------------------------------ Loopers-Delight-d Digest Volume 97 : Issue 118 Today's Topics: Gear plug: Tascam 564 [ "T.W. Hartnett" ] Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 [ Sean Echevarria ] Re: live loopage for the sake of art [ Randy Jones ] live looping in NYC [ RA336@aol.com ] Re: live loopage for the sake of art [ james rhodes ] WARNING: IMPENDING LIVE PERFORMANCES [ The Man Himself To: "Looper's Delight" Subject: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <199707222157.OAA14824@apple.com> Content-Type: text/plain Not directly related to looping, but probably of interest to many people on this list: Purchased a Tascam 564 Minidisc recorder last week (like a cassette Portastudio, but recording on Minidisc, with some digital editing capabilities). I'm quite pleased with it so far, but its wonders are too many to go into here. Tascam has a faxback service which will send you a fairly complete overview (five or six pages) of what the 564 can do. The sound quality is quite good, and I believe EQ summarized as "better than cassette, not as good as ADAT". Primo neat features include: Ą the ability to "bounce forward" to a later section of the MD, which allows you to do sub-mixes while retaining all the original tracks. The sub-mixes do not occur in the digital realm, but are routed through the analog mixer, so you can eq, add effects, etc. You can do this up to four times (only five "song" files per disc, 37 minutes of audio). Ą digital out for stereo final mix Ą auto punch in and out Ą ability to place up to 20 named index points in each song file ("Intro", "Bridge", etc) Ą MIDI sync to keep all your sequenced tracks off the disc until the final mix Ą ability to sequence audio sections within a song, so if you want to try the verse before the chorus, you can hear it without having to re-record. Ą and more stuff I haven't got into yet. If anyone has any specific questions, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my abilities. Travis Hartnett ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 15:42:53 -0700 From: Kim Flint To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <2.2.32.19970722224253.00980ce4@pop.chromatic.com> Content-Type: text/plain At 04:59 PM 7/22/97 -0000, you wrote: >Purchased a Tascam 564 Minidisc recorder last week (like a cassette how much are these things anyway? Is it worth it over just buying a big disk drive and going the hard disk route? >Ą the ability to "bounce forward" to a later section of the MD, which allows you to do sub-mixes while retaining all the original tracks. The sub-mixes do not occur in the digital realm, but are routed through the analog mixer, so you can eq, add effects, etc. You can do this up to four times (only five "song" files per disc, 37 minutes of audio). > could you do it digitally? Seems like going through the compression algorithm multiple times would do a number on the audio. Have you tried that yet? kim ________________________________________________________ Kim Flint 408-752-9284 Mpact System Engineering kflint@chromatic.com Chromatic Research http://www.chromatic.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 15:41:22 -0700 From: Sean Echevarria To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970722154122.0097aa40@pure.pureatria.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:42 PM 7/22/97 -0700, you wrote: > >could you do it digitally? Seems like going through the compression >algorithm multiple times would do a number on the audio. Have you tried that >yet? > That was Electronic Musician's biggest gripe with the whole MD format in last month's review of the 3 machines in the market. When you bounce tracks, you run through the ATRAC compression each time. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 19:02:16 -0400 From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett) To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <199707222302.AA24774@world.std.com> >>could you do it digitally? Seems like going through the compression >>algorithm multiple times would do a number on the audio. Have you tried that > >That was Electronic Musician's biggest gripe with the whole MD format in >last month's review of the 3 machines in the market. When you bounce >tracks, you run through the ATRAC compression each time. Is this worse than with tape? I.e., one generation of lossy compression is better (sounding) than one generation of tape. I would hope that three generations of lossy compression would be better than three of tape, although I can see how it might not be. I'd hope that would be part of the definition of a "good lossy compressor". Presumably by definition, there's no way to avoid the decompress/compress, even if it were a digital mix; mixing of straight digital signals is simple (simple addition), but mixing of compressed signals probably isn't. (One _can_ define compression methods where this isn't true, but it hardly seems worth it.) To put it a different way, if you have two tracks of compressed digital audio, and you mix them into one track, you end up using half as much storage. So you _have_ to lose some more data. Sean Barrett ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 19:19:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Nameless to the Goddess To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: multi-loop playback Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My first question is, is there a looper that can output more than one loop at a time? It seems sort of limiting to have only one loop, when two different length loops would sound so much more interesting. It seems sort of expensive to buy two devices. Jus wondering. afn39111@afn.org <*> Why am I such a dork? The Church of Perelandra: http://www.afn.org/~afn39111 B5 (passing beyond the Rim) list: babylon5-request@gatekey.