Re: sequences and the lp-1

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 9:10 PM, Simeon
Harris<simeonharris40@googlemail.com> wrote:
> i think i'm only scratching the surface here...there's definitely lots of
> fun to be had with sequenced pitch changes and i havn't even played 
>around
> with scramble yet. i know some of you chaps with lappytops have been 
>doing
> this kind of thing for ages, but i'm having fun!
>
> so if anybody has any more ideas for cool sequences, please chip in!
> (Per....!?!)


Wow, what cool sounds Sim! Make some awesome music with those tricks!

I too started doing that stuff in hardware, first using a Repeater and
an Alesis sequencer. Got the tip from David Torn. At Zürich loopfest
2005 Bill Walker used his guitar sequencer to drive the Repeater and I
used a Powerbook to send sequences to an EDP and Augustus Loop on the
laptop. But over the years I have actually minimized the number of
sequences I use, because the technique is so powerful to give
differently sounding results depending on what you apply them to.
Generally I use only two sequences of
HalfSpeed/NormalSpeed/DoubleSpeed jumps and two sequences of
SUSSubstitute. For the SUSSubstitute patterns I usually "play" the
Secondary Feedback of Mobius to change the amount of how much of the
old layers will be kept or replaced by my live playing (same as EDP's
"Replace Mode" etc). One pattern close to straight sixteenth notes
like a tremolo grid, and the other on a groovy pattern. Each of these
four sequences I keep in five variations, programmed to suite  the
time measures 4/4, 5/4, 6/8 and 7/8. And I have carefully blended up
and down speeding in order to make the "speed stuttering" loop finish
at the same timing as it would if not being "speed stuttered". I think
that is a really good advice, because this makes it possible to play
around with it more like an instrument - it stays in sync with
parallel loops no matter the mangling you set off. A second good
advice is to explore this stuff in overdub mode as well; then you make
a strange sound of the background layers and you will get some strange
sounds back in the next round from your present overdubbed live
playing i.e. the "variation effect" in the listeners ear will be
double the loop length.

Oh, almost forgot one cool pattern (actually keeping this one too in
four versions for the different time measures) and that is a pattern
that overdubs a short chunk (like a 32th note) then reverses and speed
shifts to overdub again at the same spot etc etc. This is repeated
four times to create a four note chord hit at the overdub spot...
given you play one note during the half second it takes. Maybe this is
not of great use for guitar playing because on a guitar you could as
well just play a muted chord strum once and get the same musical
function. But I like the odd sound I get from this with the flute,
sounds close to a hammond back-beat organ with a bit quirky sync
between "the four finger of the players chord grip hand". Finally,
each chord hit is designed, by balancing up and down speed shifting,
to not delay or speed up the loop related to other parallel loops.

With Augustus Loop, EDP and Repeater I did these things with MIDI
clips in Ableton Live but since picking up Mobius five years ago I
have been using the same patterns as custom scripts in the looper.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com