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Looper's Delight
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Mark asked about the SR16 drum machine, being blown out for $149 by musiciansfriends.com: If you purchase this machine, merely as a hardware midi sequencer is it worth it's weight in gold, in my opinion. The sounds truly suck (although practically any sounds can become interesting with a little filtering and effects processing) but it's midi implimentation is pretty darn good for such an old piece of 'kit' (love that english term for gear). Because it has always sold well, Alesis has never upgraded the sounds in this instrument. I believe it got release in 1989 so the sound choices are really terrible and old fashioned in a NOT retro cool way. I still use mine to do drum tracks and use my sampler as the sound source. Also, you can drive some of the EDP's functions with it (Claude Voit has apparently really delved into this with interesting results but I , frankly and regretfully, haven't heard what he has done----you might write him and bug him about his technique. Also, my brother has been doing really fascinating stuff with using arpegiators to control the pitch of the REPEATER. One afternoon, I came home from walking around playing my little kanjira (small diameter Southern Indian frame drum) and a beautiful bamboo D major Indian flute. Bill called me in, asked me to play a very slow Alap (the part of a piece of Indian music where you play all the notes of the scale improvisational very slowly so that the audience can really 'hear' it before you start into the more rapid raga improvisations. I did, he recorded it for a very long time onto his repeater and then he began to use a very fast arpegiator on his guitar with octaves. I then played over the top of it with a fast drum rhtyhm and Bill recorded that too. The results are truly amazing and I will use the resultant track on my next abstact electronica CD, 'Purple Hand' (out in late fall/early december). I'd say if you have the capitol, that you should buy it for it's sequencing capabilities alone. Where else can you get such a cheap hardware sequencer. Plus, you can use the machine as a metronome (to practise all those odd time signatures that have always eluded you) and try those 'behind the beat/on top of the beat' exercises that I posted here while back. last note..................if that Alesis INEKO is still being blown out, you folks are fools not to buy one (if you have the dough). My wife and I did a noise/rhythm improv set at a local bar and she used it to incredible fascinating effect.................just beautiful industrial noises and strange sounds possible with that little $80 beast. Loop on, Rick