The Tech 21 MIDI Moose, and my simple-minded approach to looping

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Quoting within context a few sentences from your post, Per: 

> vocabulary.  I never play a note (or a Mobius script) that I can't  
> already "hear as sung by me" (meaning it must have a true  
> expressional value in my imagination, or I will pass and stay silent  
> or go into a different direction).

I remember reading your posts (was it here or on the Mobius newsgroup) 
where
you also mentioned that you learn new functions one by one, instead of just
jumping into the technology pool and learning to swim afterwards.
For me, the approach is different a lot of the times. Like listening to a
lot of different music, playing with a lot of different tech thingies is an
inspiration for me regarding new things to do. 
And I also do like to work with a setup where I use only a relatively small
(read: well below 90%) percentage of its features. And I really enjoy it 
for
the kind of sound I do when now and then something happens which was 
totally
unexpected mid-performance. This goes into the same direction as the "work
with mistakes or artifacts in your loops" discussion. Of course, doing
improvised stuff helps in living with something like strange walls of
distorted feedback and resonance wandering through the stereo field
mid-performance ;).

> I think this is especially important for young musicians that learn  
> both about making music and mastering an instrument at the 
> same time.

Good point here! And here we're back with your initial "make the music in
your head" statement...if you've yet to reach that point where you can
create compositions in your head, too much tech thingies might get in your
way while going there.

> a looping rig". I think the best way to set up a looping rig is to  
> not think about technological tools at all. Just think about your  
> music, yourself and your destination in life. Then figure out how to  
> express these emotions and attitudes as sound statements and 
> you will  
> find yourself with a good blueprint copy of the rig you need to  
> assemble. Going the other way, like buying some unit and say "oh,  

Here you've become a little too esoteric for me. I see the rig design as a
process in two phases: phase one - make up your mind what you want to do
musically (which might only by chance have something to do with my
destination in life, simply because I don't know it). phase two - design a
rig which allows you to do what you defined in phase one.
Part one is about music - part two is about requirements engineering.

You're right that it's not possible to go through phase two without going
through phase one first. And most of the time, us folks here can only be of
help in phase two. And yes, a simple DD20 or Digitech PDS/RDS or whatever 
is
as good a place to start as any to get along with phase one.