------------------------------
Loopers-Delight-d Digest				Volume 97 : Issue 123

Today's Topics:
  LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 3)           [ The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.cal ]
  LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 4)           [ The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.cal ]
  RE: Midi standards                    [ Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com> ]
  Re: more plex undo questions          [ Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com> ]

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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 18:21:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.calarts.edu>
To: loopers-delight@annihilist.com
Subject: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 3)
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.91.970803175343.16189F-100000@shoko.calarts.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Kim Flint wrote:

> You're not one of those people that gets all bent about sampling are you?
> :-) 

YEP!

> What difference is it really if the sample is recorded on a hard disk
> or recorded on your brain? 

The difference is that if it's sampled, you've got a recording of somebody
else's music.  If it's "sampled in your brain,"  then it's being filtered
through your own sensibilities.  

If you have five different people sample the same Zeppelin riff on the
same sampler, you're gonna get five identical samples.  If you give five
different people the same guitar, and have them play the same Zeppelin
riff, you're going to get five subtly (or not so subtly) different
versions of that riff, because the riff is being filtered through the
basic fundamental aspects of what makes each one of us a seperate and
distinct human being. 

I'm well-aquainted with the argument that since everybody is influenced 
by something, then sampling is no less original of an approach than any 
other.  My above paragraph is my first line of response to that.

Of course, you can take that sample and tweak it to make it sound
different, but you can do the same thing with that riff an a guitar as
well.  If you're sampling, you've got to deliberately go in and change it. 
If you're actually playing, however, the "editing process" takes place
automatically -- and it takes place in a manner that no other human on the
face of the earth can precisely duplicate. 

> The loop is a sample of something. If its a
> sample of you playing, chances are the thing you played is heavily
> influenced in some way by "somebody else's music"!  
> The things I've listened to are definitely there. But that's fine!
> Using something familiar gives music a starting point.

See above.

> A lot of electronica involves recontextualizing something familiar. So does
> a lot of other kinds of looping. I think it is a stretch to say there is
> some fundamental difference between creating a loop based on some funky
> riff I play or some funky riff I sample off a p-funk album. 
> The musical
> purpose would be the same in either case. 

I can't disagree more!  The Zeppelin example is exhibit A.  Here are 
several more:

Look at the John Lennon song "Come Together."  There's a line in there
that goes, "Here come old flat-top, he come groovin' up slowly."  This is
a quote from a Chuck Berry tune.  Now then, there's a world of difference
between Lennon singing that line himself, in his own voice, in the context
of his own song, as opposed to him suddenly dropping in a sample of the
Berry original. 

What we're talking about is the difference between quoting somebody 
else's idea, as opposed to out-and-out taking that idea and inserting it 
into a different context.

Here's a different take on the issue.  In a _Musician_ magazine interview
from about a year ago, the techno group Orbital mentioned that a lot of
the sounds which appeared to be fairly standard analog synthesizer bleeps
and drum machine presets were, in fact, very elaborately altered sounds
that the group had meticulously constructed themselves.  They'd sample a
trash can being hit, and then run it through all manner of processing in
order to produce a sound that, by the group's own admission, didn't sound
significatly different from most preset sounds.  But for them, their art
is largely about taking those kinds of sounds and then reconstructing
them, sometimes to the point of making highly unlikely sounds come across
as ordinary!  Of course, it would be much faster to just use those synth
presets, and they might be the only people on earth who could tell the
difference, but that's how they make their art. 

Look at a band like Rage Against the Machine.  To me, a big part of what 
that group is about (from a musical standpoint) is the fact that they're 
a rock band that takes aspects of hip-hop's instrumental language, but 
applies it to a rock instrumentation.  They play loops all over the 
place, but they actually *play* them, rather than simply sampling them 
and then looping them.  It's a different sound, and a different artistic 
statement.  

