Are there any loopers that don't produce a gap between segments?

Started by aliensporebomb, June 15, 2013, 08:10:20 AM

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aliensporebomb

Quote from: Cricket on June 30, 2013, 06:08:42 PM
Heh, heh.  I agonize over every major purchase myself.   Think away.

Even so, whatever you wind up with will have things you love and things you don't, and that seems to be the way of it.

Funny.  From your vids I'd imagine we're both of the age where we can remember when 16 seconds was a crazy-long delay.  No storing... Hell, at one point I had a delay with 2 seconds that folks thought was pretty cool way back when.

Totally!  The longest delay I had was my old Boss DD3.  It was even longer than the delay in one of my rack units.

When I got my EHX SMMH I was bowled over at the fact that it had a 30 second 24-bit stereo looper in addition to stereo modulated delay, reverse etc.. 

The problem is then you start to see loopers with un-do, the ability to save loops for later via USB or take on a loop from a computer to play as a backing track live and you start to go "yeah, I need some of that action".


My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

aliensporebomb

Quote from: Cricket on June 30, 2013, 06:51:16 PM
Hm.  Interesting....

Things I like about the Pigtronix:

Loop aging!  Cool... missing feature from just about every looper.  Frippertronics, here we come.
Sound quality
Expandable memory
Smaller footprint

Things not so much:

Not sure I could do what I like with only two loops.

Not sure about the loop sync... does loop 2 have to be 1-6 x the length of loop 1?  Sounds like it but maybe not.  I do like it on the rc that the loops can be any length, recorded in any order, synced at the beginning of the longest loop or independent tempos.

Expression pedal looks to be sold seperately.  Ka-ching.

Well... it's always something.  I look at the 505... also cool, but not a floor pedal, so then what?  An FC?   Cripes.   I feel like I'm tap dancing sometimes already between the 55 and the RC.  Haven't found the ideal placement yet so I can play and not go off-mic to look at the floor.

Well, my bed's made (for now).  Just musing....

Yeah, I had the same concerns - could two loops be enough even though I have been gigging 40 or so gigs and a ton of recordings with just one?. 

The Pigtronix has some really cool things about it but the RC-300 had all the pedals and footswitches included.  The Pigtronix and the 505 would need extra stuff.  I wasn't really keen about adding yet another pedal/footswitch to an already large pedalboard.

Of course I could always save up for an Infinity after I get the RC-300......if I was really nuts.

My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

Cricket

Quote from: aliensporebomb on June 30, 2013, 07:04:41 PM
Yeah, I had the same concerns - could two loops be enough even though I have been gigging 40 or so gigs and a ton of recordings with just one?.

Well, maybe.  You don't seem to be doing much in the way of straight rock songs or covers.  For me, I find the 3 loops to be just enough to do a verse, chorus, maybe a bridge or intro/outro... and that takes a bit of thought as to the arrangement, whether for live looping or pre-recording some material.

And undo!   I forgot about that, but in the vid it almost sounded like the undo on the Pig was instant, or more so, and more than one layer of undo/redo.   That could be cool if that is, in fact, what it does.

RC has one layer of undo/redo and it takes 2 seconds to kick in.  It's usable but takes some attention.  Esp b/c it will undo everything from a single pass of recording so, if you want to layer stuff, you have to remember to stop/start recording before you get to any parts you intend to undo or you'll wipe them all.  Oops.

Some cool things the RC does along those lines:  you can copy phrase memories or individual tracks internally.  You can also wipe a track completely and record new material on it BUT, as long as you don't save the end result, the original loops will be there when you reselect the memory.  So you can have stored loops as a starting point, wipe them as you go, but they're still stored for next time.  I haven't really explored this too much yet but I can see where that might come in handy.

As long as I'm staying in one meter, I kind of like the built in rhythm machine too.   Some of the rhythms are quite usable, and sound pretty good if you accent them with drum sounds from the 55 to break up the same-ness.  They are also not recorded to the loop itself, but stored and recalled in the memory, so you can turn the volume up, down, or off if you like.  You can even change the rhythm pattern within a memory live (with an assign), but not the meter.  Once you've selected 4/4 and recorded a track, that's it.   You're in 4.

