Re: pedal pushers

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 12 jun 2006, at 04.30, mark sottilaro wrote:

> Boy howdy!  I don't know why, but there's nothing I
> hate more than closing a loop.  Something about having
> to focus on that event drives me crazy.  I loved the
> JamMan's ability to just choose the amount of beats
> you wanted for a loop and let it go....

I don't understand exactly what you mean here... Don't you have to  
specify the tempo first, or sync the jamman to a master clock? I  
remember an old post by you where you said you like to use a groove  
box as the master clock, so I guess you want to run the looper synced?

> I'm hoping
> Mobius will make that possible for me again.

I would guess you will find some way to do that in Mobius, because it  
offers many ways to define the loop length before actually playing  
some noise into a loop. But all these techniques relies on deciding  
on a tempo first.

One way can be to set the quantization to "8ths per cycle = 1". I  
usually like having it set to 16 or 128 (or not quantized at all) but  
for some actions, like changing loop I prefer the "1" setting, so I  
can push the "Next Loop" button at any moment within the span of the  
last bar before I plan to go into the next loop. To be able to use  
different quantizing resolutions for different actions I wrote a  
script that first changes the quantize setting, then moves to the  
Next Loop and changes back to whatever quantize setting you where  
playing in before the pedal press. Scripts you write appear in Mobius  
among the pre-defined commands so you can simply assign any MIDI  
pedal/button to trigger the script.

Another way to avoid having to close the loop is to set up Mobius to  
copy the loop length, either when going into a new loop on the same  
track or when moving from a loop on one track into a new track. In  
both cases an empty loop will be auto-created (on the same track or  
the new track) and it will be of the same length as the first loop.

A third way is to use the Instant Multiply function. I like that for  
setting up drum loops by vocal beatboxing on one track. Start out  
with a simple one bar beat. Hit "next loop" (with "Copy Sound"  
activated) and while the same audio is now playing back in this new  
loop you hit Instant Multiply to make it three or four times longer,  
just in time so you can punch in a fill at the last quarter note or  
so. With the latest Mobius version these settings (that used to be  
global) can be defined as track unique settings. So if you want, you  
can have your own set-up with tracks behaving a little differently,  
thus allowing you to use specific looping techniques on certain  
tracks. Lots of fun to be had with that :-)

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)