Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
I'm a little all over the place, but here's some thoughts, off the cuff .... > pro - i don't have to shut down my band when gil travels. > would possibly move the band towards a more electronic sound; > change is good got that > con - lack of dynamic, > lack of natural ebb & flow in improvisational music > stability (is it gonna crash?) right > > What are your requirements? > > intuitive interactivity. we play a very stream-of-conciousness kind of > improvisational thing; i don't want to have to become dj bobdog, but i > would like to be able to shape the movement of a tune by activating > different tracks as the mood calls for it. kinda like being able to do > variations on a theme each time a specific set of tracks is used. we > definitely do not want to play the exact same thing every time we load a > set of tracks (or a "song" if you will) Hmmm, it seems possible to do a lot of pre-production and try to architect as many different feel/part variations, but that doesn't sound very intuitively interactive, and you'll still need some way to determine which part plays when and the most accessible ways would be musician triggering (dj bob) or sequencing (perhaps with dj bob determining which sequence plays when = dj bob). Seems like you're begging for something that will respond to the players dynamics in some way, and I haven't stretched acid to that point yet, didn't think actually that it would necessarily be very conducive to that approach. Unless you can use all prearranged parts, and then hit a switch when you want to 'hold' a pattern or move to the next one. > > Are you asking about the useability > > of this program specifically? > > yes i'm looking for reviews/opinions of phrazer as a live tool, but i'm > also interested in reading folks' opinions of using sonic foundry acid > live since phrazer seems to based heavily on acid. Haven't used phrazer, have used acid. If defining a bunch of regions based around phrases and mapping them to footswitches or or triggering via sequencer or something would work for you, then this software might do it. As far as stability, can't speak for mac, but on pc (and probably any system) the best thing to do would be to dedicate a machine to this function, don't put on anything you don't need, and test first, rigorously. And have an identical backup machine handy to plug in (hardware failures can just happen) or you'll be sorry. I think it would probably be pretty stable this way, but I've never tried using acid as much of an interactive tool, just a straight up compositional one. If you're going to use samples, I think sticking to a few base patterns, defining regions around various parts of the mix, triggering the regions playback via midi noteons manually or with a sequencer, and maybe dropping in fills and such manually somehow, would be an approach that the software might be best suited for, but not you. I've pondered this question myself. I think you may need to look beyond something like phrazer or acid, but feel free to experiement of course. Others may have gone here with that software, but I haven't yet. Having said that, here's a brainstorm ramble: Depart from traditional percussion arrangements. I was considering taking atomic elements of electronic percussion and processing them so that they have more of a rhythmic element besides *Wack!, quickly fade to black*. For example, instead of having a kick drumish sound consisting of a click and a sine wav fading out, what about a kick drum with more than one *wack* in it (so to speak) or different kinds of *wack* that imparted some kind of rhythmic meaning and would make that atomic sound more like a rhythmic phrase, without necessarily becoming one itself. Get a waveform convoluter and see what happens when you convolve a trad. percussion sound with something else entirely, like crickets, or speech. Get a bucket of various tidbits like these together and see what happens when they overlap, patterns would form. In other words, stop considering a drum sound as a drum sound necessarily separate from other drum sounds (like kick versus snare versus hat, etc). Give your kick some hat groove aspects, make your snare hit trail some bleeps or something at the end. The real groovy trick would be to get stuff like this happening in response to your playing of course. I play around with a piece of shareware software called Tuareg, a wav arranger with a very simple interface premise that leads to some very intuitive arrangement futzing. I posted a blurb on it a while back in response to a query regarding audio plugins, even though it wasn't an audio plugin (oops, sorry Rick), and I'm not suggesting you could use this live (needs a new version with zero-crossing processing and external midi control of all functions), but I've literally started out with a single pattern and easily come up with a dozen or more interesting variations in the span of a half hour, just by futzing with the gating and rearranging tools. Those two elements alone had tremendous potential. One idea I had was to somehow use midi or instrument audio signal/voltage (this would be best imho) to act as a control element that had some kind of direct relationship to what the musicians are doing, have some way of manipulating this relationship (perhaps by having one musician's signal modulate another's), and then plug this into both tone generation sources and direct modulation of said sources through triggered gating, delays, or some other kind of processing. For example, let's say you've got a guy on bass playing some notes. Split the audio signal from this instrument into two channels. One channel would go out to the mix like normal, the other channel wouldn't end up directly in the mix at all but would be used as a control signal. Maybe gate this control signal to give it more of a switchlike shape (on/off, low/high, etc). Then, send this signal to a triggered gate, or set of triggered gates, perhaps after sending it through some kind of delay that would track tempo from the bass signal itself, or some other signal like a tap, or the midi clock from a looper device or sequencer. Now, feed a tone source consisting of either prearranged rhythmic loops (perhaps cross faded with other loops, and have the cross fade controlled by some other signal - like another musicians audio, or even percussive sounds/loops generated by the other musicians like string noises, instrument body tapping noises, or synths played by other musicians, or whatever). Now, imagine a band of musicians all generating these signals and interrelate them in various ways, and stand back!!! The result might be hard to control or predict, depending on the complexity of the interrelationships, and what the musicians are doing. But the potential for something interesting and dynamic is fascinating, and this approach would be just as applicable for other types of arrangements besides percussion (like having the musicians trigger volume/filter/other envelopes for each other, or for each other's delayed signals that wouldn't be audible until triggered). *brains begin oozing out onto the floor* Of course, it might be kinda tricky to get that tight ass, swinging funk groove with this approach, ya never know. Nothing like a drummer but a drummer, maaaaahhhhhn ..... Love, Mike