Women in Technology

Article:		Rick Walker: The Joy of Live Looping
Subject:		uh, quantization, anyone?
Date:		2009-01-13 22:39:59
From:		DavidBattino
Response to: uh, quantization, anyone?
I'm sure that live looping hardware performs a short crossfade at the loop point to smooth the transition and prevent clicks. But more to the point, "exactly the right time" may not be on the mathematically perfect sample number, but rather the point that grooves best. Think about dub producers setting delay tempos by ear. For an example of someone who uses Ableton Live onstage and doesn't look at the screen, check out the astonishing Kid Beyond (www.kidbeyond.com).

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• uh, quantization, anyone?
  2009-01-15 15:06:52  pdx [View]
  
  
  actually, unless i'm missing something, the loop does have to be exactly the right length (or damn close to it) otherwise the various loops get out of sync fairly quickly. setting a dub delay length by ear is maybe a different story because a) the delay will usually eventually fade out (i.e. feedback != 100), and b) the producer is not playing a bar of drums once, then relying on the delay to keep time with all the other instruments (which is what live loopers tend to do).
  
  or i may just be talking outa my hat, since i don't produce (or listen to) this kind of music much.
• uh, quantization, anyone?
  2009-01-19 08:15:01  Larry the O [View]
  
  
  Time for a new hat, I think. If I understand your misunderstanding correctly, what you're missing is the issue of tempo predetermination, or the lack thereof. Live looping is kind of like a tap tempo affair, except that instead of delineating enough beats for tempo to be guessed, the looper delineates only the end of phrase. How can quantization be used when the tempo is set at 121.632? Unless, of course, that particular show, it happens to fall at 107.229?
  
  Quantization requires a finer granularity of predetermination than phrase-level.