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Looper's Delight
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I use an MD deck in my setup, and while I don't use it as a live looper in the sense of real-time live input, it does come in handy as a source to pump prepared loops INTO live looping gear MIXED with real-time live input! I use it more as a cheap sampler. I suppose you COULD attempt to deal with real-time input, but any of the arguments we've heard over the past week re computers being impractical live because of the interface would be even more of a problem with a MiniDisc since you can't use a footswitch, you'd have to take your hand(s) off your instrument and the buttons are REALLY small. They're also almost impossible to see onstage, since they're black on black! (Okay, you probably COULD have the deck heavily modified for footswitch control and you could paint the buttons a contrasting color, but that's a lot to go through to end up with a seriously limited and inflexible looper!) As far as using it as a sampler, it's great. The repeat mode allows looping (but beware when shopping for a deck; they don't all HAVE repeat mode buttons on the front panel!). The "splice" is very subtle, but you have to take care to punch in/out precisely to avoid a glitch at the loop point; it often takes a few tries to get a good sample, hence you probably won't want to use it for live sound capture. It has its disadvantages when compared with a "real" sampler; lack of MIDI, no pitch correction, etc., but one big advantage I've found is there's no big wait for the thing to load! It takes a couple of seconds for a disc to load, then all of the samples on that disc are instantly accessible. A standard disc can hold 74 minutes stereo (twice that in mono) but you're limited to 25 track ID's, so most of my sample discs only use 10-20 percent of the disc's capacity. If you use a multitracker to dump your loops to the MD, you can set it up either as stereo or two paired mono tracks, then crossfade at the mixer. What I do sometimes is record a texture (synth, ebow, nature sounds, whatever) to multitrack, then overdub percussive stuff to it (hand drums, kit, electronic percussion, whatever). Then when I mix to the MiniDisc, I pan all the percussion to one side. That way, when you use the sample live you've got the option of mixing synched percussion in and out of your textural loop. You can also use this technique to crossfade two completely unrelated loops if you want. I use some old pre-MIDI analog synths with no presets, and the MiniDisc allows me to get the sound just right, then dump a sequence to MD, so I don't have to mess with setting up patches in real-time onstage, but can mutate them with delay and effects on their way into the loop. It doesn't eliminate the element of user control/live musicianship, it just changes the job description! Being able to use the display to name your samples makes it a lot easier to use the MiniDisc live, as THAT display is lighted! You just scroll through the samples until you see the name you want, then (as long as you've got REPEAT ALL selected) the sample will begin to loop automatically, without having to go searching for the tiny, black-on-black PLAY button. Another good thing is that if you really hate one sample on an otherwise useable disc, you can go in and replace it without disturbing the rest of the disc. The MiniDisc is a very useful looping tool indeed, but it won't replace the EDP or JamMan; it occupies an entirely different niche. Hope this helps, Tim At 08:52 PM 3/12/99 -0500, you wrote: >I'm considering getting a Minidisc recorder and seem to remember hearing >that they can be used for looping bya combination of precise track ID >placement, repeat mode & the anti-skip memory feature ( whatever it's >called...) > >Of course the salesman at the local Circuit City took 5 minutes to figure >out how the disc went in! >Imagine his confusion when I asked if he knew about editing track id's... > >If anyone out there is doing this or knows where I can get some definite >info on the subjec, please let me know. > >Thanks, > >jmw > >