But yeah, you can do a lot with one loop.   I thought I got some pretty good ambience out of the 55 alone with it's no-frills 20 seconds.  My biggest gripe with that is it disables the CTL pedal to use it.   Still, what can it do, not what can't it do, is my mindset.

Have to thank Adrian Belew for that.  Lone Rhino was an eye-opener.  I still love that one.   All of 'em, really, but that one has pride of place.

aliensporebomb

I've been doing more ambient things but of late I'm doing more "song like structures" (my mastering engineering even noticed this) so I need something that will cover the ambient thing as well as doing more song-like things.  And I have ideas for "spontanous composition" that requires the ability to do A-B-C type parts.

It's a toss up between the Infinity and the RC-300.  I guess it's down to how much money I feel like spending but my wife's car needs new tires now so it might get put off a bit (again).



My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

GtrGeorge

Im surprized noone mentioned the simple as heck Boss RC-2    not really expandable....but no gap, onceyou get the hang of it.  I tried the RC-3 and although newer..in the brief time I tried it..I found the RC-2 actually better at GAPLESS looping.
  GtrGeorge

Cricket

Quote from: GtrGeorge on July 03, 2013, 04:03:47 PM
Im surprized noone mentioned the simple as heck Boss RC-2    not really expandable....but no gap, onceyou get the hang of it.  I tried the RC-3 and although newer..in the brief time I tried it..I found the RC-2 actually better at GAPLESS looping.
  GtrGeorge

Good point.   Some of the smaller loopers have fallen off my radar a bit.  Even so, I have to keep them in mind.  Been using the internal looper on the 55 to "fill in" when I'm changing settings on the 300 in some cases.  A smaller, more versatile secondary looper might be just the thing.   Read the spec on that... 16 min with storage.   I keep forgetting how far these little guys have come.  "Judge me by my size, do you?"   ;D


Cricket

Quote from: aliensporebomb on July 01, 2013, 09:14:57 AM
I've been doing more ambient things but of late I'm doing more "song like structures" (my mastering engineering even noticed this) so I need something that will cover the ambient thing as well as doing more song-like things.  And I have ideas for "spontanous composition" that requires the ability to do A-B-C type parts.

It's a toss up between the Infinity and the RC-300.  I guess it's down to how much money I feel like spending but my wife's car needs new tires now so it might get put off a bit (again).

Bummer on the tires.   Well, it's always something.

Which, if any, of your posted recordings have the song-like stuff.   I'm interested to hear.   Ftr, I like your ambient recordings a lot... Ionosphere esp.

Spontaneous composition, huh?   I work with that myself when I'm playing the music I really want to hear.  One of the things that pushed me to get a better looper:  so I could get a band sound without the difficulty of finding the right people interested in playing "without a net."

I played with Butch Morris (R.I.P.) for a little while in the 80s.  Life-changing.   We would go onstage with an ensemble of I think 16 people and almost nothing pre-prepared.  We rehearsed, and there were some things, but they were pretty loose:  a scale here, a melodic or rhythmic fragment there.   He'd give a downbeat and "bam"  you're off.   From the cacophony, you would just have to listen with all your power, play whatever made sense to you, and watch him.  He almost always managed to coax something pretty cool out of the noise.  Each performance unique and unrepeatable.

I'm not in the linked vid, of course, but it's an example of how he worked.

 

Anyway, sometimes I think that's what I'm looking to do with the looper... in that vein.   Linked is an excerpt from practicing.  It's long, and probably self-indulgent as hell, but you can hear some of what the RC does, and this is all live-looped.   I have the rhythm set to a 7/4 groove, so there is quantizing when I switch to a new loop about halfway through at the "drum break."

https://www.box.com/s/1ufvma3g6v3wwz4o5bt2

Some other fun things that aren't on the excerpt:  you can switch the rhythm on and off, either changing where one is, or just bringing it in and out.   Later on, I made a short ambient loop on the 55 , fed some of that to the RC, and used it to fill in switching settings that can only be changed with the RC stopped.  Might be some potential there too:  getting material going and then just manipulating it.  Also, in the spontaneous composition vein, I had some luck looping a short melody on the 55 and letting it play against the RC.

Still wonder how much structure is needed to elevate something like this to actual music, rather than just aimless soloing over a vamp.  Don't think I'm there yet, but the getting there is fun too.