Re: feedback and loops

[jim palmer <jimp@pobox.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthias Grob" <matthias@grob.org>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2000 1:14 PM
Subject: Re: feedback and loops


> from the  "improv + looping in Jungian analysis" posts:
> 
> >  > As EE and looper I tend to believe that there is no oszilation
> >>  without feedback.
> >>  I dont know how the tiny parts guys think about it.
> >>  What is it really that keeps everithing vibrating? :-)
> >
> >prime mover?
> >big bang?
> 
> hmm, the prime mover attacked a string a very long while ago and its 
> still sounding? :-)

boooooooo|:ooooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggg:|

in the beginning was the word...
what was the word?
maybe just a big string called "word"?
ohm?
the hebrew name for god translates as "i am."
i interpret this to mean consciousness (or self awareness)
i think that consciousness itself arises from a feedback loop.
both from an awareness of sense itself and
from the sensing of oneself through the senses.
whoo boy, does that make any sense?
"sense and sensamillia"
i think this kind of thing is what attracted me to musical looping
in the first place.

> >quantum mechanics says: heat and chance.
> 
> yes, but its no answer, since heat we can only define through the 
> movement and chance?

interesting point of view.
what came first the chicken or the egg?
they define movement in terms of "probability waves"
so what is oscillating to cause these?

> 
> >i am only vaguely familiar with string theory,
> >but these guys think all matter is energy oscilating in
> >tiny loops. i agree that fundamentally there must
> >be a feedback occurring down there.
> 
> yes, the most simple model for a string vibration is an energy loop 
> between movement and tension.
> If you see the attack (additional) tension as input, that energy then 
> turns into movement (sound output) and then on the other extreme, 
> when the string stops again to change direction, the movement is 
> transformed into tension again, so it may be seen as feeding back the 
> energy...
> 
> The historic loops of peace/war or splitting/unifying could be 
> explained through feedback: The result of an action feeds a change of 
> behavior which then changes the situation so that behavior changes 
> again...

have you read "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"?
persiig calls these two poles "classical" and "romantic" after the
two previous periods in western culture and talks about the
oscillation through history between them.

> Maybe the problem with the word "feedback" is that in many loops its 
> not quite clear what is "back".
> If we look at the time scale in our music loops, it might be more 
> correct to speak of "feedforward" (expression is used in engineering, 
> too), since we bring the sound of a few seconds ago forward to now 
> when its "fed back" into memory from where it will be read in a few 
> seconds...

feedforward
an interesting notion
back is from output to input.
in a delay this equates to forward in time.
how is the term used in engineering?

i recently had the brilliant idea of plugging my guitar into one input
on a ring modulator the output of which i plugged into a delay, the output 
of which
i plugged into the other input of the ring modulator.  "i will play with 
the ring modulation of my former self and thus rule the universe!"
the problem was, with no signal in the second input of the rm, there was 
no 
signal to the delay and thus no signal to the second input of the rm....


> How about feedarround? :-)

yes!