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> I like the way dynamics affect feedback in the Vortex. When I >play loudly the older material is completely replaced, but if I play >softly it is simply layered on top of the older material. This is very >convenient and intuitive since it allows me to make much more >spontaneous compositional decisions without having to fiddle with an >expresion pedal. Ah yes, I see. I guess before I thought you were talking about the boomerang's feedback control, when you were actually talking about the vortex. Seems like a pretty interesting effect, feedback modulated by input level. In general, that sort of parameter modulation is something that is little explored in effects boxes. Having some aspect of the effected output controlled by some aspect of the input really opens up a lot of possibilities. It would make flat effects much more musically interesting, in my opinion. Using level like the vortex is only one way, and a pretty simple one. At g-wiz, we were working on the idea of timbral modulation, where some aspect of the way a note sounded was used as a control input. An example might be a sax player overblowing a note a little bit and using the resulting degree to which the note's harmonic content changes to add more flanging or something. Or to use the difference in sound between plucking a nylon string guitar with the fleshy part of your thumb and plucking it with your nail to control the high frequency damping in a reverb patch. This sort of control turns out to be quite natural, because musicians already use all of these techniques to control the way "normal" notes sound on their instrument. It's an area of expressive possibilities that hasn't made it to your garden variety effects device. Mostly because it's really, really hard to do! > I usually play standing up, and as you can imagine, am not able to use >more than one foot-pedal at a time. (Sometimes I wish I could grow a >couple of extra feet just for this purpose ;) don't we all! I guess one advantage of looping is you can record something first, and then twiddle knobs as the loop repeats! Every year at NAMM there is at least one company with some variation on attaching light sensors to something so that other motions can be used for parameter control. Maybe you could try that? My favorite remains the headstock wah-wah, where the wah sound opens and closes as you move the guitar neck up and down. Perfect for the 70's era stadium-rocker moves! For some reason these companies are never there the next year....ideas whose time has not quite arrived perhaps.... Don Buchla is the champ for optically controlled instruments. His Lightning is pretty amazing. I hear he's working with E-mu now on some sort of optically sensed drum pad, which will probably make the korg wavedrum look like a toy..... > >Having control over feedback with a pedal is fabulous, but being able to >control it through your playing (dynamics) is equally delicious. >Simplicity. Unless you want to add loud notes with the feedback up..... kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@annihilist.com | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html http://www.annihilist.com/ | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com