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Re: 2880 midi sync experience report (my first post)



Sounds good!  I've actually considered ditching my
Repeater (egad!) and picking one of these little
loopers up.  Why ditch a more fully functioned unit
over a less functional unit?

Size.

With my laptop looping system being truely amazing...
(Live+Mobius+Elottronix) I'm still not 100% sold on
the idea of doing a show "without a net" so to speak. 
I've had Live 5 melt down in my studio (OK, I was
doing wacky things like dragging new VSTs into tracks
while they were running) and even though Mobius was
still fully functional with the dead carcass of Live
around it, it left me with the feeling of "oh no, this
will bite me in the ass one day in a live show."

So here's my question: What happens with the 2880 if
mid sequence the clock goes away?  Once Digital
Performer crashed and before it did it said to my
Repeater, "how about a tempo of... 30?"  Very cool
effect... but not what one would call seamless.  In my
perfect world the 2880 would just stay on the tempo so
I could gracefully reboot the machine.

On the other hand I could slave everything to my MIDI
controller's clock, but that wouldn't be the most
elegent answer.

Thanks,

Mark

--- "Nick (Ecce)" <eccemusic@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> Another member of this list kindly lent me an
> Electro Harmonix 2880 to
> evaluate (and I've taken far too long as I've been
> so busy!)
> 
> I thought it would be useful to share my experience.
> 
> I am using the 2880 as the slave, clock sync-ed to
> an Akai MPC1000 (sending
> only start, stop and clock), playing guitar and
> synth into the 2880.
> 
> After fiddling around with trying to get loops
> synced up for ages, this is
> the best way of doing things that I have come up
> with:
> 
> 1. Set the 2880 to external midi sync, make sure
> quantize is off!
> 2. Press "new loop" on the 2880, then record (this
> does not start the
> recording process, but the midi sync LED will start
> flashing with the record
> LED, kind of saying "Ready when you are!" to the
> sequencer)
> 3. Press play on the MPC1000, the 2880 will start
> recording (I always make
> this first loop a blank loop)
> 4. Before your required loop length is up, press
> quantize.
> 5. Any time after the beginning of the final bar of
> your required loop
> length, and before your desired restart point of the
> loop press play. The
> quantize button will flash until that bar is up,
> then the 2880 will go into
> play mode, with a loop length identical to the
> number of bars you would
> like. Anything you recorded during that time would
> likely be useless as it
> would be stretched all over the place - hence why I
> keep it blank.
> 
> This is useful for the kind of applications I had in
> mind for a looper, as I
> wanted a set length loop to run over the length of a
> song performance. This
> way I am assured of, say, a four bar repeating loop
> during a song that I can
> continually overdub to, punch in to, re-record etc.
> 
> The caveat is that if you were to then press
> "reverse", you hear and
> analog-delay like speeding up and slowing down of
> the entire loop until it
> is reversed and running back in sync. If you don't
> want that effect it is
> necessary to turn the 2880 down on your mixer until
> you know you are safe!
> 
> In my opinion the 2880 is a wonderful midi-synced
> looper, but not if you
> want to start looping from the moment you press
> record. It's needs some time
> to settle down before you can start having fun. Once
> you are there though,
> there is much fun to be had - IMO recording with the
> faders slightly lower
> than maximum gives a great feedback effect over
> time.
> 
> The one thing I cannot do that I would like to is
> *not* stop the 2880 when I
> stop the MPC - would be nice to run the feedback
> while I load up samples for
> the next song! If anyone has any ideas lemme know.
> 


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