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Re: eh16 click question



All,

In a message dated 7/30/03 12:06:46 PM, stanitarium@earthlink.net writes:

>>Mr. Taruim uses the click from one of his loopers, pitch shifted down,
>>as a percussion device.  Is this the one?
>
>ouch-my secrets out!
>no gary the boom boom boom is the clickclock out from the lexicon pcm
>42 (which has many of the same bells&whistles as the 16secddl but has 
>a much better sample rate and s/n ratio and looplength. fwiw

Another groovy trick is to use the output of the EH click track to drive 
other devices that respond to any sort of "ticking clock" input. A long 
time
ago (in a galaxy far, far away) Roland/Boss used to make a few devices
that could be triggered this way. One among them was the entry-level Boss 
drum machine from the 80s the Boss Dr-220 (Dr. Rhythm). Another was 
the S-10, one of Rolands first keyboard samplers. It had an arpeggiator
feature that could be driven by an EH's clock out (or any other pulse
for that mater (say . . . a microphone in a kick drum for example).

My favorite trick of all involved the fact that although the "clock" 
slider 
on the EH traveled smoothly and continuously, the actual adjustment 
made to the clock timing was in regular "steps" (in multiples of 2). 
However, 
you could fiddle with it some to get "in-between" settings which would 
"hiccup" strangely and drop out pulses every now and then at intervals. 

What I'd regularly do was have the EH 16-Second DDL's clock out set to one 
of these "spastic" time settings and use it to drive a Boss Dr-220. Then 
I'd 
have the audio out of the Dr-220 drive the arpeggiator input of the Roland 
S-10 (on a random, plus-or-minus 2-octave "arp pattern" setting). This 
resulted in some truly sick and whacky music that seemed to subtly 
change and evolve within a narrow range (even if I used ordinary sounds 
like piano, etc.) and still always stayed in perfect sync with my guitar
going through the EH's delays.

These Roland/Boss devices are both seen on eBay for under $100 from 
time to time. So, if you already have an EH 16-Second DDL (or two) it 
might be a cheap way to check out some new funny/creative music 
possibilities.

Another use of the clock out of the EH 16-Second DDL (if you had 2 of 
them) was in synching 2 EH units together for a "stereo pair" of sorts. 
This was done by temporarily sending the clock signal (on the slowest 
setting) of one EH unit into the input of the other one and listening to 
hear if there was a "flam" before or after the click after the loop cycled 
by a few times when played through on the other unit. If you are very, 
very careful indeed (and have good ears) you can listen to that "flaming" 
sound go in and out of phase with itself and adjust the timing on both 
machines so closely and minutely that they will take minutes before 
they finally wander out of phase with each other by even so much as 
a note. 

This process takes a few minutes and is usually annoying as heck to 
the other musicians setting up on stage (heheh) when you do it. But
if synched stereo is important to you, it can be achieved even with these 
old digital dinosaurs. Out of my two supposedly identical units there was
one which was always slightly faster (the maximum delay was slightly 
shorter) than the other one by a tiny fraction. This method helped me 
fix the problem. Keeping the units in a rack drawer kept them from
being bumped out of alignment accidentally (most of the time) after
they were synched up.

Now, this "stereo pair" was not the same as an EDP stereo pair. No, you 
still had to turn the units on and off individually with the stompswitches
(as far as delay and hold functions went). However, you could get a pretty 
nice pair of "locked in" loops going that didn't wander all over the place 
(phase/timing-wise). Plus, by using the reverse button on one unit only 
you could get the unique sound of your loop coming at you in both forwards
and backward simultaneously in stereo (imagine a sound going in your
right ear forwards and seeming to exit your left ear backwards).

I haven't thought about this stuff in years. Those were fun times. Now 
everything is a digital "preset" on an expensive back box (or whatever 
color your multiprocessor or looper is). I enjoyed doing goofy things 
back then. It don't find myself experimenting nearly so much any more. 
One has to read too dang many badly-written manuals to get to the 
"interesting stuff" that the new stuff is supposed to be capable of.

Okay . . . end of "old guy" rant. Harrrumph. 

Enjoy!

tEd ® kiLLiAn

http://www.mp3s.com/tedkillian
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