Re: Hello and such

[Ray Peck <rpeck@pureatria.com>]

Here's a meessage that I send to the Torn list a while back:

From: rpeck@pure.com  (Ray Peck)
Subject: Door X, Issue 67 !

>>but am wondering if anybody knows of any sort of looping device (besides 
>the
>>multiple tape recorders
>>which I have unfortunately had to resort to) which can record multiple 
>loops
OF
>>DIFFERENT LENGTHS
>>and then play these back simultaneously.

I've been thinking about this since seeing DT last year in SF.  I was
thinking that if I were to try this sort of thing myself (which I'm
far off from doing!), I'd want a Mac-based system that let me do
multiple tracks, each with different loop times, and to be able to
change them on the fly.

Think of this sort of thing.  Sorry if it doesn't make sense: it's
kinda hard to explain.

Mac.  Screen.  Panel of momentary and on/off footswitches and pedals
(preferably with giant backlight LCD displays on each one that the
software could program to say something meaningful).

To start out a track, tap out a few beats on a footswitch.  The system
syncs, and shows a graphical metronome.  Record the first track,
tapping another switch for the beginning and end of the loop.  You
could immediately start recording the next loop (or wait 'till the
next go-around), and could specify the length of the loop relative to
the first one with a couple switches, by specifying a rational ratio
between the lengths.  Imagine two "increase the factional part"
switches.

numerator
---------
denominator

1 tap gives you a second loop 1/2 or 2/1 as long, three taps gives you
2/3 or 3/2, etc.  You could easily make loops that are 7/8 as long, or
whaever, to get really interesting repeating patterns
(cf. "Discipline").

The system would show you the waveform of what you've played, like
Deck or any other digital audio recording SW does, so you could see
what you were doing.

You could automate effects, pans, level envelopes, or whatever, on the
fly with footpedals.  You could also fade loops in and out with
pedals.

The system could also use spare time, if it has any, to do
pitch-to-sheet music conversion so you could *really* see what you
were doing.


A PowerMac could do all this with no additional hardware (although you
might want a Digidesign AudioMedia card for better a/d d/a).  Deck
will do 8 tracks off of the hard disk on the slowest PowerMac (my
6100/60).  Should be easy to do tons of tracks out of DRAM.


Now. . .

Would anyone buy it?