Re: Live Looping without "organic" instruments.. is it live looping,"MUSIC" inside (regarding a recent debate)

[mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com>]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:

Very interesting questions brought up by Ben.

Indeed, interesting thread, I love these "defining what we do" threads.
But I must say that Ive never had any trouble myself.

Firstly I find that anyone I speak to about looping, knows what it is! All musicians are aware of looping pedals nowadays, and if you say to a NON-musician.. I do looping, they gettit.. sort of!

To ask whether to programming a sequencer of drum-machine, live, and "on the fly"  is looping, is just nonsense.. its not looping! Its LIVE SEQUENCING... and thats EXTREMELY cool too! The fact that you might be sequencing samples you have made is irrelevant, they were PRE-made so not looping! 

To loop, you have to er... loop something! That means some live input. In the case of 1 or 2 tools that allow both, octatrack for example, I think that is both live looping and sequencing.

And just because this is Loopers Delight, it doesnt mean we can´t talk about it. 

As for Bens suggestion of triggering synths from a loping audio source, it works.. Ive tried. But its not very good. Most analog synths trigger by a gate, trigger or clock signal. These are all the same generally (some exceptions) but is usually a positive going pulse of a few milliseconds, (the exception being the gate signal that is positive for as long as you require the gate (key) open (pressed) Its quite a high signal, usually 5 volts, and to get that from an audio source requires amplification. lots! I used a big muff! This is a good choice as it effectivly turns the signal into a square wave. However, the amount of background noise it generates brings up the lower threshold as well, so oyu need a noise gate or expander too... EVEN then the signal you get is rather erratic and you will get loads of misfires and wibbles (technical modular synth term).

<edp specific shit>
Once I even took the beat sync OUT from one edp into the in of another, then brother synched them together. They synched, but as I drpped in some of the constant clicks from the beat synch jack using insert, this created a varying rhythm for the synths to trigger from (the beat sync out from EDP is already a good synth trig)

</edp specific shit>

But.. was it worth it---? Er no.. 

fun for 5 minutes... max!





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Mark Francombe

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