Re: [Harp-L] Morphine

[Burke Trieschmann <burket@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the reply Richard:

I figured trying to run a second looper wild without a master clock source for both units would be problematic.  (Used to call that flywheeling, when the master clock would just keep trucking over the time code {dropouts} it was sending to sync any video decks, tape, drums machines, and external samplers back in the cave man days of studio recording and external sync).  I like the sound of your drum loop and can see the benefit to a good locked groove to layer the other parts on top of.  I guess if you were a purist, you would always have a drummer and bass player to back you up at every gig, but that goes to the challenge of keeping a band together, happy and paid enough to keep showing up.  Maybe Hohner could include a "free drummer" with the purchase of their higher end harmonicas?  :)

My friend who performed his "Trio of One" at the show, used a Boss RC300 looper which seems to have a lot of functionality and can hold several different loops.  The only downside was, he had control of levels going "in" to his looper, but all that came to the house PA was a mono feed of the looper, and the one separate (clean) vocal mic.  It would have been nice to have house mix control of the various looping modules individually, but I did not have time to tweak the setup in the quick change format of a showcase with many different acts.

The JamMan sounds like a good solid looper though.  I'll check it out.  The internal RP looper seems a bit more limited.   I have not gotten comfortable enough to try it live.

BTW, there was one patch in your RP bank that did a really nice Leslie Organ effect  (I can't remember the patch right off).  I used this on a songwriter's recording a while back with a low F harmonica and it sounded really nice.  

Morphine's music is just the right combo of minimal instrumentation to get a big, dark, sound.  I can see how the harp is a good fit with the riff based guitar grooves.

Burke T.



Burke Trieschmann wrote:
<original content editied for brevity>

 <Are you running the drum loop wild and just keeping the RP looping in rough 
sync, or do you have a way to hard sync the units?

Hi Burke,

The looper I'm using on this piece is not the one built into the RP355.  I 
pre-recorded the drum loop and imported it into my Digitech JamMan Stereo 
looper; the harp tracks are then recorded into the JamMan, overdubbing on the 
drum loop, during live performance.  The advantages here are that 1) I get a 
better sounding drum loop than I can produce via beat-boxing, and 2) the length 
of the loop is already set when I start the performance.  A loop Nazi or two has 
told me that this is "cheating"--i.e. a "real" looping master would generate all 
the parts from scratch in real time--but I don't expect anybody to ask me about 
it on Judgement Day, and I'll take the quickest path to an effective performance 
when it's available.  I perform a few pieces where I beatbox, but on this piece 
in particular there really isn't much in the picture besides the bass motif and 
the drums, so the drums better be solid.

Sync is not an issue with this approach, since all the harp parts are recorded 
over the drum loop as it plays. If I play my parts in time, it's synced.  I 
would never advise anyone to run a drum loop on one piece of hardware and try to 
manually sync a loop on a different piece, because even very, very slight 
differences in the timing of the loops will become painfully obvious after a 
minute or so.

The JamMan stereo is a nice tool for this approach, as are all the Digitech 
loopers, because Digitech supplies software for managing a loop library, 
importing and exporting audio and loops, etc.

I use 3 different harmonica sounds on this piece, and all of them have either 
the RP's pitch shifter or whammy effect (essentially a continuously variable 
pitch shifter) engaged.  Morphine's music is dark, ain't it?

Regards, Richard Hunter