Re: FlyLoops and electronic instruments

[Jeffrey Larson <jeff@zonemobius.com>]

 > I should mention serial loops again here .... which play in serial  
to either
 > the A or B banks of parallel loops and allow for nice segways ...  
but this
 > is very different than having multiple banks of loops in parallel.

This is the sort of "track management" that Mobius scripts are used for.
Toggling between sets of tracks, muting the current tracks and
letting another run for 4 bars then returning, throwing tracks
1,2,4 into reverse and 3,5,7 into half speed, etc.  Basically any
imaginable sequence of pre-recorded tracks can be scripted.

Since track management is a fairly random user preference that may
change from song to song I tend to leave those things for scripts.
Sometimes I will convert things people have scripted into built-in
functions, especially if there are UI advantages.  But there are just
too may combinations of things people want do to build everything in.

This is however one of the reasons Mobius is considered "difficult"
by some.  It is very flexible, but you have to get deeply into
it to accomplish some things.

 > This is true ... when stacking (overdubbing) with flyloops, you  
have no
 > recourse once it has been done ... no undo/redo.  This is  
something we have
 > thought about adding too ... but have no yet done so, figuring  
that the user
 > can always record a parallel loop instead and turn it on/off

Yes, this is the same approach the Looperlative took initially though
I believe Bob added a one layer undo after many people requested it.
Once you get used to EDP-style infinite layer undo it is hard to give
that up, though obviously many people do.  The trick is designing the UI
so that bouncing between the tracks can be done seamlessly without a lot
of thought or footswitch presses.

 > There is also:
 > Soundtouch ... which if I remember right, is what mobius uses ....

Yes.  It is okay though I don't find the pitch shifting very satisfying.
It also adds a large amount of latency that you have to compensate for,
but they all do.  Another annoyance is that changing the pitch creates
a discontinuity in the audio stream which will sound like a click.   
So I had
to do a lot of work to make sure that the edges on either side of the
shift are cross faded.

 > And http://www.fftw.org/
 > Who also claim to support real time pitch shifting ....

I didn't spend much time with this because it is GPL and you
have to buy a commercial license.   This would seriously
cut into my profit margin :-)

 > Rewire is not nearly as flexible as VST for the user.
 >
 > How so?  I figured that supporting ReWire essentially allowed  
people to use
 > VSTs ... since you could use Rewire to connect to a VST Host.

The flexibility comes from having the looper be a VST that you can
then surround with other VSTs in a modular host like Bidule or
Max. Rewire is also not as universally supported as VST though most of
the major commercial products have it.

Jeff