Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me

[Dustbunnies <mech@m3ch.net>]

Title: Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me

On 1/2/11 1:45 AM, "mark francombe" <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote:

> Ive only tried the Looperlative once, and I must say in terms of "what it could do" I couldnt get the owner to explain me anything that really seems crazily impossibly different and new than the EDP. Excepting of course the obvious 3 main differences. mono verses stereo, multiple tracks and audio quality...

You left out a big one: the ability to stack commands in the LP-1.  Using a decent MIDI controller(!), you can put together whole sets of commands that can be fired off with a single button press — almost like a ‘macro’ or simple Mobius script.  

For instance, I put together a command that emulates what I call the ‘Red House’ effect (listen to ‘Two Soldiers’ or ‘The Red House’ from David Byrne’s “The Catherine Wheel” to hear what I’m talking about).  With this one, the loop buffer starts to fill as long as I have the MIDI pedal depressed.  The moment I let up on the pedal, it immediately begins to loop whatever was in the buffer.  Depress it again, and the previous buffer is immediately erased and begins filling a second time.  This allows me to tap the pedal quickly to capture very short looped snippets — or stutters — of sound.  A slightly longer tap means a slightly longer snippet.  If I tap several times while playing a line, it almost sounds like realtime granular, as the loop buffer grabs one ‘snapshot’ after another of what I’m playing.

Another one I put together allows me to do time-stretch, in conjunction with an outboard pitch-shift unit on the Auxiliary outs (oh yeah, multiple outputs: there’s another feature not mentioned above).  I’ll begin recording a loop as normal.  Then I’ve a command that closes/plays the loop, assigns it to Aux Out 1 (where it’s sent to a pitch shifter set to +1 octave, then routed back into the LP-1), drops to Half-Speed, and starts a Bounce on the next track.  This results in the recording of a time-stretched track that is twice the length, but at the same pitch as the original.  I can also begin to get Repeater-esque degrade effects, dependent upon the crappiness of the pitch-shifter I’m using.  Throw in some other effects (bit-shift or sample-rate degradation, synchronized slicing from the EF-303, etc.) and things can get pretty wild.

In both these cases, though, I’m doing exactly what Per suggested: I’m starting from a concept of the end-goal — the final effect — then working backward to find the best way to implement it on my architecture.

That’s the best way to use the LP-1.  It’s a very, very, open, flexible architecture.  If you try to use it plug-&-play, you’ll get only really the same advantages you listed above: stereo, multiple tracks, and excellent fidelity.  It’s no wonder quite a few people were very ‘so what’, and gave up on it after a couple of weeks.  There’s not a lot of shiny eye-candy to be had right out of the box, so you’re not as likely to be inspired to go in different directions merely by purchasing a new tool.  

However, if you figure out your end effect then work backward, the LP-1 quietly and deftly allows you to do accomplish many of the new directions you might conceive of in your looping.

        --m.