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Re: Percussive Loopers



>Anybody out there doing any *real-time* looping with either acoustic or
>electronic drums/percussion?

I thought I'd add myself to the percussive looper mix.  I loop acoustic 
drums only using a repeater and an EDP.  Most of my playing has been with 
a 
simple bass/snare/hi-hat combo.  I usually like to add djembe, tamborine, 
shaker, and/or bells.  I have a 1402 mixer and a few SM57's and a SM82 (?) 
for the bass drum.   I'm considering adding some gating techniques to keep 
the monitored loops from bleeding into the overdub. The repeater is on 
alt3-4 bus, while the EDP is on aux1.  They both return to channels.  So I 
always keep the channels "muted" (sent to aux3-4) since the repeater 
passes 
through signal anyway.  I make extensive use of the solo button to 
"audition" loops over my headphones and to keep a tempo going in the 
headphones.  My final looped result goes out into a single mackie SRM-450, 
which I love to death.

I also have a mo-fx and filter-fx unit from electrix.  I find myself 
experimenting with the effects units quite a bit, especially on "vocal" 
loops (I try to de-emphasize my completely shitty vocal ability...).

Instead of going for extremely wide variety of sounds, I am focusing on 
the 
ability of looping to recreate some rediculous polyrythms, as well as 
interlocking two independant rhythms.  I especially like to start with a 
simple hi-hat rhythm on track one of the repeater.  Then play some ryhthm 
on 
track two for a while.  Then turn off track two and create a new rhythm on 
track 3 that I think will interlock nicely without listening to track two. 
 
Then when I fade in track two, its a pleasant/unpleasant surprise.  All I 
can really say about this is that it has really lead to some incredible 
improvements in my time!

The repeater has also allowed me to experiment somewhat with what I call 
"rhythm series."  This is a rhythm that can fit with a copy of itself at a 
different speed (say at half the speed).  Imagine then that you could have 
4 
copies running at 1/4 speed, 1/2 speed, full speed, and 2x speed:  COOL!  
A 
great challenge is to try and create something that sounds good with 
itself 
at 1/3 tempo!

I am sure this is old hat, but one of my favorite things to do is to set 
the 
EDP to echo mode with an echo length of 1.5 beats (or any other number 
really) and just "jam" with what's coming out of my monitor speaker!

I enjoyed learning about everyone else's aproach to percussive looping.
Jon

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