Wow, that is officially the longest email response I've ever had to a video :) I've tried to answer all of your questions below as well as I can!
But I have some questions regarding the Pico that maybe you can answer:
Firstly, I can see the playing technique and scale choosing is excellent, I love instruments where you can make no musical mistakes, especially when the scale can be quite weird. But... how close do you have to have the manual to hand for selecting all the other features, changing sound patches, and whatnot.. is it quick and easy? Or can I accidentally hit a key combo that stops the loop?
The initial learning curve on the Pico is quite steep, as there are no visual guides on the instrument or software browser as to which buttons to press to arm record, choose instruments, drum loops etc. - however to put it into context, I had the Pico in hand for about half an hour and was able to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6XsTuK2vpk&feature=related
So to answer your question, it does become very quick and easy to change instruments, arm new loops, and fortunately there is no way to 'accidentally' stop the loop as it is two separate key presses!
Your example where you looped voice on a RC 50? Is the loopers following the midi synch of the Pico or the other way round? I would LOVE it if you could play something on the Pico, loop it.. (on the looper) as an audio loop, and this looper was then sending synch back to the Pico so that IT then played in time.
In that particular video the Pico was following the MIDI clock of the RC-50, something which is a new feature in the software. The guys at Eigenlabs are fantastic at listening to customer feedback and are constantly creating new things that the Pico can do in response to that - MIDI clock was one of the most recent and is fantastic.
Also, what of the looper capabilities of the Pico? Is possible to use without the click track? or drum loop? Do you HAVE to choose a "loop length" (one bar , two bars etc - as seen on a vid tut, but not completely sure if that was BEFORE the loop was made? Can you "multiply" over the original loop length, can you "insert" into, or on top of a loop, are you always "stacking" or can you "erase" holes into your previous performances? Can you "quantize" theses performances, come on Kayla!!
Lol! The one limitation of the Pico is (unlike the Tau/Alpha) there is no headphone out, meaning that a metronome or drumbeat is required to keep in time. You do have to choose a loop length of one, two, four, eight bars etc. You are able to remove elements from the loop as you can hear at about 2:50 here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaPlx-7Vqw4&feature=channel, where I switch off the piano and bass, which then return at the end of the song.
Tell us about the in built looper???
You can at present only do one loop per instrument, although this is
something they are looking at expanding. You can erase the loop (or all
the loops) and start again, but they are not quantized; just kept
within the boundaries of the prescribed loop bars' length.
I have to say that I'm not interested in the one man band variety of songster loopers,
None taken :P
however the 5 seconds of "using the ribbon controllers to play like a cello" that I saw on one tut vid, made me go... now wait a minute!!!
I have SHITLOADS of other questions, but they are mostly about the Alpha (or more likely for me) the Tau. But I will hold off asking YOU these questions, at least until after the weekend, when I'm sure you will be the first owner of an Alpha on this list..
Good Luck Kayla!
Mark
Thank you so much Mark! I've got some really stiff competition so I'm just crossing my fingers on the off chance that the judges might like an Irish girl's interpretation of what has been to date a male-dominated instrument ... either way I'm having great fun and look forward to keeping looping with both it and my other electronic band members :)
Hope that has been of help and do feel free to email any time! Thank you for your helpful feedback,
Kayla
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------