A lot of guitarists I know (including myself) think that Tom Morello's
solo on "Bulls On Parade," wherein he imitates the sound of a DJ
scratching a disc by sliding his hand up and down the fretboard while
toggling his pickup selector, was one of the hippest things to come out
last year.  Sure sounds like a DJ scratching a record.  So why not just 
bring in a DJ to scratch?  If you have to ask...

I'll give one more example: I'm presently in the process of putting 
together some tracks on a hard disk recorder.  Now here's an interesting 
thing about hard disk technology: If I have a two-bar phrase, it takes up 
no more space in the hard disk's memory to have that phrase repeat for 
ten minutes than it does to have it repeat for two seconds!  This has to 
do with "non-destructive editing," and the fact that if I cut-and-paste a 
phrase a few hundred times, I'm really sending info to the hard disk to 
tell it to read the original data from a certain place.

Now then, since a lot of my parts repeat, it's much more economical (both
in terms of hard disk space, and in terms of actual money when it comes
time to buy more memory) to cut and paste those sections.  But there's a
part of me that would actually prefer to play the parts over and over
again, because my ear likes hearing those sorts of subtle variances!  I
might be the only person in the world who notices this difference, and the
only significant difference may well be in terms of how it's done, but
it's still a big difference.  I'm likely going to copy them anyway, for a
variety of reasons, but it's only recently that I've started to really get
into music that loops in this sort of manner.  

I used to write off the last Tricky album as a bunch of two-bar loops over
which a stoned-beyond-belief guy mumbled three stanzas of lyrics over and
over.  I still think of it like that, but I'm actually starting to dig it
now.  ;}

> And what happens when I sample
> something off p-funk and add my playing to it? Am I some kind of
> mixed-breed, shunned by all?

No, you're just five years behind the trend of all those rap producers 
who sampled "Atomic Dog" in 10,000 different hip-hop songs.  ;}

More to come!

--Andre

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 18:54:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.calarts.edu>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (Part 4)
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.91.970803182202.16189H-100000@shoko.calarts.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Kim Flint wrote:

> It seems rather biased to decide that this is the "classical" approach to
> looping, as opposed to analog arpeggiators or turntable manipulations or
> tape-and-razors or whatever. They were all developing in roughly the same
> period. 

I coined that phrase in order to illustrate what I percieve to be the
ancestral development of the current crop of real-time loopers.  I
absolutely think that Riley/Eno/Fripp-derived tape-loop methodology
provides a more direct and significant historical link to the "Big Three" 
than does an arpeggiator on a synth, or even splicing a reel of analog
tape with tape and a razor blade. 

I would go on to say that tape-and-razors looping is the "classical" 
precursor to MIDI-based sequencer editing.  Just look at where the term
"cut and paste" comes from!  I've already gone on at length as to how and
why I draw distinctions between real-time and step-time looping; my
reference to live tape-loops as the "classical" precedent for real-time
electronic loopers is likely an extension of this as well. 

> But why do you feel so compelled to draw
> divisions between them and "us" whoever we are? 

I honestly don't think I'm drawing a division.  I started off speculating
as to why this list was so dominated by guitar-wielding Fripp-spawned
real-time loopists.  When I refer to "we," I'm referring to the majority
of the people on this list, and more specifically to the majority of those
people who contribute to the list on a regular basis.  Look through the
back-issue archives, or check the profiles page.  Do you *really*  think
that I'm making an unrealistic assesment of the membership of the list? 

At this point, of course, we've abandoned speculation about Looper's
Delight demographics and delved headlong into far deeper and more
ambiguous philosophical issues.  I for one do not regret this...  :) And
as you'll see below, I don't personally feel that I'm purveying a
particuarly provincial attitude... 

> It would seem more useful
> to communicate with whoever "them" is and discover the ways in which we are
> really doing the same thing.

I agree with the first part of the sentence, though I am unconvinced that 
we are indeed all doing the same thing.

> And I haven't noticed that electronica artists don't feel they have much in
> common with "us". In fact, many of us seem to be them, and many of us are
> actively exploring one side or the other. 

