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Looper's Delight
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After reading the ongoing discussion/rants about the lack of certain features on the Repeater, I'd like to offer this point of view as someone who doesn't have either a Repeater or an EDP (I loop primarily with a Boomerang, old OS). The underlying theme I'm hearing in these comments is "This box doesn't do things the way I'm used to doing them." Guess what? Bass guitars don't do things the way 6-string guitars do, either. Ever tried Travis picking on a bass? Or slapping and popping on a Strat? Granted, you can do a halfassed approximation of both, but it ain't the same. Why not? Because those are techniques idiosyncratic to their individual instruments. The idea that loopers are new musical instruments is an old one in this forum; an examination of the archives will confirm this. If it's true, then we have to think of looping gear in the same terms that we think of regular instruments. This leads us to a few key ideas: 1. Different loopers are different. A bass is not a guitar; an EDP is not a Boomerang is not a Repeater, no matter how similar they appear. 2. The instruments we play have a profound impact on the music that we make, and form the primary frame of reference for relating to new instruments. I'm a guitarist, and when I pick up a bass, the first thing I do is try to play it like a guitar. Realizing that this is not the optimum way to approach the instrument, I have to adjust my thinking and playing to match the strengths of the instrument. My first looper was an Akai Headrush, followed by the Boomerang. Neither of these has a true wet/dry mix control, nor can they go from recording directly into overdubbing (under the original Boomerang OS, which I still have). I don't miss these features, because the instruments on which I learned to loop do not have them, and thus my looping style does not incorporate these elements. Using a "delay-style" looper, such as the Digitech RDS series (which I owned briefly) requires me to make a big adjustment in the way I think about looping, which may not ultimately serve my playing (that's why I don't own one anymore). 3. While it's perfectly legit to ask for features that you particularly like to be added to a new instrument, one should be careful of assumptions that the lack of these features constitutes a "flaw." This is a subjective judgement, based on the requirements of your particular style of playing. To assume that the agenda of instrument builders is the same as those of instrument players is at best naive. I realize that Electrix went out of their way to solicit our desired feature lists and get our feedback; at the end of the day, however, the Repeater is THEIR vision, not ours. Whether we find it useful for our application is a separate question from whether it fulfills the purpose for which it was designed. Before we fly off the handle about the perceived flaws in the Repeater feature set, maybe we should let the Electrix crew defend their instrument in terms of its intended application. Peace! ===== And if it's up to us to bring some balance back Let it not be said it's courage that we lack -Gaia Consort, "Cry Freedom" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger http://im.yahoo.com