Willem and I got into a discussion revisiting the age-old (months-old?) question about how to get the looper to grab audio dynamically, so that it captured single notes when single notes were played and phrases when phrases were played and didn’t just… chop things up haphazardly. After some experimenting, I got inspired and decided to make a stereo delay pitchshifter reverb thing, hence LoopDelayErVerb.
I’m going to skip some of the technical details and instead post something on Tips & Tricks about it soon. Basically, it captures audio dynamically, loops it, then sends it out to ADSR-controlled VCAs, so that the loops fade, kind of like delay repeats. The “delay” then gets fed into a plate reverb, and along the way, the loops can be reversed and pitch-shifted for fun and giggles and pretty things.
The patch uses three sets of loopers to minimize cutting one another off.
Controls:
Stompswitches:
Left, momentary–cycles through five different pitch settings. 1. No pitchshifting. 2. Octave up. 3. Octave down. 4. Loop 1: fourth up/down (L/R). Loop 2: fifth up/down. Loop 3: no pitchshifting. 5. Round-robin, loop 1: octave up/no pitcshshifting. Loop 2: no pitchshifting/octave down. Loop 3: octave down/octave up.
CPU was angry, so I don’t have a *great* system for letting you know which setting you are on, but there are pixels above each loop. When they are brighter, it’s octave up, when they are entirely invisible, it’s octave down. Everything in between is… between those two settings.
Front panel:
[Mix]……..[ADSR Hold]……[Reverb decay]………..
…[Gate]……..[ADSR Decay]………….[Reverb mix]
………………………………………………………………………
……………………[Pretty little lights]…………………….
………………[Forward/reverse per loop]…………….
Mix — wet/dry mix
Gate — gate threshold for the audio capture. By default, it’s probably a little high. Higher settings will cause the loopers to capture audio only when you really dig in. Lower settings might cause phrases to be broken up.
ADSR hold and decay — these control the ADSRs following the loopers. Higher settings will cause the loops to decay for longer. At lower settings, loops may not cycle once before the ADSR cuts them off.
Reverb decay/mix — reverb affects only the loops.
Pretty little lights and pushbuttons — the loops are grouped in L/R pairs, so Red and Yellow are loop 1, Green and Aqua are loop 2, Blue and Magenta are loop 3. When pushbuttons are engaged, the loop is reversed.
Sound clip:
0:00-0:39–Pitch setting five, no reverses, no reverb.
0:39-1:20–Pitch setting four… all? loops reversed, lots of reverb, lower ADSR decay.
1:20-2:03–Pitch setting one. Trying to show off its “delay” aspects.
2:03-2:34–Pitch setting two. Some reverb, about half of the loops are reversed.
2:34-3:20–Pitch setting three. Low ADSR decay, lots of reverb and reverse.
3:20-4:00–Pitch setting five, lots of reverb.**
**The sound clips are a little quiet. I’ve since adjusted some connections to make the wet/dry mix a little more even.
That sounds like a pretty damn musical patch Christopher. Kudos! Were you just using the left stomp switch to make the changes?
Thanks!
The left stomp just controls the pitch settings–which are a big part of the sound, but not the only aspect of the patch worth toying around with. So, I use it in conjunction with some other controls, mostly the ADSR decay (which essentially functions like a “regen” or “feedback” control on a delay) and the reverb controls. Oh, and there are pushbuttons that determine whether a given loop is forward or reverse, those get changes around a lot in the demo.
But aside from setting your threshold too high–and being unable to trigger anything–or setting your envelope controls too low (which will close the envelope too quickly for sound to pass through… although there are some settings where it will chop up your loop in potentially interesting ways, allowing only half a cycle to complete, for instance), most of the patch settings sound as good as what you feed the loopers :)
VIDEO OF ME PLAYING THIS PATCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbNE0NAhwQ