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Looper's Delight
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On Jul 12, 2006, at 10:03, Buzap Buzap wrote: > Hi Loopers > > I was wondering if there is something like this available: > The idea is to split up music in real-time (!) into it's beats and > route the beats separately though various effect sends. > > So, imagine something like a stepsequencer, but instead of > constructing music out of beats, you _deconstruct_ the beats of the > music. > I imagine a DJ using it like this: > - DJ is playing some music with dense rhythm and harmony (i.e. 4/4 > meter) > - First, you sync the "Beat Splitter" with the music (tap, beat > detect, midi sync...) > - You have 16 buttons like a step sequencer for 16 beats > - You can route each beat separately to various effect routings, i.e. > - route beat 1/5/9/13 to FX Send 1 to modulate the bass drum > - route beat 3/7/11/15 to FX Send 2 to boost volume level (shift > rhythmic center) > - mute some beats completely for percussive effect > > And all this would work in real-time while the music is playing (or > maybe with 1 bar delay). > The DJ could play around with effects, mute some beats for effects > or shift the meter i.e. to 12/16 for a triplet effect etc... > > I know that Ableton Live can do some of these features (esp. with > MIDI) but is there some software - or even better - hardware that > does this? The application GURU, by FXpansion, comes half ways into this territory. It's not real-time, in that you have to first catch the audio as a sound file on the hard drive. This can be done with Ableton Live or Möbius in sync with automatic trimming of the audio file to perfectly match one or two bars, or whatever length you prefer. In GURU you select the file and "Slice" it. This means GURU slices it up into beats (i.e. eight not hits - not "beat" as in Dj/ rapper vocabulary; meaning a two bar drum loop with eventual bass and rhodes). GURU then examines each slice to see which one has the most kick drum-like frequency response and maps this sample to the kick drum not of the built in step sequencer pattern. Same goes for hi hat, snare and percussion drum. What I'm saying is that you set up GURU with a two bar step sequence, still with no audio samples assigned to the notes played, and then you start throw an audio files at it and listen back to how transients sliced out of this file do sound when transformed on-the-fly into a drum kit. I have been lobbying for FXpansion to make GURU's "slice-up and assign transients to suitable drums of a kit" functionality real- time, but was told it is not first priority. Here's the same issue as with Ableton Live related to commercial software developing and estimated market. It just seems as there isn't enough demand for real- time music production tools (of which looping is one concept). A hypothetical set-up (so far) could be a future version of Möbius that may host GURU VST. GURU could then be set by default to look for the file to auto-slice at the same location where Möbius saves by the "Quick Save" command. Another cool "beat slicing" plug-in appl is pHATmatic Pro. Both PMP and GURU supports multiple virtual outputs that can be assigned to any host appl track/channel or different physical sound card outputs (should answer some of your sound mangling wishes). There are also examples of related solutions with MAX/msp (Jamie Lidell) and Reaktor (see video at NI's web site) Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international) http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast) http://www.myspace.com/looproom