Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me

[Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com>]

On Jan 1, 2011, at 9:44 PM, Rick Walker wrote:

The only thing I would add to it is that for a technical reason,  I lost functionality in my 
FCB 1010 before going to NAMM and had to borrow one from somebody and program 
it at the damned show in order to be able to demo the LP-1.

Honest to goodness,   I programmed four very sophisticated banks on my FCB in 
5 minutes and was up and running.

You hit a button,   select midi/button,   push enter 
and it says......."push a button" (on your foot controller).
You push a button,   scroll the menu through all the options (only a couple of which need 
explanation), hit 'enter'  and that's it............no worrying about midi cc message or bank number.

I agree that it's easy to enter programs on the LP-1. But how long did it take you to figure out what functionality should be in those banks of programs?

Again, not dissing the LP-1. Just pointing out that there's ease of programming and then there's ease of figuring out what to program.

The EDP is programmable, but I don't think it was really intended that most users would need to program it. Most users can probably just use the default Loop mode and be fine. If that's not enough, they can play with picking alternative modes or reconfiguring a few buttons along design axes that again have been relatively carefully chosen. If you are worrying about how to write MIDI programs to exploit the extra functionality on the EDP, you are well outside the apparent sweet spot in its design.

The Looperlative on the other hand does a lot of cool stuff, but comes largely with the message that you need to go figure out what cool stuff you want exposed in what combinations and that not only can you set up a controller to do so but that you have to. If you want that level of customization, the Looperlative is much better than the EDP, but it expects you to program it. The Looperlative is like a highly-flexible synth that ships with almost no presets.

Mark

P.S. Semi on point:

http://releasecandidateone.com/236:crotchety_old_power_users