Re: "Tape Speed" style pitch/speed variation (was: Re: repeater question)

[michael sintros <mbsintros@yahoo.com>]

thanks for all the great replies to my initial
question, and it's nice to see it took on a life of
its own.  

ever since i started recording music 8 years ago, i
have loved the sound of varispeed pitch shift (i guess
that seems to be the most concise way to say this? 
there seems to be an ambiguity in general with
manufacturer lingo:  "pitch shift" can often mean
either the tape style shift or pitch shift independent
of tempo.)  it seems increasingly less devices are
capable of doing this though, which is a shame.  tempo
syncing appears to be what is in most demand these
days, and changing the loop length makes that
difficult.  i'm one of those people that doesn't care
about imperfections and i'd prefer music to be a bit
messy anyways.  

one of the places it seems the repeater shines is the
ability to alter pitch of the loop on the fly via a
midi keyboard, which is attractive.  something i've
wanted to experiment with but didn't know what piece
of gear could accomplish it (now i know!).  however it
looks like the elecro harmonix 2880 might be more
suited to what i'm seeking, as the ability to
varispeed shift is by far the more important for my
music.  i am currently accomplishing this just
recording into my akai s2000 and going through the
tedious process of setting up the sample to loop at
the appropriate points and then using a midi keyboard
to trigger the speeds.  pitch shift wheel i usually
have set to have an octave range so i can push the
wheel forward and have it play double speed, etc.  

one question about the eh 2880 unit though:  if you
have, say, 2 loop tracks running and you downpitch one
of them by a few semitones, effectively making it
lower in pitch and longer, do the two loops run out of
phase with one another, respecting their own loop
begin and end points, or does the original loop length
act as a limiting factor such that the loop points are
where they once were and the longer loop is truncated?
 i would prefer if it weren't the second option.  



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