Seeking repeating delay w/digital bass & drum accompanim

1Way · Post by **1Way** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:10 pm

Years ago, somewhere around San Diego CA, at a small pub called Tuba Dan's (Tuba something?), there was a guitarist performer who was basically a one man band. But he used some sort of digital drum machine type thing that lets you save various backing tracks complete with drums and bass so that you can play guitar with them live. It also lets you record a live timed session, so that part will keep playing and lets you solo leads over that, for more like spontaneous music jamming. So it was not just a fancy recorder, it had drums and effects, especially time based loops.

I don't know how much of the drums and bass was available in stock form from the unit. It was somewhat small, and I think it had some drum pads ontop as he occasionally hit one of them for some jamming fun. Maybe the bass sampling was prerecorded stuff that he may have done himself, I don't know. But I assume that the drum patterns were canned in the machine which doubtlessly allows for user customization.

I'm looking for an economical unit that can do what that one did. Do they make stuff that can produce bass lines as well as drums? Thanks!

Billy Batz · Post by **Billy Batz** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 7:07 pm

Hey 1 way. I dont know of any unit that had a drum machine and bass synth as well as a real time looper but the old Lexicon Jammans were THE looper devices for a long time. Jaco Pastorius and Victor Wooten used them all the time for live shows, and Ive seen Reeves Gabriel and Frip use them as well. They saved drum beats, bass lines, guitar and organ riffs, soun effects etc.. in them and called them up along with their own loops made live. You can only find used Jammans. The Boomerang does the same thing. Ive seen quite a few people use the Boss Loop Station recently. These things will all let you save loops (such as drum beats and bass riffs) and recall them live while you make guitar loops real time and play over them. Its actually very cool watching guys do that and Ill bet it takes some practice.

myker · Post by **myker** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 4:26 pm

ha! you guys have lost your minds!

mike

1Way · Post by **1Way** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:55 pm

Come on myker, wouldn't you like to be able to play the rhythm, and then lead right over it? How about store some backing tracks so that when it's time to sing, you can do that without doing complex riffs at the same time?

That one man band setup was the coolest thing around, I'm telling you. It was fun just watching him pull up the next number and beating on it to make it do different things.

I'm definitely window shopping, first comes the quite amp rig, but someday having a several minuets long loop recorder with slow down function is a "very" handy practicing and jamming tool to have. You can do overdubs and store just the right rhythm's for future experimentation. Once you get it just right, you can save it by feeding the stuff into a dedicated recorder and then start all over again. It's like having creative control over the ENTIRE band, if you want that much fun.

It's probably an absolute God send for composing new songs and practicing difficult passages. Did I mention that you can slow down the tempo WITHOUT changing the pitch???

I wish I knew more about that function...

myker · Post by **myker** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:58 am

you can get the cheap version of cubase and use the built in drum machine in there, record as many tracks as you need of whatever you need, then burn it to a cd player. then plug your cd player into your pa an viola! a one man band for $30...
mike

1Way · Post by **1Way** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 6:51 pm

myker,
My puter is on the fritz, can't do much multimedia worth a darn.

I want to use it live too, so a hardware standalone is for me.

Are we really off our ever loving rockers? I thought I was rocking just fine...