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Looper's Delight
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>I encountered this situation a lot in the early 80's when >confronting the situation of bands that were using >the new Midi language and sequencing in a live setting. All kinds >of devices were marketed and sold then to >let the drummer 'drive' the band. I never heard a single instance >where the feel was excellent. There was an inherent stiffness >do to the BPM changing only at the bar line. hi Rick It seems you're using the "nobody did it before, therefore you won't be able to do it" argument here. Technology has surely moved on since the 80's, when the available sound pallet was comprised of sounds that would only work with stiff music. Even Midi timing has got a bit more accurate than it was in those days. (and now it's possible to start a sound slightly early if it has a slow attack) One of the big difficulties is monitoring, as you rightly point out. ...but to a large extent the difficulty is due not to the inherent physics of playing music, but because music tends to be over-amplified, and 90% of PAs produce a sound so awful that it's actually quite hard to hear how close the timing is. For a group of musicians with their own high quality amplification set-up the problem could (with co-operation :-) be greatly reduced. If the goal is to create a loop, and then have the timing of that loop track the timing of the band then of course that's harder in some ways than getting a midi sequencer to do the same thing. I don't know of any hardware device other than a Repeater with which this could be attempted. (with it's time stretching ability) ...and the reputation for midi tracking of that device has often been criticised. ...but why wouldn't it work? Surely it's possible to renew synchronisation more often than once a bar. It's also possible to chose sounds for the loop with a different sounding attack to what's going on in the live music, that would make any slight drift sound much less unpleasant. I hope people keep trying to make it work. andy butler