I've got half a year's worth of jungle and techno beats stored in my
computer, waiting for my feeble hands to get in shape to the point where I
can record some decent guitar parts.  (That's the problem with jungle --
it's so damned FAST.  No wonder Buckethead did a drum n' bass album.)  I've
actually been using sequencers and drum machines for nine years -- that's
longer than I've been playing guitar! 

But even if I make a whole album of jungle-driven tunes (which I seem to 
be well on my way to doing), I'll have a hard time thinking of myself as 
a "drum 'n bass musician."  I've been checking out a lot of the 
publications made by and for the whole electronic dance music scene, 
reading what they have to say about themselves and how they make their 
music.  I've come to the conclusion that if you want to talk about people 
who are truly involved in what's being referred to a "electronica," then 
you're dealing with more than just what sorts of beats and samples 
they're using.  It has to do with a whole lifestyle -- philosophy, 
clothing, social behavior, language, spelling, et al.  

And it's produced some fabulous music.  But I know that I'll never be a
part of that culture.  So I guess I do have a tendency to view that music
as "something other," in the sense that the most devoted and
highly-regarded members of that culture seem to approach life in general
and music in particular in a way that is very different from my own.  I'm
speaking strictly for myself here, and won't assume that the rest of the
list feels this way.  Based upon the aforementioned demographics, however,
I would *hypothesize* that a lot of the rest of the bulk of this list is
in a somewhat similar position in terms of not having an immediate link to
that culture.  Whether or not they feel that this is a barrier towards
their being able to operate in those musical areas in a manner which truly
connects to the essence of the music is a whole other issue (and probably
a whole other thread). 

> Many of the more noteworthy
> artists of your "classical aproach" seem to be collaborating with
> electronica artists, with promising results. 

I agree.  In saying this, however, you yourself are acknowledging that 
there is in fact a distinction to be made in terms of the methodology 
involved...

Frankly, I'm hoping that the "Electronic jam session" idea at Lumpy Gravy
takes off for just this very reason; I'd like to MIDI my Echoplex up to
some DJ's sequencer and see what happens.  Better yet, slave the sequencer
to the Echoplex! 

> And I seem to get along fine
> with the electornica folks I meet. Maybe they just don't like you,
> Andre....:-)

They can join the ever-growing club. 8-{  But just wait -- they're gonna
*hate* me once they hear how I've bastardized their music... 

> Again, any lacking in the LD genre-demographics probably has a lot more to
> do with a lower profile in some net communities than in others. When more
> electronica artists know we exist, more will show up. 

I hope so.  In the meantime, I hope the last four posts or so have been 
of some food for thought.  And as always, no flames intended!

Best,

--Andre

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 19:34:24 -0700
From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: RE: Midi standards
Message-Id: <v03102806afe052ecdb7c@[207.171.198.107]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Greg asked me this a while back, and I haven't had time to answer until
now. I must say it has really been amusing to me. It's probably totally
dull and technical to many of you, feel free to skip it. Basically a long
rant directed at the MI industry in general, and maybe a little bit
unnecessarily hard on Lexicon. No offense intended towards them, just
trying to be provocative and stir things up a bit, as usual. I wrote most
of it a while ago when I must have been more stressed out than I am now, so
try not to get too peeved by the rough edges. I've chilled a bit since :-).
Some interesting things to think about, hopefully:

At 3:08 PM -0400 6/25/97, Hogan, Greg wrote:
>Dear Kim,
>
>Can you please tell us where in the MIDI spec it states that program
>change messages are ONLY for changing programs?  I don't believe it does.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Greg Hogan
>Lexicon Customer Service

If the MIDI spec were to define everything by describing what you are not
supposed to do with it, it would be infinitely long, would it not? That's
why industry standards are not written that way!

Industry standards are agreements between the members of a particular
industry to use a common interface and greatly increase the possibility
that devices from different manufacturers can operate together. They are
not laws or regulations, and do not have agencies enforcing them. They
merely have volunteers representing different parties, working together to
define the standard and add clarifications and extensions where necessary.
Complying with the standard is done as a matter of faith in the process.

