Patrick was asking who be using what. I am in western North Carolina and have played bluegrass and acoustic and whatever since 1975. I live way in the sticks and starting looping partly out of frustration of not having as many people around to jam with as I like. As far as instruments I have, road and live and loop ready, acoustic mandolin, electric mandolin, octave mandolin, mandola, electric mandola, mandocello, acoustic guitar (1956 Martin d28), electric guitar (tele), squareneck dobro, lap steel, pedal steel, roundneck dobro, electric banjo, acoustic banjo, P bass, upright bass, bass mandolin (1920's Gibson), acoustic fiddle, electric fiddle, percussion rack, Roland elect drum kit, hammond organ module, yamaha tg55 keys, and probably something I am forgetting. All those instruments are world class and with state of the art pickup systems installed as I have a Fishman endorsement for ten years now. I run all the strings to a Fishman Aura, on which I have spent years tweaking the images making them sound the best possible when amplified. The Aura has midi control to select the proper image. Then I have a digitech 1101 which also I have spent countless hours setting up sounds for each instrument. The 1101 has midi out so that when I choose a certain instrument on the 1101, it changes the Aura to the proper setting for that instrument. I then have a Rane CM86 mixer, which has eight channels, one for keys, organ, strings, drum machine, two vocal mics and a/b inserts which I have two TC M300 multi processors. The Rane has true stereo outs, A and B, and level control on each channel so I send the A to my cue and then the B to my LP1. I then route the LP1 out back to one channel of the Rane and use that to control the mix of recorded loop to the live instruments or mics. I then use a Novation control surface, the one with a two octave keyboard on it and can control the LP1, the M300s and the organ and key modules with this awesome controller. It has sliders, faders and lots of buttons and then I have full control over the loops, volume, start, stop, restart, etc, giving me the ability to control volume of the loops coming out of the LP1. I have the digitech foot pedal and a midibuddy, wah pedal and vol pedal for the organ on the floor. As you can imagine, this has taken me years to put together, from a time, money and knowledge standpoint, it has been quite an ordeal. Its hard to maintain the impetus to keep it growing. My goal is to get to the point where one button push on the Novation sets up all I need for a certain song. Musically, I really look at it more like live recording than ambient style looping like lots of ya'll do. I really like the idea of building a track that eventually works into the backup for an entire song. I can do ambient stuff of course but really if doing that type, I lean more towards building dub style tracks. The good thing I like about the M300's are that with the Novation I can on the fly with midi control all the settings, adjust delay times and such so when building dub stuff I can have the delay times and lengthes that I need, and with a push of a button I can bring up any preset I need. I love the LP1, only thing bothers me is if it craps out, I am screwed, and as of last time I checked, no way to backup the programming. I hope maybe he has this change added, havent checked in a while. Also, the Rane is an awesome mixer for looping, a bit large, three rack space, and it has a real bad habit of blowing output transisters if you plug in or out of it while its powered up, but I have three of them so can change/replace easily. If I was gigging a lot looping I would have a backup LP1 too, cant find those at Walmart!! I use Nuendo in my studio but I just really havent felt comfortable changing to a laptop based system, i just have an unatural fear of a laptop crash and dont want to change, plus the LP1 is just awesome!! Well if anyone has any ideas, comments or whatever, would love to hear them. Andy Owens 1-800-AndyOwens Sent from my iPhone So the typing might not be my best! |