Re: repeater looped vocals

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 29 maj 2007, at 01.28, RICK WALKER wrote:

> .how on earth can she make an initial repeater
> loop of fairly arhythmic vocals and then come back and perfectly  
> play a 16 note
> hand clapping ostinato that syncs with it?


I'd say it's pretty obvious, if one is familiar with how vocalists  
use to "think" when phrasing. The first "loop" she creates is the  
sixteenth pattern, but she doesn't record it, just keeps it going  
inside her head for reference. Then she starts singing the first  
voice layer while keeping the glue to the envisioned sixteenth  
pattern within. And the rhythm is the simplest possible; every word  
"just" goes on the first downbeat of a bar (except for the latest bar  
of the loop where show does a down-fall glissando of the word "now"  
at that point) and she records the loop as four bars. So, there's  
"the macro grid", if you like. If you look at the video you may also  
notice that, while she is doing the hand clapping, she's watching a  
beat meter led. The beat/tempo display/output from the Repeater  
starts when closing the first loop and she lets the Repeater loop  
pass four times before starting clapping hands, so the visual tempo  
indicator should be perfectly stable by then. Unless this double  
safety assurance she does end up a bit off, resulting in the few  
overlapping hand claps sounding like flame hits. As I remember the  
Repeater (haven't had one for years) it does sway up and down in  
tempo just like that (which I like with the Repeater BTW - sounds  
better on drones that on hand claps though)

The link for the video got lost from this thread. Here it is again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSIbfzK2spg

Greetings from Sweden

Per