No problem, yes I was a bit surprised of that too when I read your post. A search in the OT PDF manual doesn´t get many matches. However I do know that it is a bit inspired of similar feature in the Gibson(/Oberheim) Echoplex Looper (which I own one of). But I think there are some differencies between them in certain situations, I haven´t compared them to each other in this regard yet. I am at the moment unable to respond and/or clarify your question, but will look into it. If you get to some conclusions/experiments in the meanwhile, feel free to share your findings!
/mike[/quote]
Hello Mike (and friends)
I too have a Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro (EDP), using [url=“http://www.aurisis.com/loopiv.htm”]Loop IV software.
I am very interested in the OctaTrack’s Pickup machines for live looping to a master clock (grabbing and warping melodic stuff slaved to a groovebox).
When I read the present specification of the OT’s Multiply operation, it seems to look just like the Electrix Repeater, where one Multiply Message simply doubles the loop length.
On the Gibson Echoplex Loop IV, Multiply is done with two messages, let’s call them “From” and “To”…
Where you can have a loop going
“1 2 3 4”
And if you punch in/from at the “1”, and let the loop repeat N times before punching Out/From Multiply landing on the “1”, then you’ve overdubbed a longer phrase over N repeats of the shorter
Of course, you can also Multiply DOWN/shorter:
using “1 2 3 4”…
punching FROM the “1” TO the “3” gives you the shorter loop.
“1212121212”
For a demo of someone doing this repeatedly (4 beats to 3 to 2 to 1…)
check out http://youtu.be/_Xw4dtOaCwE?t=3m46s.
What’s even MORE fun is how you can use Multiply to change meter and loop centering .
For example, say I have my 4-beat sequence “1 2 3 4” running
I punch in/FROM on “2,” let it Multiply " …3412" and then punch out/TO on the “4”, then my new loop is 5 beats long,
“23412”… with only the “2” doubled…
so it would repeat as a longer phrase in a new time signature at the same tempo.
23412234122341223412…
for an example of THAT form of multiplying UP into new time-signature, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijGDH3qr9dQ, which also shows how you can move the shorter looper within the previously-longer loop by UnDo’ing your start point.
Very fun destructive editing.
(or as Aurisis, authors of Loop IV, call it, “real-time granular looping”…)
This feature can become very performative, and taken REALLY far, especially when you add other (more) basic looper behaviors (like overdub and reverse, and UnDo…).
These techniques seem to be taken their furthest shown by the brilliant Andre Lafosse,with methods he documents in his website of tutorials.
Check the performance HERE, where he works without MIDI or quantization…
Using this “performative Multiply” in tandem with the EDP’s other sampler-looper features (reversal, half-speed, deletion, UnDo) are what have made the Gibson’s EDP such an agile tool among live loop-artists…
Of course, going deep and fast with that rack box effectively REQUIRES a foot-controller to allow direct access to all these messages.
I understand the OT has menus and knobs to handle everything else, but I don’t know if I can pull of this same kind of “re-multiply” …YET
I’d hope that the memory management that Allows OT PU machines to Multiply a loop while overdubbing into itself might (also/eventually) allow for arbitrary positioning of loop From and To points
(all within each track/machine’s memory allocation, of course).
If the OT strives to push the Pickup Machines to be the most powerful live loopers around, I REALLY hope they embrace the best features of the Gibson Loop 4 OS. If it were able to re-window and re-meter loops with performative button pushes (and not pre-determined track lengths), the OT would effectively combine and replace THE REST the gear in my rack…
I have an advanced Midi FootController, if messages need to be stacked into single operations.
If anyone who owns an OT (and a Gibson Echoplex?) could dig in and try to emulate this behavior, I’d love to hear if/how any of the above features are possible.
(in or outside of PU machines).
cheers,
Patrick.