Re: Loop tracker / re-thinking technology

[Daryl <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

Title:

I'm dyin' to hear what this sounds like, Leo!  I love the idea of credit card strips too.

Part of what I love about ideas like this, or the Magnatron, is how new ideas can be generated which then can lead to development of other products based on it.  For example, I've seen people controlling a laptop instrument with a pad and lightpen.  Would it be possible to recreate and extend the Magnatron with this technology - what I'm thinking would be to assign a sample to the pad in a definite physical space, so that dragging the pen at various spots would play that particular part of the sample.  Moving the pen forward would play it forward, backwards backward, and the faster the drag, the higher the pitch.  The limitation of the Magnatron of course is that it's stuck with the sample on it, at least practically.  With a laptop, one could change samples on the fly, or even assign 10 samples to the pad, or even 100, in 1 inch "sample blocks".

I've been messing with a stock Dictaphone transcriber for awhile, and there's something unique about it that could be interesting for digital loopers.   I can record, say, 20 seconds of material, then switch into playback/transcribe mode.  Pressing the footswitch rewinds the tape a few seconds, which is controllable between a fraction of a second and four or five seconds with a slider.  The really interesting thing is that, with the slider set to maximum rewind, it's possible to control how far back the rewind happens by how quickly the footswitch is pressed.  So, imagine a sample of someone saying "tracheotomy".  As I understand it, the EDP could do stutters with this loop like "tra-tra-tra", or "tracheo-tracheo-tracheo".  By varying the speed of the footswitch click on the Dictaphone, I can replay small pieces while still rewinding, doing things like "tomy-eotomy-my-acheotromy-otomy-my-tracheotomy".  I can actually play back through the entire length of the tape, playing varying bits and pieces while moving back. The fun part is it being foot-controlled, which makes it much more expressive.   I suppose to recreate this on the EDP or other box, a time value would have to be assigned to the replay function, so that a slow click would stop the sample, rewind to the beginning and replay, while a fast click would stop the sample and only go back part of the way.

Daryl Shawn
highhorse@mhorse.com

Mind you the above are all in concept phase... but theorically should work. I am hoping to have these ready for the loopers convention this october for a live performance.

Leo