Re: Software Loopers and Hardware Loopers

["Per Boysen" <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 1:23 AM, George Ludwig <sfmissionman@yahoo.com> 
wrote:
>>>I am blown away by the posililities of Mobius, and playing with it
>>> occasionally, but I feel more conceptual, Like Im thinking what I want 
>to
>>> do, then trying to write some code, testing it, playing for a bit, 
>then back
>>> to analysis, and more programming... less "hands-on" and already Im 
>getting
>>> the feeling that Ill never master it...
>
> But after a while you go through that cycle enough times that you don't 
>need
> to do it anymore since you've implemented all the things that you can
> conceive of. That's when you realize that you have created a custom 
>looping
> instrument that exactly meets your specifications. I think Per is the
> Per-fect example of this. I've seen screenshots of his Bidule/ Mobius
> looping environment (Per, you are in fact my laptop looping 
>inspiration!).
> No way you could pull that off with a dedicated hardware unit.


Actually there is a guy in England, Pete Cornish, that builds hardware
pedal boards with lots of alternate patches of routing the same bunch
of hardware stomp boxes in different ways. My Bidule setup is as
simple as that; same four or five VST effects patched into different
order depending on what patch you select to play through. The second
stage is the looper, then there's a three band multi compressor and
finally the summed stereo signal goes to the house PA output.

However, I have more or less abandoned that Bidule setup now, since
the Mobius looper became available for Mac. When Apple released
MainStage it dawned on me that MainStage was in fact what I had been
building with Bidule for Windows XP, except for MainStage's great
built-in plug-ins.

I think this discussion shows the need to think musically about
looping instead of technically. No one should feel obliged to "try out
all possible options" just because they exist. That would be just a
sad waste of talent. When starting out using software tools one of the
first important steps is to restrict your pallet. Think about it as
starting to learn playing an instrument - you don't go back to the
shop every third day to swap the trumpet for a clarinet, for a tuba,
for an accordion etc, etc... With an open environment software system
there is no one to tell you how is supposed to look and function, so
you have to set your own restrictions in order to learn how to be
creative with that environment.

-- 
Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
www.myspace.com/perboysen
www.stockholm-athens.com