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"!!!"
Okay, paradigm shift -- light bulb slowly starts to turn up from
dim... Or, in other words, where'd I put that damn checkbook. ;)
I've gotta admit, it didn't occur to me to use slip in such a radical
manner (I'm used to shifting tracks a smidgen here or there just so
they'll
sit in a groove). It makes sense, though, and with the right amount of
MIDI tweeking it shouldn't be too hard to set up macros for randomly
accessing just about any portion of the loop and reordering it to
suit. And in tandem with time/pitch distortion? Well, let's just say I
think I might be able to find enough to keep me busy... <*evil grin*>
As for decomposition, I was more or less interested in the way the
sound/loop decomposes, or degenerates over time. I enjoy seeing what kind
of interesting artifacts start to come out as a sample begins to fall
apart. However, using your example below, it would be just as interesting
to "decompose" the groove in a very interesting manner.
And effects? Trust me, I got a gazillion! I learned how much life they
can breathe into a sterile synth sound a long time back, even before they
started integrating them into the synths themselves. My only trouble now
is limiting myself to an eight-channel mixer with two mono effect
sends. Relatedly, I'll probably be putting the Repeater in series with a
Lex MPX-100. Have you had better luck with effect units in line before or
after the Repeater?
Thanks again!
-c-
At 12:50 AM 8/27/2002 +0200, Rainer Straschill wrote:
>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-