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At 12:10 AM 8/26/2005, Ben wrote: >From: "Travis Hartnett" <travishartnett@gmail.com> > >I've seen very little evidence that there's been much research on the >part of manufacturers as to what makes a great looper (and what makes >a frustrating one). This seems to be true, unfortunately. Or at least it is true among the big name brands trying to make low-end loopers. I'm astonished at how clueless the designers of some of these recent devices are. They could come here and spend 10 minutes asking people what they really want in a looper and create a killer product, but they don't. The sad thing is, many musicians get their introduction to looping by way of one of these crappy devices. They miss out on important fundamentals of looping as a result. It must be frustrating to waste time learning on one of these things. Like learning to play guitar on an instrument with one string. >For a looper with any prior experience just >reading the manual for most of these boxes, there always seems to be >at least one feature that immediately jumps out as being missing or >horribly implemented (variable feedback level and >record-straight-into-overdub being two of the usual culprits). >Ben says: >I agree but it depends of the way you plan to use the box. For me, I'll >choose a "multiply function" over the variable feedback. Record into >overdub is the feature everyone needs, I guess ;-) I agree about multiply being important, but I think feedback control is really even more fundamental and important in a looper. We need looping devices to provide ways to reduce the loop and to evolve the loop in a creative fashion, in addition to the usual ways to add to it. This is the key point being missed by these products, a big reason why people continue to be shocked that new looping devices are being made without it. Variable feedback control is the most fundamental looping technique for evolving loops, by providing the user a way to reduce a loop and then rebuild it. Feedback control has been a primary looping technique in use for decades. At this stage it is deeply ingrained in the whole idea of what looping is. Without this type of feature you get the "wall of sound loop" problem, or you get the "static loop that is boring everybody to death" problem. If you listen to people using many of the recent looping pedals, you will hear them having this trouble all the time. Learning to use feedback is the most fundamental way to move past this. There are of course many other more advanced techniques, but they are harder to get the hang of, and most of these new looping devices lack those as well. At this stage in the development of looping instruments, for a manufacturer to not include a feature like feedback in their "looper" is really baffling. They may as well take out a huge ad in all the music magazines proclaiming "We're Morons!" >I guess the ultimate perfect box will be a software one, ... All of these devices are software. That question really is: "do you want a user interface carefully designed for the task of performance looping?" or "do you want a user interface carefully designed for businessmen giving PowerPoint presentations in hotel conference rooms?" My day job is designing computers. You probably use them. That latter point is one of our primary concerns for our designs, second to the needs of gamers. Nobody in the computer industry ever cares about the needs of performing musicians and we don't design for them. Watching musicians struggle to use personal computers for musical performance and then somehow still believe that the pc is the way of the future seems really funny from my perspective. kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com