SINGAPORE – People may know guitarist Randolf Arriola as “that guy who plays at Harry’s at Dempsey”, but he has been instrumental (no pun intended) in raising the profile of live looping here.

Live looping, for those who don’t know, is the recording and playback of looped audio samples in real-time, using either hardware or software – usually in the form of pedal gadgets – that allows for instrument textures, improvisation and composition techniques to come into play.

“It’s actually like teppanyaki,” said Arriola when asked to explain live looping without all the musical jargon. “With teppanyaki, you place your order and the chef is right in front of you with all the ingredients. And bit by bit, you observe the act of how your meal is prepared and served to you. You consume it with full knowledge and understanding of how it’s created. That’s basically what consuming a live looping performance is all about. The rest is just the diversity of what the dish is. Or rather, the different styles of music.”

These styles can be seen – and heard - from today until Sunday at the Y2K14 Live Loop Asia Festival Singapore at Artistry. Organised by Live Loop Asia and helmed by Arriola, this festival was inspired by his own experiences performing in International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz.

“It was very low-key and to me, it was more like a convention than a festival. My idea of a festival, coming from Singapore, was a very rah-rah, high brow thing. But the idea of this festival is not to go into such a mainstream manner. The idea is to reach out to anybody and everybody.”

The festival here features 20 musicians, most of whom are from Singapore (only seven are from overseas). The international artistes are an impressive bunch, featuring Mandoman from Japan, Para Sabda from America and Thorsten Vieth from Germany. But the local contingent is equally impressive, what with the likes of beatboxer Kai (who also sings with a cappella group, Vocaluptuous), bassist Wendy Phua, multi-disciplinary artist Bani Haykal, violinist Eileen Chai, electro musician Weish and Arriola himself among the line-up.

“I’m proud to say that we have a wide range of artistes here,” said Arriola, adding that he was sometimes surprised by who these artistes were.

“For example, Eileen Chai, I had no idea about her background. She had introduced herself to me and I invited her to jam with me at Harry’s one night. I only knew she was a violinist. Then my friend came up to me and said, ‘She’s more famous than you.’ He showed me her webpage and man, she is the epitome of over-achiever: She was a national athlete, a gymnast and diver and broke records and won medals. I didn’t even know she was a violinist in the orchestra!

“She had gone through the whole sports route and came to a brick wall. When she went into music ... she wanted to know what I was doing and how to incorporate it into what she was doing. Now, she has reinvented herself.”

For the record, Chai was the first violinist to perform live looping with vocals here. That is the beauty of live looping - it’s a very open platform. “It’s not genre specific and it’s very travel friendly. It can be a one-man project or it can be a group,” said Arriola. “The spirit of live looping is quite punk; and you don’t have to be bogged down by people’s expectations, as long as your creativity is there – and your accessibility to the most basic of equipment.”

Although Live Loop Asia Festival Singapore may be a low key event, for Arriola, it is one of the first steps to raise more awareness, not just for live looping per se, but also for the musical talent found in the region. He would like to create a touring circuit with this festival, which can travel throughout the year to various countries around the world.

“We create a bridge and through us, artistes can come here and the artistes from over here can go over there,” he said.

Y2K14 Live Loop Asia Festival Singapore is on until Sept 27, 7.30pm at Artistry (17 Jalan Pinang). Admission is free.