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Looper's Delight
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Hey Andrew, did you take the precaution of putting your stuff in clear plastic, or were you in a tent, and, or up on a stage and somewhat protected? The idea of doing a gig at Burning Man and the toll it would take on my hardware looping gear and effects, not to mention my guitars, fills me with terror. I have lusted after the ground control pro, though I use the behringer and have had excellent track record with it, although it can get finicky and need re-calibration from time to time. I make heavy use of the expression pedals to both fade and pan my tracks, and I was wondering what expression pedals if any, that DMC recommends for the GC pro? Thanks Bill -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Chaikin [mailto:andrew@biggerbread.com] Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 11:45 AM To: 'David Trenkel'; Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: RE: Behringer FCB 1010 or Digital Music Ground Control? > I'm looking into a foot controller for > hands-free operation my laptop / > Ableton Live setup. I believe I'm a bit late in this discussion, because you've already received your Behringer, but... I love my Ground Control Pro. I've done about 175 shows with it since November 2003 -- including 9 shows in the harsh Nevada desert conditions of Burning Man (65-mph duststorms!) -- and it has never failed me. When I first started looping with Ableton Live, I bought the Behringer FCB 1010, but: a) It was too long in my rolling carry-on bag -- a big drawback for touring. b) On the unit I bought (new) from Guitar Center, one of the two expression pedals didn't work at all. This I took to be a bad omen. These, combined with some posts on LD saying that the Behringer was slightly cheaply made and somewhat beastly to program, led me to the GCP. The digital display comes in very handy as well. That having been said: I don't program the GCP very heavily. I keep things on their standard settings for the most part, and let Bome Midi Translator translate the events into keystrokes. So other folks' posts about fewer momentary switches and so on, I couldn't speak to. (Although, after reading that post, I realize that using some momentary switches would be very useful to me...) > stompbox-style switches ... which, wile very > sturdy, take more effort to trigger in time. > Since one of the uses of the pedal will be to > trigger clips in live, I need to have pretty > exact timing. True. My stuff is mostly all quantized, so as long as I hit a given trigger before the right beat, I'm okay. But even in non-quantized situations, I've found the triggers to be very responsive. As to the loudness of the triggers, they are certainly a bit louder than the FCB -- it's sort of a little metallic squeak -- but it's never been a problem for me onstage, and all I use to make my loops is a mic and my mouth. The only non-sturdy part of the GCP is the power cable. It's pretty thin. I called the company and bought an extra one, knowing that it would crap out some day. Two weeks ago, it did -- at a gig. Worked fine in soundcheck, was DOA when I got up onstage. One tug too many, I guess. Boy, was I glad I had the backup cable in my bag. Moral: always carry a spare for every cable in your rig -- power cables, MIDI cables, mic and output cables, etc. You can watch me using the GCP here: http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=artists&sub=kid-beyond More videos coming to my own site soon. Andrew Chaikin, aka Kid Beyond andrew@biggerbread.com email@kidbeyond.com http://biggerbread.com | http://kidbeyond.com