New Cagean Loop Device!

[improv@peak.org (Dave Trenkel)]

I've just discovered a whole new looping device! Well, actually, I started
viewing a certain flaw in my recording system from a different perspective,
and came up with an all-new, chance operation digital looping device!

I'm working on a (loopy) recording project in my basement studio, a kind of
ambient/trip hop/jungle type of thing, which is a pretty new style of music
for me. I'm recording stuff onto a Powermac 7100/66, running Macromedia's
Deck II 2.5, and a digidesign Audiomedia 2 card for input/output. The
source materials are DAT's of various musicians I've played with over the
years, a couple of analog synths, my bass, and various effects including a
JamMan. Once stuff is into the computer, I loop it in either Deck or Opcode
StudioVision Pro, and process it with Hyperprism, SoundHack, Sound
Designer, etc, and assemble the final tracks in Deck.

On my system, I can get between 7 and 11 tracks of simultaneous playback,
depending on the fragmentation of my hard drive, the amount of automation
in the track, the phase of the moon and of course, the relative strength of
the earth's magnetic field. I never really know how many tracks I'll get,
it varies from day to day. The cool thing is that when I try to add another
track than the computer can play, whether by live recording or importing an
audio file, my computer goes into this wierd loop mode, where it plays back
a random-length chunk of audio from the piece over and over until I reboot
the computer, usually with wierd sonic glitches at the beginning and end of
the loop. After rebooting, everything seems fine, and I don't think this is
destroying my hard drive. This used to annoy me to no end, it happens about
once every other day or so. Lately, I've been keeping a DAT around to
record these loops, I grab 30 seconds or so before rebooting. I never
really know when this is going to happen, and these loops are not something
I'd probably intentionally do, so I'm learning to appreciate them as manna
from loop heaven, and not as a bug.

Any other stories of accidental loopistry out there?

later,
dt

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Dave Trenkel, NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: improv@peak.org
self promotional web-site: http://www.peak.org/~improv/
"A squid eating dough in a polyethelene bag is fast
and bulbous, got me?"
                                     -Captain Beefheart
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