Re: Electrix Filter Factory

["Rick Walker (Loop.pooL)" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

Dear Aaron (and fellow loopers)
I don't know the EH microsynth, but I must tell you,   The electrix filter
factory is really incredible.
The addition of playable 'drum machine' buttons to either momentarily 
engage
or disengage the
effects (filtering and/or distortion) is a very, very hip thing for
processing loops in really time.
Also, the ability to drive a sequencer or drum maching with the midi
controlled LFO as well as
setting the tempi manually is also very, very cool.   This is one of the
best $300 I have ever spent on
an effects unit.   I can't more highly recommend it.    I frequently will
just 'play' my loop with this great unit
as a dub section in my live looping gigs.

A very hip usage is to create a very limited band with 'telephone' filter 
on
the filter factory with the filter engage
on a drum or percussion loop.    By hitting the momentary button in a 
rhymic
pattern you can suddenly bring in the full spectrum of the loop for very
dramatic effects.  This particularly rocks on Bass and Snare patterns.
You can 'play' a 16 bar pattern and then suddenly disengage the effect and
the whole thing hits hard, sonically.
Very effective live processing.

I must also say that I'm in love with Electrix's Warp Factory, vocoder.   
If
you feed your voice or another instrument as a modulator for a prerecorded
loop you have a lot of control over the harmonic content.
This makes a synthesizer especially organically sensitive!!!   I don't even
ever use the cliched Robotic voice
vocoder effect at all.   This unit also has what is called a formant freeze
function which allows you to morph
the harmonic content and then freeze the timbre at an appropriate time.
This is a very cool way of playing
a very organic synth lead, freezing the formant at the end of an lead 
intro,
playing the solo, and then finishing your phrasing by disengaging the 
effect
and completing the phrase with your vocal manipulations of timbre.
You just use vowel sounds to control the harmonics of the sound you are
effecting.
You can also use drum machines to 'vocode' ambient patches for beautiful
rhythmic ghosting effects.
I haven't even begun to figure out all the cool things this unit does and I
haven't even tried their
Flanging, Chorusing, Distortion  unit yet.

yours,   Rick Walker  (loop.pool)