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At 10:04 AM 9/30/2001, Matthias Grob wrote: >>At 7:28 PM -0700 9/29/01, Mark Landman wrote: >>>The EDP has many great strengths, it remains the solo looper monster >>>machine, however, off-loading loops isn't the EDP's strength. Midi >(think >>>glacial speed, then cut in half) is the only supported off-loading >>>mechanism. The RAM is indeed non-volatile. >> >>Mark, you probably meant to say volatile here? The EDP uses DRAM on >>old-school 30 pin SIMMS, so it forgets when it gets powered off. > >How important is this non volatiliy? I often think about this, but reach a different conclusion. With a performance oriented looper like the Echoplex, the whole feature set is based around the idea of being able to build, manipulate, and evolve loops freely while performing. If all you do with it in performance is make static, unchanging loops, you are almost missing the point. So, if your loops are things that living and changing constantly, what exactly is it that you save when you "store a loop"? To me that is like taking a photograph instead of filming. It just gets a glimpse but not the whole experience. Looping to me starts with nothing and grows to something and changes to other things and eventually goes back to nothing again. "Storing the Loop" for me would just mean recording the whole evolving thing from beginning to end. There is no point in the middle where I think, "now the loop is done" and I could save it. Especially not in any kind of performance context, where I'm thinking about playing and not recording anyway. Devices like the echoplex or jamman or boomerang or DL-4 I don't think of as recording devices at all, but as performance instruments. Having recording facility built into it makes about as much sense to me as having an automatic plucking device built onto a guitar. So you play something once and press save, then the from then on you don't have to play that riff again yourself, you just recall it and the plucker does it for you. I dunno about you, but I wake up each day and enjoy that I can play it again myself. I like that it comes out a little bit different every time. (or even totally diffeent.) I like that I can adapt to my mood or other musicians or whatever. With a performance approach to looping it is the same to me. If I play some interesting loops and I like it, I remember things about what I did and have a confidence in myself that I can do that again tomorrow. If it is not exactly the same as yesterday, that is ok, maybe it will be better. Maybe I think this because I am really more of a player and improviser, and not really interested in composing or even recording. But then I also really have an appreciation for tools well designed for their purpose, with a clear focus on that purpose, and I like to consider that purpose in choosing what I want for my own needs. I don't expect a tool designed around recording and studio needs to work well for improvisational and live playing. And I don't expect a tool designed to work well as a live performance instrument to serve as a recording studio. And a tool that doesn't seem to have a clear focus and tries to be everything, I expect will not do any of those things very well. I prefer a "best of breed" device, that knows what it's purpose is and does that very well. The hammer is for hammering and the saw is for sawing, and I don't want a hammersaw that sucks at both. If having a lot of static loops stored that you can trigger at will is what you want to do, perhaps it is a sampler you want. Or if being able to save a lot of stuff so you can carefully edit it into a recorded composition is what you want to do, perhaps a pc based recording studio is what you want. Or maybe a more portable, self contained sort of recording studio that lets you easily transfer back to your pc is what you want. If playing and creating loops live and improvisationally is what you want to do, a performance looper is probably what you want. Don't expect to find one tool that does all of these things well, because you won't. Even if something tried, it would be a failure for being too overloaded with too many features and an impossibly cluttered user interface, and everywhere in the underlying design it would be making compromises on one type of feature set in order to make another type of feature work. You would hate it. If you want to do some mixture of things, get a mixture of tools to meet those needs. I notice an interesting thing with a lot of people as they get more into looping. Usually they start off thinking that loop storage is really important. That is usually the stage where they stick to very static loops, where something is created with an overdub or two, and then left to repeat as is forever while they play along with it. So they think a lot about wanting to save that loop. (this is usually where the complain a lot that the EDP lacks that feature. :-) Then as they get more into it, they discover more and more that there is so much creative possibilities in the *process* of creating loops, and manipulating them and evolving them on the fly. The loop at any given point along the way is less of the focus. As they follow that path, they gradually forget about the whole idea of storing loops, because in that context it doesn't really make sense anymore. Instead they think more about recording the whole process as storage. I find this to be true about a lot of loop oriented music. I listen to electronic dance music all the time, even though I don't really do that as a musician. Mostly it is a very composed style, created by people sitting in front of computers, constructing very static loops that they mix together in different ways to make a composition. At the entry level, people don't really even create the loops, it is mostly using "loop libraries" or pre-existing sequences or obvious samples off other music. which is fine, that is really a point where people are learning mixing skills, recording techniques, and composition. Gradually they move on to making their own loops and do more of the creation themselves, and the music usually starts to get better as they do. They still work with static loops that they have created and stored away. And then I notice that the best dance music, or what I like the best anyway, moves beyond that. It doesn't stick to the same loop repeating endlessly, instead the loops are changing all the time. different elements coming in and out of the loops, things altering and evolving into something else. It's repetitive and grooving but it never truly repeats. I imagine those guys are thinking the same things about evolving loops that I think about. I also know from interacting with some of them that the frustrations they find with the tools tend to be in the lack of immediacy of that PC-based approach. It takes too long to meticulously construct everything, and it is too hard to "feel" it as you create. they want it more direct, like a performance type looper can give. I'm really interested to see where all of this is going.... kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com