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 97 18:43:11 -0000 From: "T.W. Hartnett" To: "Looper's Delight" Subject: Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <199707222341.QAA28888@apple.com> Content-Type: text/plain > >>Purchased a Tascam 564 Minidisc recorder last week (like a cassette > >how much are these things anyway? Is it worth it over just buying a big disk >drive and going the hard disk route? I got mine for $1199 through Musician's Friend. The MD's (you have to use the 140MB data disks, not the regular two track MD's, although it can play those back) are about $18 apiece. As far as the HD recording route, it depends. My home computer is a old Mac IIfx with 20MB of RAM. To me, it would have been too much money/hassle to buy a few gigs of HD, a Jaz drive to back it up with, a sound card, HD recording software, etc. Plus, then it's a glass interface, instead of knobs, and so on. If you already have a fast, modern computer, it may be worth it to you. I preferred to have my recording setup seperate from my computer, which also allows me to move my recording setup to our rehearsal space, if I want to record there. The computer is nailed down--it's not going anywhere. And for $1199, plus the cost of disks, I was set to go. I briefly considered one of the 8-track all-in-one HD systems that have popped up, but for that money, I think I'd want to go to a tape-based digital system with a seperate mixer. To me, the mixer on all-in-one units is always the letdown, and you're stuck with it. I'm willing to live with that for a 4-track portastudio at just over a grand, but for $2-3k, I want serious options, and for me, the integrated HD systems don't deliver the features/flexibility at that price point. For instance, Fostex has the DMT-8VL, which is going for about $1399, but the onboard HD can only hold 12 minutes of audio. To back it up, you have to buy the SCSI card, for $350 or so, and a Jaz drive for $400-500, and then Jaz carts are $70 apiece, etc. Of course you do get 8-tracks, but there's there's only two-band eq in the mixer, etc. If I've got an 8-track machine, I want to be able to make records with it, and the HD based systems don't look like they're quite there for me. Maybe the next generation, though I'm still opposed to the included mixer at that level. I didn't get the 564 to make CD's with, but to make really good home demo's, and to archive/edit my looping output. For that, it seems really great so far. If you're trying to figure out how to layer 16 tracks of Queen-style vocals and record a full drum kit, look elsewhere. I look at it as the best 4-track Portastudio yet built, a Portastudio on steriods (and I've heard some very nice things off tape-based 4-tracks, which is what I'd been planning to buy until these came out). > > >>Ą the ability to "bounce forward" to a later section of the MD, which >allows you to do sub-mixes while retaining all the original tracks. The >sub-mixes do not occur in the digital realm, but are routed through the >analog mixer, so you can eq, add effects, etc. You can do this up to four >times (only five "song" files per disc, 37 minutes of audio). >> > > >could you do it digitally? Seems like going through the compression >algorithm multiple times would do a number on the audio. Have you tried that >yet? I suppose you could, if it was a digital mixer, but it's not. I think that would push the price up too far. Then you run into the "for that price, I want more than four tracks" problem. I've done one bounce forward so far, but I've got grave doubts as to the usability of four generations of "bounce four tracks into one" with modern ears. It's one thing for the Beatles or Brian Wilson to have crammed everything together into the glorious Wall-o-Mono, but thirty years down the road the "recorded in Pepperland" sound seems to have fallen somewhat out of favor. This weekend I'll do four generations of bounce just as a test, and report back. Travis ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 20:13:46 -0400 From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett) To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <199707230013.AA14360@world.std.com> >one bounce forward so far, but I've got grave doubts as to the = >usability of four generations of "bounce four tracks into one" with = >modern ears. It's one thing for the Beatles or Brian Wilson to have = >crammed everything together into the glorious Wall-o-Mono, but thirty = >years down the road... Back when my 4-track worked, I had good decent results on tape with bouncing to an external stereo mix, then back, which let me add 2 tracks to a stereo mix every 2 tape bounces. I did two recordings with 10 tracks (and many with 8) this way; I just had to be careful to make sure that the first parts recorded don't care about high-end loss or are relatively down in the mix (and you have to get pretty good about anticipating the entire mix during bouncedown, which is an otherwise worthless skill). These days, using a DAT would halve the number of tape generations. Stereo "bounce ahead" would work pretty well for this, but I don't suppose that's a feature on the minidisc multitracks? Much as I've suggested that MIDI looping could