RE: Using a Looper with a mixer

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

At 5:41 PM -0500 9/4/01, M. Steven Ginn wrote:
>Sure sounds like the best way to accomplish something like this for a
>live musician is to use something like the Switchblade that someone else
>mentioned.  I guess for testing purposes, I could use a patchbay to
>change routings around.

I have heard good things about the Switchblade and have examined the 
manual, but I don't own one myself. I believe several people on this 
list are Switchblade users.

I am familiar with matrix mixing in general terms, and specifically 
with systems from Level Control Systems. Such a system can give you 
total control over all your signal routing, but it can get 
complicated (worth the effort, though).

>I am a wind player (Sax, EWI, WX5).  One type of musical structure that
>I am trying to create is to lay down what I have seen mentioned (or read
>in the archives) called a sound carpet and then play another instrument
>over the top.

This is certainly one of the popular approaches, and it can be 
achieved with a variety of looping devices. If you have multiple 
channels of looping devices, such as several Echoplexes or a 
Repeater, then there is the possibility to create such a "carpet," 
"bed," or "wash" that can then be further modified by fading the 
layers in and out. Multiple foot pedals would be good for this.

This is an example of parallel signal processing: simple dynamic 
mixing of sound layers. You could do the same sort of thing with your 
synthesizer sounds. Rather than simply summing them in a line mixer 
you could control the level of each instrument with a pedal. 
Similarly (and getting back to the idea of splitting signals) you 
could split the output of your looper and route each leg of the 
signal through its own effects processor before mixing them back 
together.

Clearly you can end up with a complicated system, with lots of pedals 
and lots of separate processors. But you don't have to take it to 
extremes. Some effects processors will allow you to do this sort of 
routing internally. The main point is to find ways to gain real time 
control over the evolution of your sound.
-- 

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Richard Zvonar, PhD
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