Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me

[Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com>]

On Dec 31, 2010, at 9:08 AM, William Walker wrote:

Hi Mark , as far as I can tell you need to dig deeper in to the LP-1 to reveal its mysteries and I can't for the life of me understand why you are so resistant. . I say  live with the LCD screen and learn not to be so dependent on it. I rarely look at the front panel of mine unless I have lost track of which track I'm on. I almost always use sync record and there is a work around that lets you set the tempo in advance . You simply record a blank loop without playing anything to set clock tempo for other effects. Works like a charm, I do it all the time. It takes a couple of moments of silence before starting to play but I don't sense it is distracting to an audience. When I moved from the Repeater to the LP-1 I gave up some functions that where not reproduced in the same way. I jettisoned time stretch and mellotron mode (though its possible to fake both things in the LP-1 now) and I took the LP-1 as its own animal and I proceeded to dig in as deeply as I could and I spent a lot of time doing it. i find it fascinating that some folks on this list are willing to take that kind of time to get inside the machine and some want everything nice and simple. One list member gave up on the LP-1 after spending a paltry  two weeks? What the fuck can one hope to possibly understand about a machine this sophisticated in two weeks?????? perhaps enough to realize it isn't an EDP, but not enough time to understand its potential. This is a machine that takes a bit of work to understand just like the EDP did.  Unlike the time I've spent trying to make modeling amps sound right, working  to learn how to use the LP-1 has been totally gratifying and musically rewarding to me. You saw my performance at Y2K10 didn't you? Did I look like someone who was struggling with my gear? I would be happy to help you accelerate your growth on the machine if time is an issue, and I know that with a family and a high powered tech job,  time is at a premium for you. But at this stage of the game I'm a bit exhausted by giving out free advice to people about the LP-1.  

Bill

I'm not sure why it's so important to you and Rick that I come to love the LP-1. I appreciate it and I appreciate the offers of help, but it's rather odd how saying that one is more comfortable with the EDP elicits some of the reactions that it does. My initial post on this thread was sparked by a question from someone else a few weeks back on why one might prefer the EDP and I tried to sort through what it is that I find appealing about the EDP.

One thing I'll note on learning curves is that almost all of the Looperlative discussions start with: "It's really easy to program a MIDI controller for it." It's worth noting that that's a much bigger initial learning curve than exhibited by the EDP for which you can get a custom footswitch for which the software has already been optimized. The EDP programming depth is about customization, but on arrival it's set up and ready to go whereas the Looperlative is relatively lost without a MIDI controller or at least some programming of the user buttons. Now, I'm certainly capable of doing that programming, but now I need to step back and start thinking about designing a looper control set that's right for me.

So, I start down that path and I ask what, for example, would I like to do? Hmm. I've had times where I have my feedback set to 0% and basically just work with a long synchronized delay, but I'd like to be able to transition to feedback = 100% to build a seamless loop. I can program a button to go to feedback = 100%, but I can't program a button to go to feedback = 0%. I could use a continuous pedal to control this with a suitable MIDI controller, but that has it's own set of complexities with respect to when the controller signal gets sent. Given a sufficiently powerful MIDI controller, I could program buttons to send those control values but now we're out of the "the Looperlative is trivial to get working with a MIDI controller" realm. My first thought had been to use Replace+ mode, but it's interaction with Rec/Dub proved to be "interesting".

Now, that said, this is difficult to make work with the stock EDP as well given that substitute is a sustained function (cool for quantized replace, not a good answer for a generic take the feedback to 0% option) and various interface modes aren't friendly to stereo EDP use. But my point is that the EDP basically comes optimized for a particular way of working whereas the Looperlative comes expecting the user to program it to fit their working style only to then present various at times unexpected bumps in the road. Maybe this is also why I generally prefer Apple equipment. It has all sorts of limitations, but it has also been subjected to a lot of focus on making it good at working in a particular way.

But really with the Looperlative, it comes down to saying: Here's what I want to do. Then figure out what the Looperlative would need to do to best approximate that. Then figure out how sophisticated a MIDI controller I need to get. Then get it programmed. Maybe at the end of the day that all works out well, but it also feels a lot like what I spend my time at work worrying about doing.

Mark