do lots of things audio looping can't, I wish digital recorders weren't so tied to the "tape multitrack" metaphor. There's no reason in software you can't mix arbitrary numbers of tracks together, not in real-time, but as far as I know, all of the computer-based "digital multitracks" still require you to manually bounce things down yourself, rather than automate the process. But this is getting way off topic... Sean Barrett ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 20:57:51 -0400 (EDT) From: ANET@aol.com To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: jamman Message-ID: <970722205746_785071945@emout04.mail.aol.com> Ambience is controlled prior to the loops being layered. Sometimes a build-up into silence is great. However; if you don't like that, lay the loops down "pp" so that the mulitple effect is a "mf". If you have done it correctly, then you will know when the loop ends. Just start playing with the loop one measure prior to the end and viola, a seemless concert. Belive me, it works very well. The key is "dynamic" volume throughout the song. With loops, "dynamics" are even more important than without. See Ya!!!!!!!!!!! Have a great loop!!!!!!!!! Played last Sunday and knocked 'em out! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 20:59:28 -0400 (EDT) From: ANET@aol.com To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: jamman Message-ID: <970722205925_785071946@emout05.mail.aol.com> Excellent reply, this is exactly what a magician does. Loopers are magical!!!!!!! See ya!!!!!!!!!!!! Have a great loop!!!!! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:31:29 +0000 From: Malhomme Olivier To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re:Ambient? Message-ID: <33D5EB8C.7498@infobiogen.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Matthias, you said we all play ambient? Well, would you call what I do "ambient"? (well, i'm looking for a name for it for so long a time...) Must we all be held by some magical "ambient hand" when working with loops? duh! Olivier Malhomme ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:14:53 -0400 From: Mark@asisoftware.com (Mark Kata) To: "'Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com'" Subject: RE: live loopage for the sake of art with the Stick(R) Message-ID: <01BC9751.45A64140@mark.asisoftware.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit James, Why don't you tape your performance and make it available to us loopers at a nominal charge? Mark Kata ---------- From: james rhodes[SMTP:sharkey@texas.net] Sent: Monday, July 21, 1997 8:38 PM To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: live loopage for the sake of art with the Stick(R) hi folks, looping live with the Chapman Stick(R) on Sat july 26 at the Wong Spot, 1203 East Commerce St., San Antonio ,TX ..but the main feature is an art exhibit featuring 13 artists from Latin America, Mexico, US,,,maybe some other countries too. i'll be providing the musical backdrop from 6-8pm. one can reach the Wong Spot at 210-506-1710 for further details...these are very fine artists, displaying very fine works,,, have'nt done very many SOLO looping/soundexpressions performances,,,so i hope to have a lot of fun,,,anyone this far south,,,please e-mail me or drop by if you like the painted picture...........of sound....of sound....of sound james rhodes ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 97 10:10:53 -0000 From: "T.W. Hartnett" To: "Looper's Delight" Subject: Re: Gear plug: Tascam 564 Message-Id: <199707231508.IAA32212@apple.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Back when my 4-track worked, I had good decent results on tape with >bouncing to an external stereo mix, then back, which let me add 2 tracks >to a stereo mix every 2 tape bounces. I did two recordings with >10 tracks (and many with 8) this way; I just had to be careful to make >sure that the first parts recorded don't care about high-end loss or are >relatively down in the mix (and you have to get pretty good about >anticipating the entire mix during bouncedown, which is an otherwise >worthless skill). These days, using a DAT would halve the number >of tape generations. > >Stereo "bounce ahead" would work pretty well for this, but I don't >suppose that's a feature on the minidisc multitracks? What do you mean by "stereo bounce ahead"? You can bounce forward to two tracks, treating it just like a stereo mix to tape. Travis ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 19:15:47 -0500 (CDT) From: james rhodes To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: RE: live loopage for the sake of art with the Stick(R) Message-Id: <199707240015.TAA23142@mail2.texas.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hi mark, havent made up my mind whether i will record the evening,,,if i do,,i'll let the list know... thanks for your interest, james rhodes At 10:14 AM 7/23/97 -0400, you wrote: >James, > >Why don't you tape your performance and make it available to us loopers at a nominal charge? > >Mark Kata > >---------- >From: james rhodes[SMTP:sharkey@texas.net] >Sent: Monday, July 21, 1997 8:38 PM >To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com >Subject: live loopage for the sake of art with the Stick(R) > >hi folks, > >looping live with the Chapman Stick(R) on Sat july 26 at the Wong Spot, >1203 East Commerce St., San Antonio ,TX ..but the main feature is an art >exhibit featuring 13 artists from Latin America, Mexico, US,,,maybe some >other countries too. i'll be providing the musical backdrop from 6-8pm. one >can reach the Wong Spot at 210-506-1710 for further details...these are very >fine artists, displaying very fine works,,, > >have'nt done very many SOLO looping/soundexpressions performances,,,so i >hope to have a lot of fun,,,anyone this far south,,,please e-mail me or drop >by if you like the painted picture...........of sound....of sound....of sound > >james rhodes > > > > > > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 19:33:16 -0500 From: Randy Jones To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: live loopage for the sake of art with the Stick(R) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970723193314.008652e0@texas.