RE: Static Loops, Quantized Sequences and Music that Breathes

["Goddard, Duncan" <goddard.duncan@mtvne.com>]

>>Well, imagine you have all these step sequencer modules that keep  
looping riffs, melodies, chords or whatever. Then you can assign  
knobs to adjust each sequencers number of steps. Imagine running  
three patterns in a cool complimentary three part groove. All three  
runs by 16 steps, smoothing in very well as 4/4 measure music. Now  
twist a knob to shorten one of them to 15 steps. This means for each  
loop one of the "instruments" will speed up on 16th note related to  
the other two instruments. To go havoc with this technique and still  
not loosing the downbeat feel you may set a "Hard Sync" value. If you  
set one sequencer module to "Hard Sync = 32" it means that this  
pattern will get retriggered at the original down-beat every 32d  
step. You may eventually assign a second button to "Tempo Division",  
which means that this particular sequencer will run faster or slower,  
compared to the others, according to the Tempo Division value (but  
always "brought home" by the eventual Hard Sync setting). Expand this  
into 128th note values and assign a fourth sequencer module (or an  
LFO) to modulate the instrument sequencer's Tempo Division value  
according to continuous sweeps, and you might take off into  
Squarepusher land.<<

per, you really need to get y'rself a sequentix p3 midi sequencer. I
have been using one of mine as a polyphonic midi looper.

http://www.sequentix.com/

colin doesn't make or supply the thing any more, because he is working
on the p4- the result of a healthy forum & many keen users. they do turn
up for sale from time to time though. 

obviously, it will hard-quantize the note on/offs to whatever the
resolution of the pattern is, but one has the option of switching the
midi-through on & off in record mode, so that one's unquantized keyboard
riffing (or, in my case, banging around on a peavey midibase) can go
straight through to the sampler/module the first time it's played, then
the sequencer repeats it quantized until/unless you play something else
& over-write the pattern with new notes.

the 8 "parts" can all be on different midi channels or all on the same
channel or anything in between. they can run at different
tempi-divisions, be different lengths, run in any number of directions
including a variety of random, brownian &c. they can be made to
interact, so that one track will poach notes from other tracks......
almost all of these parameters can be altered by step-events, by manual
manipulation, by accumulators that do different things depending how
"old" the sequences are, & all in real-time while the thing is running.

I'm using, as I mentioned earlier, my repeater as the master clock. my
challenge is to keep the sequences bouncing nicely along with a
syncopated echo but in fact, my drummer is the master clock & the
repeater should follow him really. he doesn't/won't play the sort of
drum patterns that would lend themselves to beat-extraction, either by
the repeater's beat detector or by anything else I can think of, hence
my whacking the tap-tempo button & looking for a way to do this with a
speed-up/slow-down pedal.

d.