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Re: mini review: BOSS SL-20 SLICER-LOOPER pedal



On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 8:34 AM, Michael Peters <mp@mpeters.de> wrote:
> I also wonder if there are VST plugins that can do basically the same 
>thing

A bunch of (hopefully) useful hints:

TB Cairo is the name of the free VST plug-in that I use in Windows for
this kind of live stuttering/gating on my laptop looping setup. You
can find the download page by an internet search engine. It can be set
to any musical or non musical rhythmic relation to the tempo. It does
not reorder the slices though, but many loopers do that fine
(Looperlative 1, Mobius, Live's BeatRepeat).

A more musically interesting approach IMO would be to have a proper
step sequencer sending out the "open/close the gate" commands, because
this would allow for a musical groove factor (swing) and not only the
stiff mathematical grid that we know from plug-ins like TB Cairo,
LP1's scramble, Mobius shuffle, Mobius scripting or the BOSS SL-20.
This is by the way one of the reasons I'm not interested in using
VST's in the future, as the best groove clocked step sequencing host
application I know, Numerology, works with AU plug-ins under OS X.

If you are using Pro Tools as your looping host you can buy the Pro
Tools plug-in Transfuser that does both slicing/gating and many other
things. I have just did a test of Transfuser and was amazed by how
powerful this plug-in is and how easy it is to use, thanks to the
smart and clever design.

In Logic many native instrument plug-ins can fetch the audio input as
a side-chain feed and then work as slicing gates. The gating rhythm
can be directed by either the plug-in's built-in step sequencer or an
infinite number of MIDI regions (sequences) placed on a track along
the linear time line.

Whatever software method you prefer, a nice trick is to assign a MIDI
expression pedal to sweep the musically relevant time measure values
of the slicing/gating speed while playing. I started doing that back
in the Repeater days, using analog filter banks, but it's much easier
to set up and use creatively with today's computer hosted software.

-- 
Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
www.myspace.com/perboysen
www.stockholm-athens.com