Re: MacLOOP

[Dave Stagner <dstagner@icarus.leepfrog.com>]

On Fri, 13 Sep 1996, Matthias wrote:

> Can anyone understand why under the zillion models of Apple, there is 
>none
> made for the musician, who always was the most faithfull mac client?
> It would be very easy to do a 19" rack version with a LCD screen for 
>stage
> and a ordinary monitor for home!
> All the musicians and studios and probably even some industries would 
>want
> that model!

I definitely concur.  I'm used to seeing PCs in industrial-strength
rackmount cases, and it amazes me that the same isn't available for
the Macintosh.  Maybe one of the new clone makers will pursue this
market.  Reliable rackmount VGA monitors are available, as are robust
pointing devices.  All that really needs to change is the case.  

On the other hand, I don't play live.  All I have is a home studio
setup.  I use a preamp with speaker emulation, and do all my
monitoring through headphones or stereo speakers.  In such an
environment, using a desktop computer is much less of an issue,
because it isn't subject to transportation abuse.  

> Well Dave, if you really do it, I will be very happy!
> - One thing would be a shareware version, that does the basic for 
>everyone
> to play. Go ahead.

Well, if I do this, I'll either give it away, or find some
distribution channel to sell it.  Those of you in the audio industry,
do you think a major vendor might pick up something like this and
redistribute it?  I'm a programmer by nature, which is the logical
complement of marketing.  :}

> - Another thing would be the soft version of the ECHOPLEX which I could
> help with soft modules for the functions. All that rounding and syncing 
>is
> nothing easy!

How comfortable with C++ are you?  :}  Yeah, the hard part is going to
be dealing with the musical manipulation of the sounds.  Digital
emulation of analog concepts is always a lot uglier than it looks.  

> - The real thing would be a HD recording program which works with
> integrated loops, so we can record what we loop, loop what we record and
> edit the loops we recorded by relooping. This is definitally a comercial
> project that has to be done in colaboration with a enterprise that
> developped HD recording.

Now I'm starting to think.  Why would it have to be done in
collaboration with an existing company?  It seems to me that the
existing companies have been practically the enemies of our musical
needs... the marketing problems of the Echoplex and Vortex are cases
in point.  Or maybe the reality is that we're such a tiny subculture
that there simply isn't a real market for such tools.  :/

But what I'm talking about here is a purely software project.  I don't
want to build new hardware; I want to take advantage of existing
hardware to get it to do what I want.  This flies in the face of the
electronic music equipment industry.  It's all about selling you
another rack device.  If I want to give myself headaches arguing with
managers and marketers that the developers and users know what to
build better than they do, I'll just go to work.  If I could build
something like this and then convince Digidesign or Lexicon or
whomever to distribute it for me and pay me royalties, all well and
good.  But mostly, I'm doing this so I can make the music that's in my
head, struggling to get out.  :}

> >What about the user interface?
> 
> A MIDI Pedal board with "volume" controller input for the FeedBack and
> maybe other parameters.

Controllers should be virtual and arbitrary.  There are basically two
classes of controllers - on/off switches and continuous controllers.
Any given software function should need one or the other.  Users
should be able to arbitrarily assign controllers to functions.  For
example, you might want to control feedback via a footpedal, or via an
onscreen fader controlled by the mouse.   That's the problem with
dedicated hardware... it ties you to specific input devices and limits
your controls.  All the physical controllers we need... expression
pedals, footswitches, faders... are available on the open market from
specialized vendors, with nothing more than a MIDI port needed to use
them.  So why invest effort reinventing the wheel, at least at this
point?  

> There is a lot to do!
> Lets loop a bit first...
> 
> Matthias

An interesting aside... do you think of your looping device(s) as an
effect, or as an instrument?  For me, the JamMan and Vortex are
instruments in and of themselves, not just processing for my guitar.
They're just instruments that need an outside tone source.

-dave

By "beauty," I mean that which seems complete.
Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly. 
Venus De Milo.
To a child she is ugly.       /* dstagner@icarus.leepfrog.com      */ 
   -Charles Fort              /* http://www.leepfrog.com/~dstagner */