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The idea came after seeing a few Joseph Arthur and Howie Day shows...the things those guys can do with looping was facinating to me. But as they both gained popularity they played with full bands and left their experiments with looping behind them....there was no way for them to start a loop and have the drummer stay in time. 2 years later I finished the Loopy Llama. I've used it with drummers, but mostly for solo acoustic and vocal looping and as an interesting reverse effect for recordings. It performs just like many hardware looper units on the market, but with a maximum loop time of 60 seconds. Experienced loopers will recognize "endpoints" mode - where you hit the record button to start recording, and again at the end of the loop to start playback. Alternatively, you can determine the tempo before you play by synching it to the host, by typing it, or by tapping it in with a mouse, keyboard, or any MIDI foot controller. If you are recording, hitting "Clear" once will "undo" what you just played for one pass of a loop - so if you hit a wrong note you don't have to start over. If it's not recording or you hit the Clear button twice it will completely clear the loop. In honor of Robert Fripp and his frippertronics pioneering in the field of looping I added the Llamatronics section. With these sliders the loop will decay over time or lose high end over time like a real tape loop would. A generic tape hiss sound gives an aproximation of the old ways - Check out Elogoxa Elottronics for deeper exploration of that area. Now the really fun part...reversing the loop. Set the playback to reverse and what you play will smear back in your face after the loop cycles. If you use it in endpoints mode it will immediately reverse after you mark the second endpoint. If you have it in relative reverse everything will work normally until you change the playback direction - that way you could play forward over something you just reversed, and then flip it again whenever you want. You can create crazy reverse delayish effects by setting the feedback low...but check out OhmForce OhmBoys if you are looking for a crazy delay effect with reverse and anything else you can think of. The fade time prevents clicks from happening when you first start recording or at the end of a loop in reverse mode. The Mac version is now out! Currently you can't adjust the speed of the loop, so to create a loop at a different tempo you will erase your current loop. Check out Expert Sleepers Augustus Loop for a mac VST looper with speed control. Many thanks to Tobybear, Seb, and David Viens for invaluable help when I was stuck, and any others at Plogue for creating such a kick ass host - and still taking time to answer emails quickly.
Last updated on February 17th, 2006 by Chris |
