Quad and Looping Possibilities..

[Todd Madson <crash@waste.org>]

First off:
That TC unit sounds great.  Keep us posted and if anyone manages to
get one, I'm expecting a review.

As an aside, if you haven't gotten a Vortex, or gotten your hands on
one, you really need to experience it to see what the fuss is all 
about.

It should have been a music biz success story, but it's kind of like
the Ensoniq Fizmo is the Lexicon Vortex of synths.  Nobody could 
figure out what it did, the presets were either too tame or too 
extreme depending on who you asked and finally when the marketing
didn't really work they were sold off at a bargain price.  The 
Vortex ads I kept seeing in guitar magazines emphasized the strange
effects: BLEEN, ORBITS, etc. and guitar players can be notoriously
conservative, especially since grunge came into prominence in the
early 1990s.  Me, I was always from Venus or Saturn so it was the 
perfect piece of gear for me.  Everyone else was into the vintage
thing, I was way the hell out beyond the outer rings somewhere. 

I've had a series of comments by people I've played with on the unit
and the comments I kept hearing was that my sound was definetely my
own, which made me happy anyway.  Some of the other comments seemed
to reflect on the fact that I should be wearing a space suit while
playing.  Pass the anti-grav boots.

Check out my Vortex page at:
http://www.waste.org/~crash/loopage.html

I've got the full Lexicon applications notes for the Vortex duplicated
there (without their permission, but the document was rare to begin 
with so...) as well as some links and other stuff.  Oh, and I've got
some mp3s of some loops I did recently (although they might go away
in favor of some even newer ones).

Secondly:
I remember Quad well.  My old public library actually had a Quad 
section where you could check out Quad recordings.  In some cases
the quad versions were way different than the more common stereo 
versions.  A friend's parents owned a giant wooden all-in one 
monster-osity that could play quad recordings.  There was an extra
set of speakers that were silent until you played a quad recording.

It was kind of weird because it didn't really surround you, but as
you sat in front of it you got the quad effect.  Sort of.

Some memories of quad recordings: the QS version of Santana's "Welcome",
that was a real rush.  Everything had an extra layer of percussion on it.
I especially remember that tune with the kalimba and Santana on bass
and lots of extra percs.  What else?  Flame Sky - insane as it was, it 
was almost out of control in quad, another set of drums and percussion
and I believe there were extra guitars.  Crazy.

Thoughts on Quad/Surround, Looping and Long Form Work:

It's too bad that Quad didn't catch on, but now that surround sound
stereo systems have become popular again (Dolby surround systems)(
it's been a very tempting idea to do some work in this area.  The
mastering tools for computers are getting to the point where one can
work in 5.1 and create a CD in that format.

Now how looping fits into this: I once belonged to an electronic music
mailing list where it was discussed that extremely long form pieces 
could be played, but the storage medium of the CD may or may not fit 
the bill.  Well, the humble Hi-Fi VCR would allow you to potentially do
an extremely long-form piece by recording the output of a looper direct
into a mixer and into the VCR.

Now, not all Hi-Fi VCRs have a good front end to them - some have
annoying compression but some do not.  And the Hi-Fi VCR that I have
creates really decent sound.  I've created 8-hour mixes of music for
parties and the like.  The sound quality is so close to the CD that
you cannot tell the difference.  It's somewhat better than MPEG-3
at 160 kbps.  Most MPEGs you find on the net are encoded at 128 and
I can hear the aliasing there.  Ick.  160 sounds good though.

And the longest looper I have is the Procrastination audio looper by
Ken Mistove and that sucker is really* conducive to loops that go on
for a long time.  For instance, that "Unravelling" thing I put up on
my web site is just the last seven minutes or so of a 40 minute plus
piece.  And I could have easily gone on for hours doing that.

I've seen up to 9 hour tapes available and I may just do a long-form 
loop piece in the future and then the only way you could get it from 
me would be to order a VHS tape with it on there...  I could do short
excerpts and put them on the website to entice the masses, I imagine.

Anyway, I thought about the concept of long form pieces mainly because
guys like Steve Roach were doing all night concerts where people would
actually bring sleeping bags and sleep during portions.  I think that
some tranquil looping might just do the trick here.

My 2 cents, anyway.

-Todd
http://www.waste.org/~crash/index.html