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Looper's Delight
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Hi Bill-
You wrote:
Do you find the looping time to be enough to fulfill your needs?
Yes, more than enough. The only situation where I would imagine the
need for more time would be a traditional song form, where someone might wish
to create a verse in one loop and a chorus in another. Each part could be
30-40 seconds long. The DD20 is NOT the machine for this kind of looping.
...and...
I'd like to be able to create a sonic wall of sound, so to speak.
With that in mind, my second question is: how many loops can you create on top
of each other?
Infinite.
The nature of your questions makes me wonder if you're
grasping how the DD20 works. Think of it as a very long digital delay. Most
delays function in the 300ms-2 second range. You begin playing, and a second
later there it is again.
And again a second later.
And again a second later.
And again a second later.
If the delay is set to 100% feedback, the sounds will keep
repeating at the same volume, theoretically forever. You can continue to play on
top of these repeats, and the new sounds will lay atop the old. A good digital
delay will duck and compress the audio as it layers so that it sounds
"thicker" with the new sounds without sounding sludgy or distorting. The DD20 is
very good at this. You could think of it as an infinite number of digital
recorders, all recording and playing back forever. I envision it as the "cabin
scene" in the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera," a room filling with more
and more people. Just remember that the DD20 has a delay of up to 23 seconds, so
a lot of sound can go in before it starts to repeat.
If the delay is set to less than 100% (say, 75%), then
the effect is more like "traditional" echo. If the delay is very short, we
associate the repeating (and decaying) sound with an acoustic space, like a big
gymnasium or a canyon. But when the delay exceeds about 3 seconds, it functions
more like a signpost in a landscape, slowly getting smaller and smaller. Or like
our own memories of an event, slowly receeding with time. Remember, with the
DD20, you can crank this up to 23 seconds, and continue to layer sounds upon
sounds upon sounds, all gently receeding into the mists of passed
time.
There are limitations to the DD20, to be sure. You can't have
one delay crankin' away at 14 seconds, a second delay at 12.8 seconds, and a
third delay at 17.4 seconds, etc. etc. But you CAN have TWO different delays at
one time by switching to a new patch. You can have one delay at 14 seconds and
another at 12.8, for instance. Read through the review of the DD20 on the
Loopers Delight web page again if this remains unclear. Also, if you listen to
the excerpt from "The Long Dance," you'll hear dozens and dozens of guitars by
the time you get 30 seconds into it. I did that with two DD-20s and a few
short delays generated from my Boss GT-3, live. For the sake of that performance
I layered two takes, but it is fundamentally the same as the sound I get
live.
I'm sure you won't mind if I post this on the Loopers Delight
forum as well. New loopers are always appearing, and an occasional refresher
course in what an old looper does is always useful. (Read that last sentence two
ways: "looper" as looping device, and "looper" as looping person!)
dB, coyote
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