Re: EDP question

["K. Douglas Baldwin" <dbaldwin@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

Lee Wordsman wrote:
>My Digitech 4 sec timemachine attenuates each layer as a new overdub is
>added.  The result is that new material is in the front of the mix while
the
>older layers fall away over time.  Does the EDP allow you to maintain each
>layer in overdub on the surface (say by using 100% feedback)?  I assume it
>does.  Then by varrying feedback you can move a set of layers into the
>background?
>
>What about these other looper's that have been mentioned.  Zoom, Akai,
>Boomerang, others.  For my purpose the attentuation that occurs with the
>digitech can be limiting at times.  For instance, I was listening to a
>Brahms clarinet concerto.  The various members of the string quartet were
>playing a sort of droning series of chords and the clarinet was playing a
>melody over the chords.  I thought that it would be cool to create that
>droning series of chords (or, in my case one or two chords given my 4 sec.
>limitation).  However, with the timemachine, the chords never quite voice
>the way I want them.
>
>Are people doing stuff like this at all.  I've heard samples from the LD
>series and from various MPG's but nothing that quite falls into the area 
>of
>mimicing a string quartet's chord voicings.
>
>I may be mixing terminology wrong here but hope someone understands the
>question.

The Akai Headrush has an 11.8 sec. "sample" mode which allows for putting
down a basic sample, then overdubbing forever with all overdubs at equal
volume. You can shut off the "record" mode and solo over your
sample-plus-overdubs, then continue to record more overdubs and/or 
instantly
erase all but the original sample. In the "Normal Echo" mode, you can get
near-equal overdubs with the feedback maxed out, but you can't "freeze" 
your
loop and solo over it.
    I think the "string-quartet-plus-melody" is a fairly common sound in
loopdom myself, perhaps because I do it all the time (and aren't I just so
full of me?) But check out Fripp's solo Frippertronic thing on the League 
of
Crafty Guitarists Live! album for sonething like what I imagine you're
talking about. A bed of ambient clouds of chordlike lines over which he
solos.
>