Re: Following Acoustic Musicians with Looper

["Buzap Buzap" <buzap@gmx.net>]

Hi guys

first of all, I'm glad to have started such a fruitful discussion :)

So, some comments:

To me, it is important not only to lead the gang with my looping but also 
be able to follow (what if the other guys _are_ the drummer+bass player?).
People already look at me in strange ways when I come up with my looper. I 
think you can earn quite some respect when you are also able to follow 
others decently. Plus, it's simply my desire for musical freedom.
In the situation I had described, an accordeonist was leading this ethnic 
rubato style song with _very_ free tempo. The song wouldn't be the same 
(not "breathing") if we'd stick to my stuff.

Anyway, some ideas/best practices I've developed in the mean time:
Since you have to keep track of the time of the others constantly anyway, 
you can do this:
- Put everything that is like ambient sound on a loop (or seperate delay 
pedal)
- Fire the ryhthmical stuff as one shot samples
i.e. you record a rhythmic pattern of 4 beats. So that means, you have to 
press the pedal at the exact time in every bar to trigger your 
one-shot-loop. (The drummer uses his pedals all the time, so why shouldnt 
you?). The good thing is, even if the tempo varies a bit, you are still on 
track. So you keep on stomping through the whole song... (poor pedal)

On the RC-50 I would work it like this (forgot to deactivate TEMPO SYNC in 
my last mail btw):
- Make the following settings:
 - SINGLE MODE
 - no loop sync, turn off tempo sync for all three phrases, turn down 
Rhythm knob to off
 - Assuming your loop is 4 beats do this:
  - Start looping (begin with a distinct sound on beat 1)
  - Play your 4 beats
  - Keep on recording i.e. alltogether 8/12 beats
  - Run your phrase as continuous loop
  - Retrigger (Stutter) by pressing PHRASE pedal every 4 beats
  - That means you are rhythmically pressing the pedal on every beat 1
  - If you go into OVERDUB mode quickly, you can sneak in some more stuff 
in the first 4 beats (or some ambient sounds in beats 1-12)

If you want to add ambient layers, I'd recommend using a seperate delay 
pedal. (There is also a workaround in MULTI MODE using external pedals, 
one phrase as ambient loop and the others as one-shot-loops - but 
complicated).

I hope this hasn't been too confusing. I'm still experimenting.
But I've discovered new ways to use my looper today :-))

Best regards
Buzap


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