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Alright! Someone in here from SA. I'm there dude! And a Chapman. I always wanted to see one. Very lookin' forward! rj At 12:38 AM 7/22/97 -0500, you wrote: >hi folks, > >looping live with the Chapman Stick(R) on Sat july 26 at the Wong Spot, >1203 East Commerce St., San Antonio ,TX ..but the main feature is an art >exhibit featuring 13 artists from Latin America, Mexico, US,,,maybe some >other countries too. i'll be providing the musical backdrop from 6-8pm. one >can reach the Wong Spot at 210-506-1710 for further details...these are very >fine artists, displaying very fine works,,, > >have'nt done very many SOLO looping/soundexpressions performances,,,so i >hope to have a lot of fun,,,anyone this far south,,,please e-mail me or drop >by if you like the painted picture...........of sound....of sound....of sound > >james rhodes > > > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 21:25:52 -0400 (EDT) From: RA336@aol.com To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: live looping in NYC Message-ID: <970723212546_1180746994@emout19.mail.aol.com> Hey all loopers! quick little plug: I will be playing guitar & doing a little looping behind Irish singer Noella Hutton in NYC/Greenwich village at; Arlene's Grocery, 95 Stanton St (between Orchard & Ludlow) on Monday 28th July/ 7pm. Great little band; we're there to showcase Noella to her label (MCA) prior to the release of her debut cd. best, Robby Aceto ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 21:18:29 -0500 (CDT) From: james rhodes To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: Re: live loopage for the sake of art with the Stick(R) Message-Id: <199707240218.VAA25574@mail1.texas.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" great!!! drop by and say hi... james At 07:33 PM 7/23/97 -0500, you wrote: >Alright! Someone in here from SA. I'm there dude! And a Chapman. I always >wanted to see one. Very lookin' forward! >rj > >At 12:38 AM 7/22/97 -0500, you wrote: >>hi folks, >> >>looping live with the Chapman Stick(R) on Sat july 26 at the Wong Spot, >>1203 East Commerce St., San Antonio ,TX ..but the main feature is an art >>exhibit featuring 13 artists from Latin America, Mexico, US,,,maybe some >>other countries too. i'll be providing the musical backdrop from 6-8pm. one >>can reach the Wong Spot at 210-506-1710 for further details...these are very >>fine artists, displaying very fine works,,, >> >>have'nt done very many SOLO looping/soundexpressions performances,,,so i >>hope to have a lot of fun,,,anyone this far south,,,please e-mail me or drop >>by if you like the painted picture...........of sound....of sound....of sound >> >>james rhodes >> >> >> >> > > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 21:26:55 -0700 (PDT) From: The Man Himself To: loopers-delight@annihilist.com Subject: WARNING: IMPENDING LIVE PERFORMANCES TO INVADE LA! Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi people. Here's some important news for any experimentally-inclined SoCal music players or fans. It's long, but worth checking out: It looks as if there's some hope for experimental music in Los Angeles. There's been some talk on the list about a new club called Lumpy Gravy, which is a sort of combination experiental music venue/art gallery/restaurant which opened in February. Our own Ken Roesser has done some playing there, as have a number of other artists, many of whom are related to the music of this list. I just got off the phone with Scott Johnson, who is the new manager/coordinator/damage control specialist at the place. He's very interested in trying to cultivate a number of unusual and experimental shows at Lumpy Gravy, and seems committed to making the place work. One notion which caught my ear in particular was an idea for a sort of "electronic jam session," probably to happen on Tuesday nights. He envisions having different electronically-oriented artists coming up and doing some spontaneous collective playing -- sort of a blues jam session for the end of the Millenium, or something. I'm dropping this note to first of all encourage everyone in the SoCal area to check the place out, or to get in touch with the club to see about booking some shows there; the number is (213) 934-9400, and the people to direct a tape to are Scott Johnson and/or two young women by the names of Lee and Christina, who are in charge of co-management and booking. In the self-promotional department, I'm already booked for two gigs there: Thursday, August 7th, and Tuesday, August 26th, with another show in between those two likely to be added; it looks like Lumpy Gravy is interested in setting up some sort of regular residency there. Now here's the interesting part: I just happened to send my Echoplex in to Oberheim this very afternoon for repair, and Dean