RE: ReCycle, Loop Slicing, GURU (Re: FlyLoops and electronicinstruments)

[Jeff Larson <jeff.larson@sailpoint.com>]

[jeff]
>> Basically loops are cut up into multiple "slices"
>> ...
>> To change the tempo, the playback software shifts each slice closer
>> together (to speed up) or farther apart (to slow down).

[andy]
> Sounds like a fantastic feature to put in a looper.

I actually experimented with this a little when I was working on
Shuffle (slicing the loop into even sections and randomizing their
order).  After slicing, rather than changing the order it just changed
the start times so they could expand and contract.  I didn't find this
particularly interesting, expansion left gaps of silence between
slices, contraction made them overlap which produced various phasey
artifacts.  It was kind fun for glitch looping but didn't achieve what
most would consider a musical time stretch.  The main problem was that
the slices were way to coarse (8thsPerCycle) and did not attempt to
find the beats.

It wouldn't be horribly complicated to do proper beat slicing, but I
think you'd still have to be careful about what you play so that the
automatic beat detector can make the right choices.  Doing this in
real time would be the challenge.  You would probably have to enter a
BeatSlice mode for a second during which the analysis takes place in
parallel with playing the loop and no other modifications are allowed.
Then something lights up to let you know you can twist the
expand/contract knob.

Allowing continuous control over this also doesn't fit well with the
infinite layer model.  While you are in "twist the tempo knob" mode
you would not be allowed to make any other changes, the track becomes
more of a static-loop-playback-with-effects track rather than a
continuously-evolving-loop track.  As soon as you start overdubbing or
otherwise modifying a sliced loop that would effectively pin the
slices to their current locations and we would use that as the
background for the next layer.  You could repeat this process
after the next overdub if desired.

[per]
> And, as the third stage, loop slices are mapped to MIDI notes
> according to the GM standard (Roland's General MIDI standard, which goes
> Note#36=Kick drum, Note#37=Rim Shit, Note#38=Snare drum one, etc
> etc).

Given all of the above, this would be fairly easy.  It would be sort
of like SamplerStyle=Once except that you would be triggering and
playing only a subcycle rather than the entire loop.  Where it would
differ is that you probably want to trigger more than one slice at the
same time.  Like the tempo knob, this would only be available in
"static loop" mode, as soon as you start modifying the loop
the slices are gone and you can't trigger them.  You could however
use Bounce to record a performance of triggered slices into
another track, then build from there.

Or I could just fix my backlog of bugs :-)

Sigh, too much to do...

Jeff