Laundry? Um, more like entrails...

[Oops!]

Hello All & sundry,
It's good to be back on Mobius and this new forum is a big improvment. I did post few things on the Yahoo group about some latency/direct monitoring issues which led to a short converstaion with Per a year or so ago, but not much more.

While I notice that many of us here including me are well, 'of an age', (many rememberances of the 70's and 80's) I've only started to think seriously about looping over the past 2 years or so. The vast majority of the gigs I do are 'safe' corporate cocktail jazz stuff leaving little room for looping, which can be really disruptive in that situation.

Back in '69, I think, I was in a warmup band for a tour of southern Ontario with the Foundations (Build me, Buttercup Baby) (Oh dear!), when I first met an Echoplex at an afternoon jam in one of the towns we hit. I really enjoyed that experience and meant to follow it up, but never seemed to have the bucks to get started.

I picked up a Roland RC-20 shortly after they came out (circa 2000?) and used it a bit, but found it really needed more in the way of foot controls (esp output vol & feedback) to be very interesting.

It wasn't until late 2007 that I discovered Ambiloop and started messing around. Pretty soon, I had a Roland FC-300 on the floor and a BCF 2000 on top of the amp, all conected to a hopelessly overloaded laptop through a Firepod. Ambiloop was nice, but a quick trial of Mobius did it in right away. Looping on the fly is the only looping that really interests me and Mobius is King in that department.

In a fit of frustration with the usual complexities of computer looping I did pick up a Roland RC-50 after that. At least it's a bulletproof peice of hardware that performs consistently, but again, no feedback control and that darned "hold for 2 seconds" to clear a loop soon becomes a major PITA, not to mention the little dead spot when you hit record the second time. So, it was back to Mobius with the FC-300, (ditched the BCF2000) and ran it into a better computer with the same audio interface.

I rigged up a bunch of effects in Bidule and it seemed OK, but even with 4ms latency it was driving me nuts. I even had it down to 2ms at one point and it still didn't sound right to me --the loops sounded great, but having to monitor my realtime sounds through the computer sounded like it was comb-filtered. I psuedo-double-blinded myself by miking the amp and recording it all. That sounded fine, so I seemed to be mentally combining the (mental) sound in my head with the latent signal (audio) and hearing the the two together. I don't know if that is even possible, but for me it eventually became a showstopper. Maybe this weirdness is less pronounced if you're using a lot of effects -I tend to play very clean most of the time.

Before I gave up on it, I did take Mobius to Mongolia in 2008 for the Giant Steppes jazz festival where we worked with some traditional Mongolian musicians. Their stuff is loopers heaven, and I was able to do some nice work with them. (Per, I met Nils Petter Molvær and his guitarist Ivan while I was there. Fabulous. They had a ton of problems with the rented gear but the musicianship and the concepts rang through it all.)

The latency issues led to a short romance with a TimeFactor and DL4 in series, but I still wanted to make longer loops sometimes and the double click to get reverse on the DL4 was a timing nusiance. We recorded a CD with the Mongolians in the fall of 2009 (yet to be released) and I now regret not using Mobius for that. It seemed to come down to "Oh Gawd, do I have to take the computer?". I have to get over that! I missed some golden opportunities which would have been easy to grab with Mobius.

Back to Mobius. At present I'm using Mobius as standalone with software monitoring disabled and getting the realtime sound from hardware. I do have the TimeFactor and a few other pedals in front of the Mobius inputs and it makes a very nice system. I am messing with a Korg NanoControl at the moment for quickly changing the mix -need to do some scripting, but it behaves well with the FC-300/Firepod and looks like it will be a good addition.

I plan to leave things that way for as long as possible so I can get on with the real challenge of using loops in a group situation without chaining the other guys down and killing the 'creative anarchy' which makes the music breathe. More on that in the posts...

Best to everyone and a big thanks to Jeff Larson!

Keith Smith
Calgary

[Per Boysen]

Fun reading at the laundromat! THanks for posting. Mongolia sounds cool

Originally Posted by Oops!

At present I'm using Mobius as standalone with software monitoring disabled and getting the realtime sound from hardware.

That's a very stable and awarding setup! If you take out the MIDI Clock generated by Mobius from your created loop you can sync the hardware that are pre laptop in your signal chain. I did that with a TC FireworX and liked that setup a lot. Until I was forced by economic matters to sell the hardware and since then I use software only and software monitoring. After all, 4 ms latency is almost like an acoustic guitar: about one meter away from your ears ;-)

[stevoj]

Yes, really nice post Keith, thanks for sharing that.

[Oops!]

Thanks guys!

stevoj - nice to talk to someone from my ancestral home. I was there for a few days in '86, just after Thorpe Gardens had been changed to the Rushcutters and the ghosts had resorted to throwing the cutlery around. It has got to be one of the most beautiful cities anywhere.

Per, I mentioned you to Ivan in Mongolia. He definitely knew about you and might have met you at one time or another -very tall, thin, blonde, plays a strat and doubles on bass, all through a mac with a truckload of toys.

I hadn't considered the idea of syncing the TimeFactor to Mobius, but your suggestion is quite timely. I'm very lucky to be the 'other' guitar player in a jazz trio with Amos Garrett which is great fun. Amos is on a real Bill Frisell kick these days, at least in the listening department and we've talked about working some loop pieces into the repertoire. He's not a techie guy at all, but even syncing things like Tremolos might be an interesting start. Oh crap. More $$$

Best to all,
k

[zerocrossing]

Originally Posted by Oops!

I rigged up a bunch of effects in Bidule and it seemed OK, but even with 4ms latency it was driving me nuts. I even had it down to 2ms at one point and it still didn't sound right to me --the loops sounded great, but having to monitor my realtime sounds through the computer sounded like it was comb-filtered. I psuedo-double-blinded myself by miking the amp and recording it all. That sounded fine, so I seemed to be mentally combining the (mental) sound in my head with the latent signal (audio) and hearing the the two together. I don't know if that is even possible, but for me it eventually became a showstopper. Maybe this weirdness is less pronounced if you're using a lot of effects -I tend to play very clean most of the time.

What you're describing used to be the bane of my existence until I finally conceded and gave up on the traditional mic'd amp for looping. Even before computers and latency issues feedback was an ever lurking evil. I had some success putting a looper in a line level effects send, but later found it easier to forgo actual guitar amps for modelers. I went though a bunch of different hardware and software solutions but these days I'm using Amplitube 3 which sounds fantastic to me. Of course, it's no real amp but it's a good trade off to be able to work with computer looping and guitar via Mobius.