Bringing Harvey into the Loop

["Gary Lehmann" <relayonemanband@cts.com>]

I had the pleasure today of showing Harvey Starr, inventor of the Ztar and
Kurzweil Event Station, over to the house to show him my progress in using
the Ztar to control the Echoplex Digital Pro.  He was properly impressed,
even tho I am still just getting started.  I'm using a doubleneck so I can
play guitar as well as the synth controller to create pop song-like 
textures
in real time.  I like to think of it as real time digital audio sequencing.
The Ztar serves as a reliable MIDI controller, generating the kind of
accuracy you demand from a controller.  Doing the drums seems to be a bit
dicey, however--I am hoping to score an Event Station to try to take care 
of
that end of things.  I am using the SR-16 to drive the EDP sometimes, but
for the best effect I should just drop the drums in when the bass enters.
Like it say, it's really still in its infancy--I just got the Ztar a couple
of weeks ago and it was used and has a few things that need attention 
before
I put it in front of an audience (and don the silver lame cybersuit)--but
it's nice not to have to look at my feet while I'm controlling the EDP!
Gary

BTW, here's the tour dates for the MTV thing
http://mtv.com/sendme.tin?page=/mtv/music/campusinvasion00/&sub=music

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ztars'R'Us" <harvey@cts.com>

>We put an interesting rig out on the road last week with a touring MTV
>show,  "Campus Invasion", which is intended to promo the upcoming MTV
>television season. There were several interactive electronic music 
>exhibits
>planned and we were called in at the last minute to supply some electronic
>guitars. Twelve days before the show was to ship out.



> At 01:51 PM 10/6/00, Matthias Grob replied:
> >hm... quite interesting work... and interesting the question how far
> >we can replace musical incompetence by technology. Tuning certainly
> >is a good start.
> >
> >But as there is a subject to this list you must expect one question:
> >
> >Why did you not use LOOPing ?

and Harvey replied:
>
> Time and budget contraints. We had 1 week to order all the hardware and
> just a couple of days to set up the Kurzweils. It was a budget stretch to
> get the K2000's. We also had to set this up for non-musicians in an
> arcade-style environment where people could accidentaly or deliberately
> mees up the rig. So we were asked to keep it simple. Other than that our
> only spec from MTV was "it has to rock and it can't suck." They were't
sure
> what they wanted other than the big crunch guitar. Everything else we
added
> was information overload even though the loop-playback was pretty
> intuitive. Re-sampling would've been over the top for this show. Anyway,
if
> we get another shot at this I'd like to take the time set up looping. Our
> existing hardware setup is pretty good at playing and adjusting MIDI
loops.
> An EDP added to the rig would be totally slick, and would help make the
> music-production for non-musicians an entertaining experience. Next time.
> -harvey