Re: solicitation for beat chopping ideas in EDP

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@altruistmusic.com>]

Hi Dylan,

Dylan DeAnda wrote:
 
> I'm trying to culminate some ideas on how to go about getting some more
> interesting rhythm patterns out of my echoplex and turntable setup.
> 
> One of the things I'm looking to do is chop the beat up so that I can 
>keep
> cutting it in half and dramatically increasing the rhythmic tension, 
>until
> release.

Try this.  (It's a bit complex, but should be worth your while).

Record a basic drum beat into the EDP.  

BUT: Before you do that, do a few things - 

-- Set quantize=on

-- Set insertmode=insert

I'm assuming you've got the EDP chasing some sort of sync from the 
turntables.

Now...

Rather than recording the entire beat as a single cycle, do this instead:

1) Hit record

2) Hit insert WHILE RECORD IS STILL GOING.

3) You should now see that new cycles are forming in the display window
of the EDP, even as you're continuing to record the initial loop.

4) When you get to the end of a measure, hit insert again to finish
recording the initial loop.

What you should have now is a basic loop that's already been subdivided
into different cycles, sort of like an EDP version of ReCycle.

So, now that you've got a beat that's subdivided in this way, there's
all sorts of stuff you can do:

-- Remultiply part of the pattern (by hitting multiply at the beginning
of the cycle you want to start at, and then ending it somewhere else). 
This can shorten the pattern; it's also cool to remultiply the loop down
to an odd number of cycles, so that you get an odd-metered loop
happening against the original beat coming from the turntables.

-- After you've remultiplied down to a smaller number of cycles, hit the
"undo" button -- you'll start scrolling through different memory laters
in interesting and unpredictable ways.  This is a trick I stumbled onto
(quite by accident) along with David Torn back in March of '98 (I know
some other people had discovered it as well, at that point); it's a fun
"trick" to pull.  My (latest) name for this is "unmultiply."

A more advanced application of this basic idea, using multiple loops:

-- Once you've recorded your basic loop, keep the original in loop 1,
and copy it to several other loops.  You can then mess with the original
loop to your heart's content, and go back to loop one if you want to
return to the original idea.  If you have switchquant=on and
loopcopy=sound, then you can switch back and forth between different
loops, quantized to each new cycle.

I've actually done some drum & bass type stuff along these lines (using
my guitar as the "drum" source), playing with switching back and forth
between loops 2-4 rhythmically, and then landing back on the original,
uncut loop at the downbeat of every other bar.

Anyway... hope this helps.  Holler if I'm not clear on anything here...

Best wishes,

--Andre LaFosse
http://www.altruistmusic.com