Air FX and Repeater

[Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

Hey Gang,

about a month ago, I gave my Korg KAOSS pad to my wife, thinking with the
addition of the Electrix MO-FX and Warp Factory, I had too much in my
Repeater's effect loop anyway, and maybe I'd pick up another KAOSS pad
sometime in the future.

Well, I've been missing the KAOSS pad a lot.  It's a really cool little 
box,
with some rudimentary loop functions built in.  As for bang for the buck, 
it's
very high on my list of cool toys.  However, a few weeks ago I saw a 
special
on PBS about "High-tech and music in the SF bay area."  Not a great show, 
but
it did give a pretty good overview some stuff.  One of the people they
interviewed was a guy that does a little electronic show on the sidewalk
outside Tower Records on Market St. in San Francisco (if you haven't seen 
him,
he's really great, you should check him out)  One of the pieces of gear he
talked about was the Alesis Air FX.  Found out that Guitar Center was 
blowing
them out at $149, and for that price, I figured, what the hell?

I LOVE THIS THING!  OK, first off, IT IS NOT PROGRAMMABLE.  However, it's 
got
40 presets and not a clunker among them.  As a guitarist, it's way easier 
for
me to manipulate than the KAOSS pad was, and I was even having luck waving 
my
foot over it.  I don't think I'd have the toe accuracy to get good results
with the KAOSS pad, though I never tried.  It's got a mic mount on the 
bottom,
and I think I'm going to try mounting it at a 90 degree angle and actually
moving the face of my guitar around it to control it.  It does respond to 
X Y
and Z axis motion, so this may force me to seem more animated on stage.

What's maybe even cooler than the Air FX itself, is the way I'm able to 
use it
in conjunction with the Repeater.  Because the Repeater has a programmable
effects send, you can place effects at the input, or loop output.  When I
first started reading about the Repeater's capabilities, this feature 
didn't
really WOW me, but it sure does now.  When I set the send to loop output, 
it
doesn't effect what I'm playing, until it becomes part of the loop.  The
result is amazing, as what I'm hearing back in my loop isn't exactly what I
played into it, yet it's based on what I played into it.  Depending on what
effects you put in your chain, it can go from subtle reverb, to almost
unrecognizable mayhem.  Controlled with my elbow via the Alesis Air FX.  
So,
I'm playing notes with my hands, effecting them with my foot, and at the 
same
time effecting the loop with my elbow.  Hot damn.  Does it get better than
this?  If I really want to save what I'm doing to the current loop, I can 
do a
resample, adding what ever effects are in the loop permanently, while 
keeping
my original one the way I played it.  SWA-EET.

So, if you've got $149 or so burning a hole in your pocket, I suggest 
picking
up an Air Effects, before they go away forever.  Now that Newmark owns 
Alesis,
who knows what the future of this little baby is.  All I know is it seems 
to
be an untapped treasure.

Mark Sottilaro.