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General Discussion: Looping rather than Recording

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written by: mikemilton

'Have no experience of it but would this do?

midiLooper

written by: jsn

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:24:59 +0100 BST

I can't figure out how (if it's possible) to use EigenD to act as a loop station rather than having to configure how many bars to record/loop.

When I improvise or play with other musicians (non-trained, traditional ones) it is often unclear what the tempo/loop length is going to be before you find it. Is there a way to start/stop recording with arbitrary lengths - or rather non-predefined lengths?

I'd still like the overdub and unplay features, but without the n-bar set-up. Bascially change the record button to be a toggle (start/stop)


written by: mikemilton

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:46:27 +0100 BST

+1 for that feature... it would be *really* useful. I'd prefer this even just playing by myself so that I'm not locked to a drum loop.

Some additional thoughts:
- each keygroup should be able to be 'latched' to the loop (or not)
- overdub and undo would be nice
- recording the mic would be nice

In the interim, JSN, you can use (free) souper looper (or a HW solution if you have one) with the limitation that the focus of building the piece shifts away from the 'harp.

I see GB is working on a cover of escape artist and this will expose this challenge nicely.


written by: barnone

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:05:24 +0100 BST

I completely agree with this. For example this is the way we record patterns in 7up on the monome and it's much much more flexible and freeform.

Basically, you simple hit the record button and it starts flashing to say its armed. I wish at least the light would turn red on the harp.

It doesn't actually start recording till you hit your first note which is quantized to a 64th or 128th note, after you are done with however long you wish to record, you hit the record button again to capture the loop. The loop starts exactly when you end the recording. After you get the hang of this it is incredibly intuitive and improvisational. You don't need things to start at all on a bar. Forget bars, it's more about playing with whatever is happening in the music.

The other thing to note is when you trigger the loop, it starts immediately(well quantized to 64th or 128th), so you have to time this, but that is easy to do for a musician, because the loop can start anywhere, you are free to mess with timing in the song.

At least I find this method to be an amazing option, even if the n-bar thing stays as well.

I think you can see me doing it here on the Manta.
Sometimes when you start playing you have no idea what you are going to record but you just feel when it should end and repeat.

Manta Improv

And actually even with the n-bar quantized to the bar thing, you shouldn't have to choose the number of bars beforehand, just start recording and click again to end recording and it's quantized to the nearest bar.


written by: mikemilton

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:14:05 +0100 BST

Yes... to be clear this is a good addition, not a suggestion for a change. The existing process has its uses as well.

I may have said this above, but the loops should be able to be differing lengths on different keygroups


written by: barnone

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:55:05 +0100 BST

On another note, playing with sooperlooper. Very nice. It also has midi and OSC support for control, so fairly easy to map eigenkeys to it.


written by: jsn

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:16:46 +0000 GMT

Whilst SooperLooper is great and solves 80% of what I want, it doesn't do the one thing that I really would like: recorder patterns of key strokes not just audio.

I use AAS Guitar synths and its useful to set-up a picking pattern (right-hand lower keys) using the recorder function and then be able to have picked chords from the left-hand playing patterns whilst I'm playing (piano, say). This works nicely but has the bar restriction. SooperLooper only loops audio - so fails the pattern requirement.

I think SooperLooper is a good model to work from though!


written by: mikemilton

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:57:45 +0000 GMT

'Have no experience of it but would this do?

midiLooper



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