Re: such a lame beginner

[Tim Nelson <tcn62@ici.net>]

Sure you could; what a lot of people do is position their rack very close
to their mixer. The controls aren't really much farther apart than they
would be on one device, and it's a lot more flexible (and easier to upgrade
piece by piece without replacing your whole setup in one fell swoop, which
helps with the affordability quotient). Separate devices allow you to set
up your stuff in the configuration YOU want, which isn't always in ways
some research team at Roland or Korg (or egad! an onstage PC running exotic
software) may have thought of.

Depending on which looper you go with, either the unit itself (Boomerang,
Headrush, 2100, etc.) would be on the floor, or a footswitch unit would be
connected to your rack (EDP, JamMan, etc.) so you'd be stopping and
starting your loops with your feet, yet not having to crouch down to make
other adjustments. Your filterbank and any other rackmount processors you'd
care to use would all be together, their controls mere inches apart!
Ergonomica!

I've seen a lot of loopers use keyboard stands (or even tilted amp stands)
to position their racks at the right height. I use a rack that's kind of
weird; it's six spaces, but it's set up three high and two wide. With two
keyboard stands set at different heights, I can have my rack controls right
over my keyboard controls, and the rack itself supports my mixer and
another mono synth so everything's right there all in one place with the
pedals underneath. I set it perpendicular to the front of the stage to
avoid giving anyone "staring at the back of a rack" syndrome, and put my
guitar pedalboard at right angles to the keyboard setup, so everything's
really very accessible and there's minimal tap-dancing involved. You might
not need to improve your dexterity as much as you might think!

Tim

At 11:47 AM 8/10/99 -0700, you wrote:
>heh, yeah the problem is that i wouldn't be able to control three seperate
>devices as you suggest with my foot and one spare hand.  maybe it's my
>dexterity that needs improvement. heh, thanks..
>
>On Tue, 10 Aug 1999, Travis Hartnett wrote:
>
  For what you're wanting, I
>[.suspect you'd need a good looping device, a mixer, and a filterbank in 
>the
>[.effects loop.