looperlative thoughts

[Steve Lawson <steve@steve-lawson.co.uk>]

OK, before we get completely carried away, as one of the very small  
group of people here who've actually tried out a looperlative, I'll  
offer a couple of thoughts...

Firstly, Bob's aim has clearly not been to just redo the EDP in  
stereo - the EDP is very much a product of initially Matthias'  
genius, and then years and years of tweaking and shaping the way that  
particular instrument works. It's an incredible tool, and one that,  
if there is to be stereo version, needs to updated by the people who  
had that vision.

In the wider world of looping ideas/devices/concepts, the  
looperlative offers something wonderful. In the short time I've spent  
with one thus far, the programming of the MIDI controls is easier  
than on anything I've tried before (even for MIDI-phobes), the  
availability of the 8 stereo loops is almost too much - it's going to  
take me a while to get to grips with the expanded range of  
possibilities (I think I'll be mainly using the first three for quite  
a while, before I start to really get to know the box and use it  
intuitively.

And, like the EDP, the looperlative reflects a lot about it's creator  
- I've known Bob for a few years, and of all the music product  
development people I've ever had dealings with (which is a LOT of  
people), Bob is probably the one I trust the most to get it right.  
Not that it's meet every last requirement of everyone on the list  
(sorry, there won't be a feature that allows you to midi up your  
eyeballs to operate the loops just by looking at foxy peoples in the  
audience), but that it will do what it says it does, what it set out  
to do, and will be incredibly well supported.

It seems, from what Bob has said, that the LP1 is pretty much  
established in terms of what's going on with it, how the architecture  
will work. The one I tried (which I'll get back early next week) did  
everything it said it should do - the menus were easy to navigate,  
the audio was clean, the midi controls worked, and I was looping with  
it immediately.

If you're looking for something to replicate the feature set of the  
EDP, it's not that. It may well end up incorporating some of the more  
esoteric EDP ideas, but I'm guessing Andre is about to switch units  
after spending a decade building up the facility he has with the  
echoplex... What I predict will happen is that a fair few people will  
end up with one of each - especially those who like the granular cut  
'n' paste freakery of the Echoplex, but want the option to a) go  
stereo and b) reorder those bits and keep some stuff going while they  
they carry on chopping elsewhere.

Oh, and the two stereo aux sends are going to be an absolute god-send  
for anyone who post-processes their loops.

For the way I loop, and the way I think about the performance  
process, the LP1 is pretty much everything I've hoped for in a  
looper. It'll take me a while to learn it in the way I currently know  
the EDP, but I'm confident that I'll get there in the same way I made  
the jump from 2 seconds on my ART night bass to 8 seconds on my  
jamman, to 32 seconds on my jamman, to jamman plus DL4, to jamman  
plus echoplex plus DL4 to two echoplexes, to two echoplexes plus two  
G2 plus kaoss pad... :o)

That one guy working on his own has come up with such a device is  
fantastic - to see it through from conception to shippable product is  
a remarkable feat and one that I for one am exceedingly grateful for,  
given the rubbishness of Gibson at doing anything sensible with the  
remarkable technology that they are sitting on, and the reluctance of  
Line 6 to ever take their looping stuff a stage further.

three cheers for Bob and the Looperlative...

Steve
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