Fouts at Oberheim estimates roughly a one-month turnaround. (Isn't it ironic, don't you think...?!) I told Scott at Lumpy Gravy about this, but he seemed anxious to book something soon. Since it's not often that club owners try to set up immediate residencies for looping artists, I wasn't about to postpone the bookings while the Echoplex (hopefully) gets repaired, so I'll likely be doing these upcoming shows with a Vortex-and-MIDI-guitar-based rig (and hoping the engineers up in Oakland can put my Plex to rights sooner than later!) That's fine, really, as it'll give me a good excuse to delve more heavily into those oft-neglected items. The shows are probably slated to run from 8:00 to 11:00 PM (we'd like to do three hours of continuous music, which isn't such a stretch with looping); the cover will likely be $3. Scott mentioned that he's trying to cultivate the restaurant aspect of the place, so my mission will be music that people can comfortably eat to (sounds like the oft-spoken "ambient" word...) -- call it a chill room with waiters. I also mentioned to Scott that I and other people on this list have been trying in vain to try and organize a multi-artist loop show; he seemed *very* receptive to the idea of staging something there, saying that Lumpy Gravy would likely be the ideal place in town for this sort of thing. It may not be too far in the future that we can actually try and make the oft-postponed California Loop show a reality. There might, in fact, be the potential for it to become a semi-regular event! If any of you can check out the upcoming gigs there, I'll very much appreciate it. I get a very good vibe from the people there; they seem very interested in trying to cultivate a genuinely creative environment that can accommodate a variety of different experimental arts. In this town (or anywhere else, for that matter), they'll need some help, so I urge anyone in the area to look into the place, as a performer, an audience member, or both. Best, --Andre ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 07:53:36 -0300 From: matthias@bahianet.com.br (Matthias Grob) To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: "bring it back down" Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Siobhan Canty about how to "bring it back down" ? >I only have one of these toys, which is limiting so >I have more ideas at this point than practical applications....Right now, I >make the last vocal line I lay down indicate impending harmonic or rhythmic >change with a twist or turn that is noticeably different than the previous >loops. Then I bring down the volumn while singing a live line that builds >on that last twist... in effect then, the last loop acts as the transition >loop and the listener is moved through the transition smoothly...I guess >what I try to do is create a distraction so that they don't pay too much >attention to the fact that the machine is being taken out...make them move >forward with you...before they know it, you have changed pitch or rhythm, >and have started a whole new looping sequence. I think I did such transitions, too. Isn't that last twist slightly disharmonic, so that the listener feels rather relieved than missing something, when you shut the loop down? (is that what "impending" means?) Do you cut it at once or with a slight fade? On the Echoplex, I developped the following methods to "bring it back down": 1. Use Undo to go back to the beginning of the buildup and than either fade this thin base or build on it into another direction. 2. Use multiple loops, record the base on one, copy it to another while building on top of it and then come back to the first to "bring it back down" 3. Use Replace: While the full loop is going, you sing another voice on top (probable rather "on the bottom") of it and the next time around, only the last voice appears and you can go on building on it, without ever being "left alone" by the machine. This function is the same as Feedback down + Overdub on. 4. Multiply: You chop out a bit of the full loop, either one or two bars (Multiply-Multiply), or even a different timing (Multiply-Record) to create a new rhythm, and then fade it while building the next base whereon you can build a longer theme with Multiply again. >Ideally, however, I would love to have a number (at least two) of Jammen so >that I could create overlapping harmonies that fit together yet act as >different sections when playing alone. For example, I could lay down four >vocal parts on one JamMan...and then lay down the next two, three or four >in the same basic tempo but on a different JamMan and with different >harmonic and rythmic qualities. I could let them groove for a bit (until >that dangerous monotony starts threatening) and then pull out the first >JamMan, leaving the second one to continue...You could hand the sections >back and forth between Jammen that way...Just ideas...I can't wait until I >actually have two to see what really happens.... Some people on the list are strong on that. I somehow could not handle it and now my partner percussionist Bira Reis uses second Plex syncronized but with independent multiple of bars. Its a broad field. We usually keep both going and modifying. One can fade out while the other stays or one can stay in a non rhithmic base while to other starts a new theme on a different loop length where then the first can resynchronize to. I keep learning about the necessary software to make this easy, too... Loads of inspired loop chants! Matthias --------------------------------