Re: midi looper

["Jon Wagner" <jondrums@hotmail.com>]

> even if your midilooper pairs note-on to note-off,
> the receiving devices generally won't be able to do this.

huh?  doesn't a midi-off event have a note number as well?  Maybe I'm
missing something here.

> when you overdub and play a note that is already in
> the loop, the next note off will stop it, even if you
> are still holding it.

not incredibly hard to compensate for in code.  If its build as a midi
looper there are many graceful ways to fix this problem.  If we're just
talking about using a midi-codec with a regular looper this is definately 
an
issue.

> if you have feedback set to less than 100% and a note in
> the loop is fading, if you play that note again, the new
> notes velocity will be hijacked by the next note that was
> fading.  (this is kind of hard to describe)

I am totally confused by this one.  I'm very interested, if you have the
chance to explain this one further!

> overdubbing continuous controllers will make a mess as each new
> controller move would interleave with the moves in the loop,
> causing toggling effects. (as cool as they may sound, they w

Once again, there are graceful ways around this - the looper could ignore
incoming CC commands if it knows that there are already CC commands on that
channel/number in the loop or in that section of the loop (or 
alternatively,
there could be an option to allow/disallow CC overdubs - so the user can at
least be conscious to this problem).

All good points Jim, now let me bring up a couple of neat ideas that make a
midi looper a cool idea:

*no bump at the loop point - great for ambient loopers -smile-
*ability to do a live quantize function
*It could receive all internal control commands on its own midi channel
(these wouldn't get looped)
*Much easier to synch a device like this to midi time clock
*pitch, tempo, and volume changes are easy to implement and are totally
smooth
*global search and replace notes (maybe is totally specialized and obscure,
but I think it could be really cool!)
*could configure a midi-filter before the looper, so that only certain
things are looped, but all things are passed through (this means that it 
can
be placed late in the midi chain and easily switched to looping whatever
devices you want)
*wet/dry mix easy to do in software
*if this is done in hardware, it could be very cheap and simple

Jon