Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
At 6:14 PM -0500 4/23/98, Dennis W. Leas wrote: >Hello, All! > >I'm a new subscriber though a long-term looper. I live in Lafayette, >Indiana and am >primarily a percussionist (strictly acoustic instruments) although I play >a few >non-percussion instruments as well. welcome! and sorry I'm slow replying, but ya know, the life is too full...... warning: massive, possibly excruciatingly detailed, echoplex techno babble commences from here on out, the rest of you might want to go back to contemplating the beatle's tape loop usage or whatever...;-) >I recently acquired a second Oberheim 'Plex with several goals in mind: > > 1) stereo looping > 2) simultaneous unsynchronized loops > 3) synchronized loops > >I'm having problems with number three. first question: do both units have the new software upgrade? (LoopIIIv5.0) This is exactly the sort of stuff that was a bit dodgy in the old echoplex software, and works considerably better now. If your older unit has the older software, you should definitely get it upgraded. >I've read through the information on >Looper's Delight regarding synchronizing. I have the two loopers >connected with a >midi cable, one is set to SYNC out, 1/8s per beat to 1; the other is set >to SYNC in, >1/8s per beat to 8 (though I've tried all the values). The two loopers >mostly >synchronize how I imagine they would, i.e., they mostly do what I want. >However, >sometimes they don't. For example, after building up a pattern in the >master looper >(via, record, overdub, multiply, nextloop-multiply, etc.) I want to record >my first >pattern into the slave. I want an integral number of the slave loops to >fit into >the master loop. Diagramatically, > >master loop: begin |---------------------------------------| end > >slave loop: begin |---------| end > >so that, as they play together: > >master loop: |---------------------------------------| > >slave loop: |---------|---------|---------|---------| > >and we all make beautiful music together... :) > >If I perform only simple operations on the master, this seems to work. >When I build >up a loop in a more complicated fashion, I can't get the units to >synchronize. >HELP! I can't find enough details to figure out what is going on. Well, I spent a couple of hours this afternoon syncing two echoplexes like you're talking about, and didn't encounter any bug-like trouble, so I'm currently of the belief that it should work. You didn't really say exactly what the "complicated" actions were in building the initial loop, or what exactly happened when the slave unit didn't do what you expected. Maybe you could send me mail and fill in the details? I'll see what I can suggest anyway: It sounds like you have things basically set up correctly. One thing seems a bit backwards though. You say the master has 8ths/beat = 1, and the slave is 8ths/beat = 8. Then you say you are trying to get this to happen: >master loop: |---------------------------------------| > >slave loop: |---------|---------|---------|---------| If I were doing this, I would set the master to have the larger 8ths/beat value (8) and the slave the smaller. (2 would be the right thing for your diagram.) Then you would record a loop on the master which would be considered 4 beats long, and loops recorded on the slave could be done in increments of 1 beat. So I wonder if you are confused about what 8ths/beat does? That's easy to do, actually, because it's a poorly named parameter. It should really be called "8ths/cycle". (those crazy swiss and their english translations....:-) The 8ths/beat parameter determines how many 8th notes the loop length represents when generating midi clock. The echoplex uses that parameter and the loop length to determine what tempo to set the clock to. For example, if 8ths/beat = 8 the basic loop length will represent 8 8th notes, which of course is 4/4. If you create a 2 second loop, the echoplex will consider that to be .25 seconds per 8th note, or 120 BPM, and transmit midi clock at that tempo. If you set the second unit to have 8ths/beat = 2, it will consider a basic loop length to have two 8th notes, or 1 beat in 4/4 time. So if the second unit is syncing to the first unit, it will create loops in increments of .5 seconds, or one beat. This should allow you to get what you've diagrammed above. but then, maybe that's not your problem..... You mentioned using multiply a lot. When I was playing around with this today, I noticed I could sometimes screw things up if I didn't think about what I was doing with multiply. (actually, I was mostly screwing my perception of things up....) One bit of advice: turn the quantize parameter on. Using multiply while syncing two or more units is a lot easier if the multiply automatically starts at the cycle boundary. If you don't have quantize on, it will still sync up properly, but the multiply counts on the master's display will probably end up out of phase with any multiply counts on the slave's display. Like I say, they will actually still be in sync, but when you look at it you will think they aren't because the displays won't change together. If quantize is on, the multiply displays will change together, and it will look right. Another thing to realize is that the slave is receiving midi clock as soon as you first record the loop on the master unit. Midi clock doesn't say anything about where the beats are located, it just defines a tempo by sending 24 pulses per quarter note. The slave keeps track of where the beats are by counting the pulses. (that's true of anything, not just echoplexes.) If you have 8ths/beat set differently on master and slave, they will have a different idea of where the downbeats of their loop measures are located. So when you do a multiply on the master, it's multiply display will be counting according to it's original loop length. The slave's idea of where it's loop downbeat should be located will regularly changing against the master's multiply count, even if you haven't recorded a loop on the slave yet, since it is just sitting there counting the midi clock pulses. So when you do hit record on the slave, it will just happily wait until it's idea of the downbeat arrives, and start recording. If you are not thinking about what is going on, this might not be where you expect it to be! It will still be in sync with the master, but it might take some practice on your part to get the hang of where it will come in. Where this can get really funky is when you have done multiply on the master's loop several times. Each time you do a multiply, the point where you hit multiply becomes the beginning of multiple "1". The "1" position can be moved around if you start multiply in different places. (this is where having quantize on is a really good idea.) The slave doesn't know anything about that, because all it gets is midi clock and it has been happily keeping track of midi clock pulses to determine where the beats are. So while it will still be synchronized to the master, it's idea of beat one might moved around a lot in relation. For example, say you've got the master's 8ths/beat=1, and the slave's 8ths/beat=8, like you say above. Let's say you've already multiplied a loop on the master to 8, and you were smart enough to start the multiply right at beat 1 in the 4/4 time that the slave is tracking. So the master's loop is now equal to one 4/4 measure, counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. The slave's sync LED should be flashing each time the master's display goes to 1. Then you decide to shorten the master loop to 4 multiples. Instead of pressing Multiply right as the display says "1", you press it right as the display says "4". (that's the "and" of 2, from the slaves point of view.) You capture multiples 4-5-6-7. The master, however, will now call these 1-2-3-4. If you've managed to follow this, you'll see the master's 1 multiple falls at what the slave thinks is "and of 2" and "and of 4". So if you now record your first loop on the slave, things might seem out of whack. I know this seems mind-numbingly confusing, but if you think about it a bit and understand what's going on, you should be able to get the hang of it pretty quickly. I hadn't really played this sort of setup much before today. I had tested it a lot, but never actually sat there using it. I had trouble with the multiply thing at first, and had some trouble getting things rhythmically organized. After a bit of practice I was doing fine though. Practice with it some and see if it starts to work, or feel free to ask more questions. hope this helps, 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