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At 09:57 PM 8/29/2003, Mike Barrs wrote: > > >If you want to play with other musicians, a looper is a barrier > > >because it's like playing to a click track... which everyone > > hates, unless > > >they're another looping musician. > > > > That's true if the looper is a beginner and doesn't know how to adjust > > their loops with the music around them. > >I don't know about that. Even with tap tempo on the Repeater, you're a >long >way from the kind of realtime, continuous tempo adjustment that happens >with >live musicians. In addition to the tap tempo, you also can adjust tempo with the tempo knob on the Repeater. With that I think you could use a beat matching technique like DJ's use with the speed controls of a turntable. As with any other techniques for adjusting loop tempos, it will take some practicing to do this well. Certainly DJ's spend a lot of time practicing this, and good ones get the tempos matched up very quickly. I don't see why you couldn't do the same with your Repeater. Also, the Repeater has the Beat Detect function, where it can determine tempo from an incoming audio signal. It's a little tricky to work around the signal routing issues, but I think you can manage get a feed from the drums coming in on one channel and use that for setting the tempo for loops recorded on the other channels. (since you don't want to record the drums.) Then as the tempo of the drums coming in drifts, the Repeater will expand and compress the loop time to keep it matched and in sync. It works pretty well, once you work out the routing. There are other devices on the market that only do this beat detection, like the Red Sound Micro Sync which detects BPM of incoming audio and outputs a midi clock. This is commonly used by DJ's to match sequencers and tempo effects to the beat coming off a record. It could also easily serve your purpose to keep the Repeater (or other loopers) in sync with your live drummer, and you wouldn't have to deal with the routing problem on the repeater. >Also, it's a strange concept (outside of looping) for the >rest of the band to follow the guitar player, or the keyboard player, or >whoever is into looping. Tempo management is normally the role of the >drummer and bass player. Right! I agree, at least in a rock context. That's why I'm saying its the wrong approach for you to walk into that and try to change the whole band dynamic by insisting that now suddenly everybody has to follow the tempo from your loop in some section of the song. In my view, that's amateurish. You are the one controlling the loop, it is your job to keep it in tempo with the others, whether it be by your manual control, giving the drummer means to set and adjust your loop tempo, or some automatic sync mechanism. It's not a simple thing, there are many different tempo techniques that will apply to different situations, you may need to make some adjustments or compromises to make it work, and you need to do some practicing to get the hang of it. The more you understand it the better you will be at doing it and the more options you will see for any given situation. A lot of beginners with looping don't know how to do these techniques and try to insist that the loop is uncontrollable and therefore everybody else has to follow that tempo, which I think is an excellent way to end up being a solo musician. >We're talking about two different cultures here -- live, free tempo groups >vs. groups that work on a fixed clock. I'm not trying to make the case >that >one is better than the other... just trying to point out that it's a >different culture, and it's an uphill battle to get someone to move into a >different culture. Well, I'm not talking about different cultures. You are trying to paint looping as part of one "culture" and not another, which I think is nuts. It's just a tool, but it is a tool you need to learn how to use in different ways to apply it in different situations. > > It's no different from a beginner on any other instrument. How well >does > > someone who just started playing drums play with others? That's gonna >be > > just as much a tempo problem! > >Before I got into guitar, I was a drummer. So I'm coming at this from both >perspectives. Ok, so you must have had to spend time learning to play drums, and maintain tempo while doing it! It didn't come to you on the first day. Now you have to do that practicing with looping. That is my point. All instruments require learning and practice and looping is no different. >That makes it twice as embarrassing that I've had to spend time learning >how >to hit the loop button on the downbeat! Of course everybody has to practice that, there is nothing embarrassing about it. If you were a drummer maybe it helps you some, but still it is a fundamental looping technique that takes practice. It also goes a long way to helping to get loops in tempo if you are able to tap them in tempo at the beginning! >However... this is different from keeping a steady beat on kit drums, >where >you're active all the time. The way I'm doing it now (as a guitar player) >requires precision timing once every 12 bars (or whatever loop structure >I'm >using). It's not as easy as keeping tempo when your main thing is >percussion >or drums, and you're driving the rhythm in real time on every eighth note >(or whatever). Yes, of course it is different, since it is a different instrument. If you are using the manual retriggering method it works better with short loops. Long loops can drift out a bit again by the end. Still, it is way better to have the beginning at least start on the beat and get a little out at the end instead of compounding the drift every time the loop repeats. Chances are the tempo drift hasn't been that severe for the end measures to be too bad if the beginning started right. Using a shorter loop would help a lot there, since it can be resynched more often. If there is a long chord progression you really think needs to be in a loop, you might even try splitting it into several loops so it resyncs with each loop switch, but that's kind of a pain. Other techniques include redefining the loop length on the fly and fixing the rhythm from there, re-recording a loop on the fly, using feedback and replace to evolve into a new groove, chopping out a small bit of the loop in the new tempo and remultiplying it out again, etc. None of these things work in all circumstances, but having many techniques available will give you a lot more flexibility for live playing. Listen to the way people like Matthias Grob or Andre LaFosse can totally change the rhythm of a loop very quickly to fit a new groove or tempo. They might not be doing the same sort of music as you, but both these guys play both solo and in groups a lot live. With a variety of techniques readily at their command they can easily jam with people while using loops in a very rhythmic way. > > >2) Someone like me who comes from a traditional music background > > (blues and > > >jazz) automatically thinks in terms of traditional song structures >like > > >A-A-B-A. How many people on this list have actually tried to loop a > > >traditional verse-verse-chorus-verse song? I've been working at it >for a > > >year, and it's frustrating. The Repeater fixes the bar length > > with the first > > >recorded track, so forget an AABA song where the "B" section is > > a different > > >number of bars, unless you want to get into a Midi pedal tap dancing > > >nightmare of arming and switching between loops. > > > > seems to me your problem is specific with the repeater, not > > looping. That's > > simple to deal with in the Echoplex. The boomerang might be able to do >it > > too, I'm not sure. The jamman had the same problem of forcing all > > the loops > > to be the same length. > >Okay, so the EDP is better at structured AABA song format looping? If so, >I >need to read the manual and see if this offers some things the Repeater >doesn't. > > > To some extent too, think about arrangement. what the hell are > > you talking > > about AABA where you've recorded multiple overdubs over the A loop >before > > you ever get to B? Or bass and rhythm and lead while also talking about > > looping with multiple people? Can't the bass player make his own loop? > >This is in the context of solo performance, sorry if that wasn't clear. I >don't have a bass player. My bass player is my thumb on the bottom two >strings of my guitar. ah. since you were talking about bands I assumed you had more players. In any case, consider arrangement. If you have AABA, I would think by the first time through the sequence you've already recorded the base and two passes of overdubs on the A section and the base recording on the B section. Next time through you could add something else to B or just play a second part over it live. You would just do all of that as you play through the song. I think you can easily arrange a song so that it sounds natural to build the loops as part of it. Try listening to people like Phil Keaggy, Howie Day, Kellar Williams, and Amy X Neuberg. They all do this sort of thing in their live sets with structured songs and arrangements. They do overdubs and new sections naturally as they move through the sections of the song. The audience never feels like they are waiting for them to set up a loop before the song really starts. kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com