Abstract:
LiLo is a live looping playground created as a performance and compositional aid for musicians. In many ways, LiLo resembles a traditional looping device. With the touch of a button, loops can be created, removed, re-recorded, and overdubbed. At this minimal level, LiLo acts as an open-source replacement for your Boss RC-20. However, LiLo expands on these basic features in a number of important ways. First, LiLo allows the performer to chop up their loops into a number of smaller "chunks," which can be rearranged, reversed, randomized, or rotated left and right. Each chunk has its own volume, pitch, and rate that can be edited in LiLo's various edit modes. Furthermore, the loops can be "chunked" according to several methods:
- Manual chunking
- Automatic chunking into equal-sized divisions
- Feature-based chunking (chunking according to degrees of variance among features derived from either time-domain signal data or FFT spectral data, including centroid, RMS, spectral flux, and spectral roll-off)
The performer may also add multiple iterations (called "voices") of a buffer. Each voice can be chunked independently, providing endless possibilities for creating new textures. Additionally, LiLo is completely customizable, meaning that presets can be written to call up a specific voice/chunk arrangement at any point during performance. This combination of features gives the performer unprecedented control over his or her audio loops.
The Future of Looping:
Let's be honest. Looping has a reputation as a relatively stagnant form of composition. Composers who loop (often out of necessity) usually feel the need to obfuscate the "looping" qualities of the loop. Skilled loopers such as Bill Frisell and Andrew Bird have become experts at hiding their loops behind flowing sonic textures. While this is a completely valid and effective form of composition in its own right, LiLo hopes to reinvent the looper as a dynamic and interactive tool, a playground for live or private performance. While this is an admittedly ambitious goal, LiLo's combination of intuitive design and flexible control points the way toward a not-so-distant future where looping is itself a form of expression on par with traditional instruments. Our goal is TOTAL LOOP DOMINATION.
LiLo for PLOrk:
Although LiLo was originally conceived as a performance and compositional tool for individual performers, it has proven to be quite powerful in ensemble settings as well. The first piece written for LiLo - Inlayers, composed by the author of the software - takes advantage of this by spreading LiLo out among the 30 members of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra. The ensemble is divided into three sections, with each section assigned a different set of loops to open in LiLo. The players receive further instructions in a text message window that appears when a special version of LiLo is launched (this can be accessed by double clicking the LiLo_for_PLOrk script in the download folder). Performance duties of the players include: rate-shifting, editing chunk gains, editing chunk pitches, editing the number of chunks, and munging.
Although sections of Inlayers consist solely of PLOrk playing LiLo, the piece is a collaborative effort with the groups Matmos and So Percussion, who are working with PLOrk in the spring of 2009. Using samples of acoustic and electric guitars recorded by the composer, Matmos constructed a variety of rhythms that feature prominently in the piece. The question of how to rhythmically synchronize two electronic groups quickly became a crucial issue. Although collectively synchronizing the entire PLOrk ensemble over a network was auditioned early on, this was dropped in favor of a more organic, and sometimes more unpredictable, method wherein each individual player is responsible for synching himself or herself to Matmos's rhythms.
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