Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me



Title: Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me
Hey Rick!

Heh!  I’ve thought about doing some of the same sort of videos that your brother does so well, but every time I consider having a video camera placed on me, the blood drops outta me head and I slough off into a dead faint.  ;)

FWIW, my ‘Red House’ effect appears to be something you can do on the EDP (never got a chance to play with an EDP very much, so I don’t know).  It seems you’ve probably already heard it, if not on one of the many Byrne/Eno/Belew recordings using it..  Also, I used it during my performance for Y2k7.  You can see it on one of the videos from that performance ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcffXnqv_Lw ) starting at about 6:00.

One of my projects for this New Year’s break is to remount the GK3 on my lap steel (it was more ergonomic to mount it reversed, which the VG-99 is fine with. But now my GR-20 doesn’t have a clue what the hell is going on, so I gotta switch it.)  While I’m in the studio I should record a bit more anyway, so mebbe I’ll see what I can put together in the next coupla days.  :)

        --m.


On 1/2/11 6:02 PM, "Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote:

  Hey Duke,
 Would you have the time to record a couple of examples of these creative techniques you've come up
 with and post them so we can read them and here them simultaneously?
 
 If you are really busy, no worries, but these are really cool creative ways to use the LP-1 that I've not
 stumbled on or thought of and I'd love to learn them.
 
 Thanks for an inspired post!
 
 Happy New Years,     
 
 rick walker
 
 On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Dustbunnies wrote:
 Re: The EDP and the Looperlative and me
 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.