Re: Composing/Planning the Looping Fun

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

hi Steve,
welcome

Steve Crumpler wrote:
> So as this is my first post, I'll offer a quick introduction.  For the 
> past year-and-a-half has been learning how to play the violin 
> (electric).  Originally my goal was just to learn how to play the 
> violin, but with success I quickly expanded on that.  I decided to plan 
> out how to create a solo electric violin looping performance.  That's 
> what I've been focusing on (as much as I can with a full-time job) for 
> the past few months.  Also, I'm a software engineer.  One thing to know 
> about software engineers is that we spend months planning software in 
> detail before we get to the part where we implement it.  A lot of 
> creative thought goes into planning out elegantly-written software.  I 
> believe it is similar to planning out an elegant looping structure/song.

let's just say there's also inelegant software out there :-)

The alternative approach is 
1) just get it going
2) listen to user feedback
3) accommodate the wishes of users

> So, hopefully my background will help explain the seeming oddness of my 
> question ... 
>
> How do you guys compose/plan your songs?  For the instrument-based 
> loopers out there, do you write sheet music for the loop and free-play 
> sections and have some scheme for organizing it or do you simply play 
> and improvise till you have something that works?  

If I'm working on a piece I will just run through it over and over,
with occasional breaks to figure out how to get the looping 
hardware to do what I want, or to work on the harmony/arrangement
aspects of sections. 

Generally I end up with a set of "moves" on the loop technology,
some harmonic and rhythmic structure, and some compatible
melodic material, although the amount of variation per each
performance depends on the piece.

> So with that problem in mind I had some inspiration from my CS 
> education.  I can think of a loop-based song like a finite state machine 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine> (FSM), which is 
> simply a way to describe the states a machine (in this case a loop-based 
> song) can be in and how it transitions between the states.  The only way 
> to change which loops are playing (0 to *) is to press a foot pedal, 
> similar to how the only way to change a FSM state is with a transition. 
>  With that I can diagram out my loop-based song, with each loop 
> start/end/overdub, effect on/off, effect settings, etc. to the very end. 
>  I think this is flexible enough to be useful for mapping out any 
> loop-based song.

I'd say *no*, to describe a sophisticated looping device the number of 
possible
states becomes unwieldy.
..and some features like playback speed aren't easily described by on/off 
flags.

> Thoughts?

> From a programmer perspective, the thing about a looping device is
that you're very likely to want to extend it's capabilities after 
finishing it.
If you use a state machine as described I then you're likely
to end up with inelegant software with hard to find bugs.

I'd at least consider a structure whereby each loop has it's own
FSM.

Of course, I'm aware it's likely you know exactly what your about,
and that these comments are telling you nothing new :-)

andy