Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
Hey -c-,
I don't know if I understand what people (or, more specifically, you) mean
by "decomposition". But I think there are some cool things you can do with
a
Repeater (or partially an Echoplex) which you might find appealing,
especially when using it together with a sequencer. While I haven't done
this myself, I guess that by clever combination of slip, trim, start/stop,
reverse, pitch shift and changing speed, you can do some crazy things like
reordering the sequence of events in a certain loop, most of it
independently for the four tracks. Say you've got a four-bar rock drum
groove on stereo pair 1+2 (recorded at home, perhaps from some original
source) and a i-iv-VI-V synth chord progression on track 3 (recorded at
home
with your Prophet or during performance from one of your synths). You could
then reorder the synth chord progression to V-iv-i-i, or you could use the
beginning of bar 3's bass drum to run this track via a separate output
through a filter, filter the bass drum, and rerecord this to track 4, which
you would then use to turn your rock drum groove into a house drum groove
by
slipping the very bass drum (now on track 4) to every beat. This has so far
happened without time compression and pitch shift. Then, by varispeeding
the
whole thing and at the same time pitchshifting track 3, you could double
the
speed of the drum groove, while keeping the synths at same length and
pitch.
You might then resample the bass drum from track 4 into your pitched drum
loop, and while having the four bars run into a D2 delay, put the muted
Repeater into reverse and overdub something else onto track 4, before
killing the D2 and at the same time returning the Repeater to forward and
unmuting it, to have your "organic" reverse stuff on track 4 run with the
groove (which you might then also run through a Kaoss Pad via the effects
loop).
Speaking of the Kaoss Pad, a quick look on my big rig's patchbay shows me
the current patchwork repeater effects send->Kaoss Pad->repeater effects
return :-)
The above are just a few weird ideas, and I guess it would be extremely
challenging to do this in "realtime" (i.e. by sending the necessary CC by
hand), but I guess if you assign a few "macros" to hotkeys in your
sequencer
(I think for example Cubase does this, but I haven't worked with Cubase
intensively for something like 3 years), you could realize some of these
functions and still retain a "spontaneous" element.
And think about using effects in general. Lots of effects. The "cold and
emotionless" synthesizers do gain so much from the use of effects.
And again, here are lots of people who do crazy things with an EDP, and
there are some people who do crazy things with EDP and Repeater be sure to
get their input!
Rainer
Rainer Straschill
Moinlabs GFX and Soundworks - www.moinlabs.de
digital penis expert group - www.dpeg.de
The MoinSound Archives - www.mp3.com/moinlabs
> Thanks for the note back, Rainer, although I'd politely
> disagree with your
> assertion that it's "not much of a help". ;)
>
> In fact, I believe that in many instances I'd use the
> Repeater just as you
> are. But since I was a little vague in my previous
> description, let me go
> into a bit more detail.
>
> I figured out a long time ago that I seem to base almost
> everything I do
> off some sort of ostinato, some set of repeating patterns.
> The interest
> for me comes in the interaction between the different parts,
> and in their
> evolution/de-evolution in relation to each other.
>
> Now I'm also a synth junkie -- can't help it, I've always
> loved 'em. And
> this whole episode started when I decided to pare down my
> system to just a
> laptop setup. Since there were a few hardware modules I
> really didn't want
> to do without, I decided to supplement with a small portable
> rack (which,
> if I add the Repeater, is now up to a 12-space -- small and
> portable my
> @$#!). :P
>
> With the new system, I can do just about anything I need to
> do as far as
> sequences and their manipulations. I've got enough gear to
> handle that in
> realtime. But, as I'm sure you'll agree, locking into a
> sequencer tends to
> turn a performance into an artifact rather than an experience. If I
> wanted, I could probably set everything up onstage, press
> play, and go home
> for the evening. That's not what I'm looking for. I've
> still got some
> constraints I've put upon myself. I've got to establish an
> underlying
> beat/pulse, for instance, but over the top of that I'm looking for
> something a bit more organic.
>
> As I was looking for a method to get around this dilemma, I began
> remembering the recordings of those early tape loop
> experiments from people
> such as Eno & Fripp and Steve Reich, amongst others. It
> wasn't just the
> juxtaposition of the different parts that was interesting,
> but also the way
> in which the older parts gradually degraded as new ones were
> put down over
> the top of them. That was one of the things that originally
> attracted me
> to the Echo Pro, with its models of the old tape and platter
> looping devices.
>
> So, getting back to the Repeater, if it were nothing more
> than a realtime
> digital 4-track, then you're correct -- it wouldn't be of
> much use to me in
> this setup. But, reading through some of your other comments
> (as well as
> once again going through Mark Sottilaro's review on the
> website) leads me
> to believe that there are indeed some rather interesting ways
> to not only
> layer, but also to "decompose" your loops. Would I be
> correct in saying that?
>
> My original inclination was to see if I could simply "cheap
> out" and get
> the Echo Pro to accomplish some of the things I needed it to.
> But I'm
> beginning to think that the Repeater may actually be a bit
> more viable
> option for going about this. For instance, I've got an old
> Korg Kaos pad
> that I hadn't planned on integrating into my rig, but the
> effects loop on
> the Repeater seems the perfect place for it. Also, I've got
> a few synths
> that I love dearly (Prophet VS, Kawaii K5k) that I will just
> not take out
> of the house for fear of something happening to them.
> Because the Repeater
> can save data in a nonvolatile format, I could record synth
> clusters as
> loops instead of sampling them into the computer, then play them back
> repitched via MIDI. Neat!
>
> I think I'm leaning toward springing the bucks for one of
> these, but I'm
> still open to arguments pro or con if you (or anybody else)
> has any more
> feedback.
>
> Thanks again for your thoughts, Rainer!
>
> -c-