I had an unsynchronized jam with both 202s free looping through mercury x. One is being used more for volume swells with overtones of closely looped vocal notes and various noisy samples. The other is layering short melodic and rhythmic loops that give it something of a structure. Some samples are from prior record diving sampling extravaganza thread missions.
Expanding my looping workflow to 2 units and a pedal which you also have to babysit takes some getting accustomed to and goes off the rails quickly, but I found the biggest challenge was trying to keep up with my own ideas and the second unit adds some additional freedom to improvise without fx polyphony suddenly killing voices.
Next time maybe something more composed using midi but for now thatās what I got.
Adding this more than slightly over the top ring mod from some messing around on another take.
Love it! While I was listening it reminded me of living in a city thatās by the water. Like, parking my car on a busy street then walking to the beach. The longer I walk the sounds of the city transition in to the sound of the sea. I dig it.
Thatās an awesome and descriptive analogy. I really appreciate you taking time to listen and I like the feedback. Some of the anharmonic samples have a very city traffic kind of feel and that makes total sense.
I like to let the layers get a bit washed out and then reign it back in so an analogy of walking through various busy places and eventually reaching an ocean where the sound dissolves into the background is kinda perfect here.
I feel like the essence of these improvised jams gives something less rigid which could be good or bad, depending on whoās listening.
Thanks a lot for taking some time out of your saturday to check it out. I think the second 202 adds something here beyond just the extra samples playing so maybe the next one will be a bit more composed. I just wanted to get a feel for how I could expand and adapt this unsynced looping that I like to do with one machine out into 2.
Itās always a challenge getting samples looped evenly enough (with each other) to not drift over time but i figure with something thatās just a freeform unsequenced exercise you just sort of have to live with the output. I had several less successful takes and could have probably done 30 more before I was happy with something. Just decided to roll with this one because the 15 minute versions were not feeling very concise.
Thatās awesome and thank you! Hopefully I can come up with something a little more coherent next time around and depending on how you look at it, either fortunately or unfortunately the majority of my music posts could probably be considered experimental.
Did you have any luck with your 303 or are you still looking into the pad repair?
iām a little lazy when it comes to fixing things if theyāre not completely broken and all the pads, except for hold work, which i donāt really care about, so i havenāt gotten around to attempting a fix yet, but it is starting to take more effort for rec button presses to be recognized so iāll probably try to fix it soon
Iām pretty lazy myself so this is something that I can relate to. Had the volume not been entirely non-functional on this unit or had it at least been at a level where I could record without a bunch of line noise I probably would have put it off for longer than Iād like to admit.
Has anyone had success using rechargable AA batteries with an SP-202?
Iād like to order a bunch to use with both the 404mkii and the 202, but the 202 explicitly asks for 1.5v ādryā batteries where the 404 specs allow for nimh 1.2v batteries.
Iām wondering if in practice it makes any difference? Technically the rechargables are lower voltage but disposables drop charge faster so they wouldnāt be outputting 1.5v for the whole time anyway.
Iād rather use internal rechargables than an external pack.
Canāt rightly say for the 202 specifically because Iāve never tried it but some older devices are designed to work with the higher internal resistance of the 1.5V akaline and the spike that dry AA alkaline batteries put out is closer to that 1.5V.
A 1.2 rechargeable has a more stable output and lower internal resistance but if that higher resistance is incorporated into the device design it could potentially cause overheating. Could be read by the device as a low battery. I donāt know how the SP-202 performs under low battery or if it even recognizes it but it sounds risky-ish depending on what you paid for it.
Not saying it wonāt work but may behave weirdly. Might have something like me recently where some of the samples on my card ate themselves. The cards seem temperamental, all I did was take it out of the machine when it was powered off which Iāve done plenty of times but not recently and that was enough to corrupt like 3/4 of the samples that I had on there.
Point being that results may vary, be cautious. Probably fine but itās an old design so who knows what they did and I wouldnāt want to try and replace the card if the memory itself got fried considering the scalper market on those.
Yea - itās a shame as Iād like to make it a bit more portable - even for just moving it around the house for sampling etc.
You can get 1.5v lithium ion recharable batteries (basically a tiny cell in a AA casing) but they are much more expensive and need a different charger - definitely donāt want to risk damaging the 202 - itās a little magic box.