In the case of MIDI, we have the MIDI Manufacturers Association, or the
MMA. The MMA is not big and powerful, and is not known for operating
quickly, but they do appear to be quite dedicated to maintaining the
integrity of the MIDI Standard. They have an electronic forum where members
are able to discuss proposed changes and additions to the midi spec. Voting
is held periodically to determine whether proposals should become official
components of the spec. Examples of this sort of process of addition
include Midi Sample Dump, Midi Show Control, and General Midi. I've never
been active in this process myself, but I've followed it a little bit and
may end up being involved one of these days.

I think the definition of MIDI program change is clear and
self-explanatory. It is for changing programs on a device. Programs are
generally taken to mean the configuration a device is set to. With a
synthesizer, sending Program Change on a given midi channel is understood
to set the instrument used on that channel. With an effects device, it is
understood that Program Change sets the patch that is currently being used
to process audio. With a sequencer or drum machine, Program Change sets
which pattern or song is currently cued up. To abstract this a little bit,
Program Change alters the configuration of a device, but in no case does it
execute a function.

We have different commands to execute functions. For a synthesizer, we
configure a channel with Program Change, but we execute on that channel
with Note On and Note Off commands. With the sequencer, we execute with
Start Song and Stop Song. We do not expect Program Change to cause any
functional execution. Likewise, we do not expect Note On/Off or Start/Stop
Song to change the device configuration. With an effects device, there is
usually no concept of execution, because the processing is always on.
Therefore, there is no corresponding "execute" command.

In the case of the JamMan and other looping devices, we are not merely
dealing with a passive effects device. We are dealing with a device that
executes functions under control of the user. In my opinion, using MIDI
Program Change messages to execute these functions is a significant
deviation from the manner in which Program Change has traditionally been
used in other devices, including other devices from Lexicon.

So I wonder, Did Lexicon discuss this new use of Program Change with the
MMA? Did Lexicon attempt to work with the MMA to determine which commands
best suited their new type of need? Did Lexicon attempt to propose a new
subset of MIDI commands for looping to the MMA, in the manner Charlie
Richmond did with Midi Show Control when he wanted to use MIDI to control
lighting rigs?  Or did Lexicon glance at the MIDI 1.0 spec published in the
early 80's, ignore the years of subsequent discussion, additions, and
publications, see that the spec didn't say you couldn't use Program Change
any way you wanted to, and just go ahead?

Perhaps the fact that Lexicon has primarily dealt only with effects and
processing is why they stumbled over this subtlety? If you never had to
allow users to truly execute functions, could you have failed to realize
the distiction that other devices have always dealt with?

Or was it just convenience? Lots of potential users owned simple midi
controllers that only sent Program Change, why not use that? "The MMA is
too slow, and we want to sell product." Lots of people have taken that
route, unfortunately. The classically simple decision with larger
ramifications than anyone is realizing? How often do we complain about
decisions that only help in the short term but hurt in the long term?

And what do we do in the case of a looping device that can also have it's
configuration changed? If there had been a JamManII with 128 presets, how
would it's functional executions be controlled? Either you can't have 128
presets, or you can't be compatible with your own products! That would have
been a troubling situation, and following the MIDI Standard spec would have
helped you to avoid it. That's what standards are for! Not to mention the
fact that it helps you to be compatible with other manufacturers.

By making the seemingly trivial choice to use Program Change, I think that
Lexicon effectively diluted a portion of the MIDI Standard specification
and the MMA's process, and I think that was irresponsible on the part of a
major manufacturer in the music industry. At the same time, I sincerely
doubt there was any malicious intent to subvert the MIDI spec or the MMA,
and suspect it is just a combination of ignorance and convenience. I know
how easy that is, because I've made similar decisions myself.

