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Re: EDP ReAlign vs. QuantStartPoint...
this is also old, but seemed to need an answer. rainy sunday, good day for
catching up on old stuff:
At 06:56 AM 3/11/2003, Jesse Ray Lucas wrote:
>ReAlign and QuantStartPoint. I am a little unclear about which of these
>two
>commands is better suited to getting the EDP back on track with a MIDI
>clock.
Probably ReAlign is what you want. When you have done something to your
loop to move it out of alignment with the downbeat of the external clock,
ReAlign retriggers it back so it starts with the downbeat again.
There are many ways to move a loop out of alignment with an external
clock,
like retriggering it, or briefly going in and out of reverse or halfspeed.
If you do these things unquantized, your loop's startpoint will be in a
different spot than the external clock's startpoint. Even so, the Echoplex
continues listening to the clock and keeps your loop in sync so it will
not
drift, even though it is not aligned anymore. The echoplex also continues
to keep track of where your loop's startpoint is located (the local
startpoint) and where the external clock's startpoint is located (the
global startpoint).
ReAlign puts them back in phase again. If you didn't do anything to move
the out of phase, there wouldn't be any reason to use ReAlign.
QuantStartPoint is almost the opposite. If you have moved your loop out of
alignment with the external clock's downbeat, QuantStartPoint does not
retrigger the loop. It leaves the loop playing exactly as it is, out of
alignment from where it originally started. Instead, QuantStartPoint moves
the startpoint of your loop to the new place where the external clock's
startpoint is. The audio of your loop keeps playing as it was, but the
startpoint LED will now blink at the downbeat of the clock. This is
similar
to using the StartPoint command to move the StartPoint of the loop, except
that the Echoplex moves it precisely to the downbeat of the external
clock.
(the global startpoint).
Once you have moved the startpoint, if you retrigger your loop or use
quantize or something like that, it would go from the new startpoint. You
might use this command if you had disaligned the loop for some reason and
then decided that was where you wanted to keep it, and you want all
quantizing actions afterwards to match up with the external clock.
>The way I understand it is that, after the initial cycle length is
>calculated, the EDP ignores the clock.
no, that is wrong. The Echoplex always listens to the clock and always
keeps the loop in sync to it. It also keeps track of both your local
loop's
startpoint and the clock's startpoint, in case you do something to shift
them out of alignment.
>After about sixteen bars I can hear
>that it's drifted off course slightly and I would like to get it to listen
>to the clock again to get the loops back in time.
If it has drifted from the clock you have something else wrong. It
shouldn't do that. Either the clock isn't being sent, or the clock is
extremely jittery, or the echoplex does not have sync=in, or something
like
that. ReAlign might be able to help you recover something like that, but
that is not the purpose of it!
>I guess I'm a little confused as to exactly what the Global and Local
>StartPoints are derived from. Does the EDP actually continue to listen to
>the clock and use that as the Global StartPoint, and then it listens to
>the
>cycle length it calculated and calls the beginning of each of those cycles
>the Local StartPoint?
yes, that is correct.
>Alright, I guess here's a better question: Quantize=CYC, 8ths/Cycle=8,
>SamplerStyle=StA, Source#=36. If I trigger a ReAlign via MIDI on beat
>four
>of a bar while I'm in loop 2, and then trigger loop 1 via MIDI to start on
>beat one of the following bar, will it quantize loop 1 to the Global
>StartPoint? The manual says...
>
>...
>- ReAlign (Restart the current loop at the next MIDI beat 1)
>...
>
>...which implies that since I was in loop 2 when I initiated the ReAlign
>it
>wouldn't ReAlign the loop that I'm switching to. True or false?
This might end up being confusing, but that would actually be true. In
fact
it will ReAlign loop 2, and it might only do it when you return to loop 2
again! It's kind of a weird sequence of functions, so I'm not sure what
you
expect.
I just tried it. I recorded the same drum machine loop in loop 1 and loop
2
of the echoplex, and kept the drum machine playing so I could easily hear
when it was in alignment or not. The drum machine was the clock master.
While in loop 2 I retriggered the loop on the Echoplex so it was out of
alignment with the drum machine. Halfway through the Echoplex's loop 1
pressed ReAlign, and then immediately pressed NextLoop. (I had
SwitchQuantize on also.) I think this is what you describe above.
At the end of the Echoplex's loop, it switched back to Loop 1, which makes
sense because it was SwitchQuantized. However, this was not the end of the
drum machine's loop, so now Loop 1 was playing out of phase with the drum
machine in the same way Loop 2 had been out of phase. I then pressed
NextLoop again to see what had happened to Loop 2. When the Echoplex
reached it's end of Loop 1, it switched to Loop 2. Loop 2 began playing,
initially out of phase in the same way from the drum machine. Then when
the
downbeat of the drum machine came a couple of beats later, the Echoplex
ReAligned and was back in phase with it!
The ReAlign I had pressed before I left Loop 2 finally executed when I
returned to Loop 2, which is the next time Loop 2 heard the downbeat from
the drum machine. That makes sense, because the Echoplex remembers the
state of a loop when you leave, so it is in the same state when you come
back. In this case ReAlign was armed when we left Loop 2, and so was still
armed when we came back. So it did what it was supposed to do. (in fact
I'm kind of amazed, since I don't think we ever tested anything quite like
that...)
I hope that made sense for you.
kim
______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com