Playing with looping pedals

OH right Christ. I see. I didn't appreciate that the question was a case of fading out each individual layer...

...I guess you'd be looking at a delay modeler then, yup!

Based on my limited experience, I think the fading is actually a typical feature. Why? Because if nothing ever faded away, then a few passes would saturate the available headroom, and then subsequent passes would either be inaudible, or would cause distortion.

I've been trying to clean up my intonation before I use looping pedals with theremin. But as a guitarist, I've played with the Akai Headrush, the Boss GigaDelay, and the Boomerang.

I found the Headrush terribly awkward to use; the GigaDelay is much more user-friendly. The fidelity of the Boomerang isn't as good as the GigaDelay's, but it offers much longer delay times (nearly four minutes) and the best interface for live performance.

Still haven't tried the Line 6 or the DigiTech JamMan...

For a really great example of looping using the Line 6 (she uses two) check out Bela Emerson: http://www.myspace.com/belaemerson or http://www.cellobela.com

The real problem with using looping pedals is restrictiveness, the piece is forever locked into one pattern, one phrase, and all you can do is layer over that, or cut it off and start over. It's hardly ideal.

I guess an incredibly long delay that you can control (does the Giga Delay do this outside of SOS mode?) would be ideal.

One thing I've found with the RC-50 is being able to drop different loops in and out, but by recording them onto other, synchronised phrases, which can be faded out and in at will.

I'm amazed nobody's said "build one in MAX" yet.

I haven't seen one yet but I woulda thought the Electro Harmonix 2880 had it all. Especially cool having faders for each layer plus bounce-down capability. Anyone tried one?
http://www.ehx.com/ehx2/Default.asp?q=f&f=%2FCatalog%2F01_New_Products%2F09_2880

I still in my own head have it that a looper sends the loop round and round forever and a delay makes a loop which can slowly fade over time.

Coming from the delay side of working I realise that it;d be cool to have both. The delay set-up is great fro making backing pads and washes of sound, but it'd be nice to have a looped phrase leap out at once every few minutes or so. Or maybe a sampler would be the thing for that.

I still get it confused in my head as to looping versus delay (as you can see by my ramblings in this thread.

On the Boomerang, you can adjust the level of decay, from "no decay = infinite repeat" to "slapback = only one repeat". (Anyone up to try Telemann's canonic sonatas on theremin?) :-P

Alexander, I agree with you about the problem of literal repetition... which is why I never use the sound-on-sound mode of the GigaDelay. Yes, 23 seconds is longer than you need to lay down Pachelbel's Canon, but it's not long enough to mask the sheer repetition; you always know what's coming in the next moment.

In contrast, with the Boomerang, you can set the delay time so long that the listener becomes only vaguely aware of the repetitions... and the more atmospheric or impressionistic the material, the better.

P.S. I don't have the GigaDelay here at home right now, but I seem to recall that you can similarly set the feedback level to control the number of repetitions.

P.P.P.S. Yes, the features of the Electro-Harmonix 2880 look positively dreamy; I only wonder about the performance interface.

It drives me crazy that the marvelous Boomerang interface serves as a front-end for what might have been the state of the art, oh, eight years ago. If the makers would just update the guts of the unit...

[i]Alexander, I agree with you about the problem of literal repetition... which is why I never use the sound-on-sound mode of the GigaDelay. Yes, 23 seconds is longer than you need to lay down Pachelbel's Canon, but it's not long enough to mask the sheer repetition; you always know what's coming in the next moment.[/i]

So use three loops of different lengths. Say with repeat times of 13, 15 and 17 seconds (works best if the lengths are relatively prime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprime).) Make the three loops similar - same timbre, tempo, style of playing, effects, pitch range - so that they cannot be separated by the listener and they will provide a non-repeating sound source for 55 and a quarter minutes.

I am sorry, maybe it is my cold but I finally don't know which pedal to buy for Pamelia's effect I explained at my last post here. Do she needs both DL4's or just one? Otherwise, is the RC50 able to replicate this effect?

I am thinking seriously on selling my jamman in case the rc50 makes it possible.

(I had one of Pam's DL4 at my hand 2 years ago here at Spain but I did not asked her then about how she exactly deals with them for this effect! )

Without watching the video my guess is that the task at hand is to have a long loop playing over several iterations of a shorter loop.

So with two DL4s you do this:

-Make your short loop on the first one
-Record it several times over on the second one
-Switch the first one off
-Record the long loop over the top on the second one

Then when you need to play a new phrase over the old short-loops, you start up the first lot again and delete what's on the second looper. Do the same thing, but backwards I guess.

[i]So use three loops of different lengths. Say with repeat times of 13, 15 and 17 seconds (works best if the lengths are relatively prime.) Make the three loops similar - same timbre, tempo, style of playing, effects, pitch range - so that they cannot be separated by the listener and they will provide a non-repeating sound source for 55 and a quarter minutes.[/i]

Actually, I do that sort of thing all too frequently, without electronics; I blame the influence of medieval isorhythm, Messiaen, and the minimalists.

In a related vein, what possessed me to buy the Headrush and GigaDelay when I already had the Boomerang was the idea of creating a hall-of-mirrors piece in which four delays of different lengths are all chained together. No, I never got around to trying it, because I found the interfaces of the Headrush and GigaDelay so irritating.

Maybe someday I'll write a grant proposal to acquire some more Boomerangs...