IT ONLY HAPPENS ONCE.
What will become of a musical idea that's too easily forgotten? If you want to create truth then keep repeating it. Folk will believe an idea is true if the meme has its own echo chamber. This is becoming a musical truth with this new thing thing called the loop pedal. Record a snippet of music, play it back and record over it. Play those back and add another layer. With new technology comes new music and a different unique snippet of music eventually gets forgotten. THE BRIDGE. Traditional pop song structures have some kind of combination of verse-chorus repetition. That synchs nicely with the loop pedal idea. But the square peg is the part of the song that is different from the rest. The bridge sets itself apart from the rest of a song by a different chord progression, melody, lyric or some such. The layering process doesn't lend itself to that kind of spice.
Foot pedal tunes hit my main stream first with KT Tunstall:
The hipsters with taste rightfully love Owen Pallett's layers:
Reggie Watts makes with the funny bytes:
but the most to be done so far with this new gift is the incredible work of Zoe Keating:
Repetition is not here to stay but it is-now. From Mondrian's grid painting to pop radio, the feeling of minimalist art is as real today as are big box store shelves. Beautiful things are happening with the foot pedal but does this mean we will tacitly retire the singular BRIDGE?
