Re: Akai Heardush , a little frustrated, please help..

[Travis <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

Practicing with the drum machine is a great exercise, but when you're 
on the gig and your time keeper is now a drummer with an elastic 
pocket, things can get sticky.  Even if your playing follows the 
eccentricities of the acting time-keeper (the drummer in this case) for 
the duration of the loop recording, this may not match up to what the 
drummer does twenty bars down the road.  A bit of a rush in bar 3 
doesn't always translate to every third bar rushing, and if the drummer 
starts trying to chase the loop, and you're trying to split the 
difference between the loop and the drummer...

I'm curious--are you doing this with non-ambient loops in a live 
context, and if so, how improvised is the material?

TravisH

On Friday, June 20, 2003, at 10:04 PM,  "max valentino" 
<ekstasis1@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
> To aid in the timing of your loop tap ins and outs, you need do 
> develop your rhythmic acuity.  One way I have found to be a great help 
> is to hook up a drum machine along with whatever is your primary 
> instrument, in my case bass, to separate channels of a mixer and put 
> the looper into the aux send and return.  Be sure to return the 
> looping device to the aux return and not a separate channel.  The idea 
> here is “record” the drum machine along with whatever you are looping. 
>  If your timing is perfect the drum parts will be flawless, until they 
> start to drift do to lack of sync(yes, btw, don’t sync the looper and 
> drum machine as that will defeat the purpose of the whole technique).  
> That is to say there will be no audible “flam”, glitch or other audio 
> inconsistency.
>
> If your timing is just a hair off, something like 10-20ms, you will 
> get a phasing effect from the looped drum part and the original 
> sequence being slightly off.  With practice you can lose this phasing 
> effect, and gain a newfound “tightness” to your loops. If your timing 
> is further off, there will be obvious flams, and glitches and other 
> audio ugliness.  I use this technique as a regular practice for my 
> looping, and it has helped greatly.  It has made it possible for me to 
> really the hear the loops as a sort of audio landscape, and with a 
> higher degree of accuracy in setting the loop points I can proceed 
> with real-time playing or overdubs just as the loop begins to 
> play…again greatly benefiting a “seamless” quality.