Re: Footpedals, Rampant Elitism.

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

At 11:54 AM -0700 8/26/00, Your Name wrote:
>Kim,
>
>    While your critique of the MIDI versitility is appropriate, I defend
>the use
>of the adjective "powerful."  When used in conjunction with the GCX 
>rackmount
>this unit is great; specifically because of the way the software lets you
>access
>the rack loops.  With the 2.0 ROM update you can assign a pedals to
>function as
>indidual loop switches; thus allowing you to create banks that contain 
>both
>multi command presets and individual pedal style switches.  In a rig like 
>my
>own, which relies heavily on dumb, non-MIDI pedals, this allows me to 
>create
>multi-unit presets with the option of realtime modification.

yes, like I said, it's fine if all you want to do is change patches on
multi-effects, cause that is all it was designed to do. That's basically
what you are doing, even though some of the effects are separate stomp
boxes in your case. The GCX thing is nice, but as far as I can tell it is
controlled by program change messages which all pedals send. So most any
midi pedal should be able to work with it just fine, not just ground
control.

If you want to do other simple midi things, like send startsong/stopsong
messages to a sequencer or drum machine, trigger samples from a sampler,
play notes or chords on a synth while you play your instrument, etc., the
ground control can't do that. You can't even download its program memory to
a librarian program on PC and upload it later, so there's no backup. Many
other midi pedals can do all these things. Since most people interested in
looping are going to be interested in these types of applications, I think
a limited midi controller pedal like the ground control is not a very good
choice.

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com