Lexicon is presumably a member of the MMA, but I really have no idea how
active the company is in the organization. It is clear that they have been
involved from the very earliest days, since Lexicon has manufacturer ID 6.
My question to you, Greg: With your comments above, you don't mean to
indicate that Lexicon is not totally committed to this history and the
continuing process of evolving the Midi Standard specification, do you?
Does it really make sense for Lexicon to try to justify what seems to me to
have been a poor decision, with the reasoning you have used? Wouldn't it
make more sense for Lexicon to say, "Yeah, that wasn't a very good idea.
Sorry about that."

I may seem a little insane for going on about this. But I hope you see what
I am trying to get at. Looping devices are continuing to develop, and are
becoming more sophisticated. We won't really be able to use Program Change
to control these devices. It's not just the philisophical distinction
between configuration and execution. Or the fact that Program Change will
be needed for it's intended purpose. There are technical reasons too, since
Program Change only sends one byte of information and a minimal control
interface can take advantage of at least two. (that's why the echoplex uses
note and controller messages, which send two bytes, for control. The
interface is more sophisticated and Program Change doesn't convey enough
info. This has it's own set of problems, less philosophically severe than
the program change decision, but admittedly still troubling. That's why we
let the user select which way they want the midi control to work, in the
hopes that it doesn't conflict with something else.)

We need a standard way to communicate with these devices, or we have chaos
and the ability for a fledgling segment of the industry to grow is
hampered. Lexicon probably doesn't care about that anymore, but it would be
nice if a company with so much influence didn't continue supporting a
position that limits the rest of us from developing future generations of
looping products. Would that be too much to ask?

thanks for your patience, and honestly not trying to offend,

kim


______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com

------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 17:50:28 -0700
From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Re: more plex undo questions
Message-Id: <v03102802b00acc7c7ad9@[207.171.196.149]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

an ancient plea for help, discovered on the bottom of all my email:

At 1:31 PM -0700 6/30/97, dan mcmullen wrote:
>hello again,
>
>no replies to my last, somewhat vague query about plex undo behavior, so
>here are a few more specific questions:
>
>- why does the undo led go on at the second repeat of a loop that has just
>been recorded for the first time?

This happens when you are still playing at the time you end the loop. The
echoplex is smart about that, and actually does a small overdub just past
the loop boundary as the input is being turned off. The input is not turned
off abruptly, but very quickly ramped down on the analog side. The result
is that you don't get an ugly pop at the loop boundary.

Since a small overdub was done, the undo function is capable of removing
it. That's why the LED comes on. If you make a loop where you stop the
input before ending the loop, you will see that the LED does not come on.


>- it seems that loops just less than 1/3 of the available time can still
>fail to undo an overdub that crosses the start point.  what is the actual
>percent of total loop time that can always support the two full undos
>necessary to eliminate overdubs that cross over the start point?

This is why expanding the memory in the echoplex is a good idea! You don't
have to worry about things like this anymore. Take a look at the diagrams
about memory use in the Undo section of the manual. That should help you
some.

Each time you do an overdub over a pass of the loop, you use a new section
of memory. If an overdub is done over a loop boundary, you will use two new
sections of memory equal to the loop time. So you have to be careful about
that when you don't have a lot of memory available.

In the cases where you are using almost all the memory, the echoplex often
needs to set aside memory sections to handle situations where you need to
recover from something like an accidental record. I think that may be why
you couldn't undo twice when the loop was 1/3 of the total memory. Matthias
will have to explain that one better, since he knows it better than anyone.


>- the following sequence seems to confuse undo:
>
>  - record a loop
>  - 'accidentally' record over it, but end with undo to cancel the record
>    and return to the first loop
>  - overdub
>
>a long-press undo does not work at this point to remove the overdub.
>short-press undos can remove some of it, depending on where it is.  anyone
>know what's going on here?

You may be hitting a bug in the old software, but I'm not sure. I don't
remember one like that, though. The new software doesn't do this, assuming
you have enough memory available.

You might also be running out of memory, and have a loop that is too long
for an overdub to be undone. This seems more likely. As you're noticeing,
Undo is a feature that becomes much more satisfying when you have plenty of
memory available!

hope this helps,

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com

--------------------------------