Re: looping with a netbook

[TR <tomrollison@yahoo.com>]

Lovely music video. I love the idea of having a sort of organically 
developing sound regenerating itself via feedback. It really reminds me 
sound wise of some of the things I was finding by sending a digital delay 
with a fair amount of feedback into a Vortex. The feed back wanted to keep 
going off to god-knows-where and the Vortex kept it in check via some 
inherent tendency to compress the input signal. But it would happily 
bubble along for a very long time and I had various ways of causing little 
variations and such. Hours of fun.
    But I wanted to touch on your idea of using midi clips to control plug 
in parameters. Would these be precomposed midi clips? Sort of a recording 
of various knob twisting and tweaks? This gets to something I have been 
wanting to try but just haven't gotten around to it. Which is to compose a 
noteless sequence of effects tweaks creating a constantly shifting 
environment through which to play my guitar. Or an entire 
ensemble.Sequencing effects and adding note values later. I think this 
could be an interesting compositional tool for improvised music. But is 
this something you may have done with your use of the midi clips? 

--- On Sat, 6/5/10, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: looping with a netbook
> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Date: Saturday, June 5, 2010, 7:30 AM
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:18 PM, TR
> <tomrollison@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I was running it on a Gateway with 2 gigs of Ram and a
> 1.8 Ghz dual core processor. Seems that this particular
> machine could either run virtual instruments OR
> record/playback but not both.
> > I should add that I was running mics in through an TC
> Electronic audio interface as
> > well as my guitar. My hope is to be able to do
> realtime remixing and dubbing and looping.
> > I honestly don't think there is a laptop (let alone a
> notebook) with the resources to pull this all off.
> 
> 
> I have to agree to that. But only if you mean it in the
> sense of how
> you would do "looping, dubbing and remixing" by using the
> traditional
> tools like a mixing console, various audio sources for
> input and
> various external effect processors routed in effect send
> loops around
> the console. Some years ago I tried to achieve that "in the
> box" by
> MIDI clock syncing two laptops and piping audio between
> them digitally
> (SPDIF and optical ADAT). But it still wasn't enough
> processing power
> and I don't see any modern laptops that provide the power
> needed.
> 
> So what to do then? The solution is to simplify your setup
> to bring
> down the burden of the CPU. This pretty much disqualifies
> Ableton Live
> because it is designed to meet the remix concept where all
> options are
> instantly accessible. But you can still use Live though, if
> you
> restrict the numbers of effects active within the session.
> Think about
> what exactly you need to do in your performance and set up
> Live only
> for that. You will have to sacrifice the freedom to be able
> to do
> whatever comes to mind with your audio, but since only you
> know what
> you are excluding from your performance it won't be an
> issue for the
> audience.
> 
> One typical example of this minimize-CPU-load strategy is
> to use the
> same dub delay circuit for all channels and send audio
> there by
> channel send knobs. The simple Ping-Pong delay in Live is
> very CPU
> efficient and it can sound pretty cool if placed with
> "feedback = 0"
> in a effect Return Track loop that is using its effect send
> knob to
> send signal back into itself. After the Ping Pong you may
> put a
> limiter or compressor. That's it as for CPU taxing. The
> rest is usual
> control strategies like assigning some knobs or sticks to
> sweep the
> Ping-Pong's filter range and its tempo division. And you
> may add a
> button for its Freeze loop function.
> 
> Another example of "low CPU cost" techniques in Ableton
> Live that may
> sound very advanced is to utilize MIDI Clips for control
> data
> targeting any plug-in parameter. Now, you may be thinking
> that it is
> not always possible to send MIDI directly to a track or a
> track's
> plug-in from a MIDI Track, but there is a workaround for
> that! Send
> MIDI through the computers operating system! If using OS X
> there is
> the built-in IAC Bus system and for Windows XP I remember I
> was using
> the third-party hack MIDI Yoke. Not sure how to go here if
> you are
> using Vista or W7, but regard this a lead and look into
> it!
> http://www.midiox.com/
> 
> Myself I have chosen a different solution; to not add
> effects to
> tracks. Instead I add effects PRE looping and create loops
> where
> different effect treatments are recorded with the source
> sound. This
> might seem to restrict your options, and it actually does
> in a
> technically theoretical way. But as I see it it increases
> my
> expressive options when performing. For example, a command
> to cut and
> mutilate a loop will not only change the source sound but
> all effects
> as well - and this does  give more "listener
> experienced" power under
> your fingertips. Ableton Live is designed to offer many
> options in
> parallel and I stopped using Live and went with the free
> software
> Plogue Bidule (it has a price tag today, but still low for
> what you
> get) where I could build a system that lets me use an
> almost infinite
> number of effect processor chains for my source audio
> input. Later on
> the software Mainstage was launched by Apple and since I
> found it to
> be a replica of my Bidule setup replaced my old pc with one
> from Apple
> that could run both the Windows XP Bidule rig and a
> Mainstage rig
> according to the same functionality and performance
> strategies.
> 
> Greetings from Sweden
> 
> Per Boysen
> www.boysen.se
> www.perboysen.com
> www.looproom.com internet music hub
> 
>