In the latest loopop video, host Ziv Eliraz takes an in-depth look at the Midiphy LoopA, a six-track polyphonic MIDI sequencer & looper.
It lets you arrange songs with six scenes (36 tracks in memory) and perform live by using Mute/Unmute to control sequences on the fly. It’s available pre-built or as an advanced DIY project.
Topics covered:
0:00 Intro
1:30 Connectivity
2:30 This setup
3:30 Overview
5:00 Scenes
5:45 DIY vs builders
6:55 Track setup
9:00 Clip setup
9:30 Step seq
11:30 Drum seq
12:30 Live recording
13:05 Autoloop
15:30 CC seq
17:20 LiveFX
18:20 Beat loop
19:25 Transpose
20:30 Misc features
22:15 Pros & cons
26:20 Outro jam
This looks like a fun device and the build seems pretty reasonable (for my skill level). Looks like there’s a couple case options.
Nice to see lots of time signatures supported. But it the lack of triplets much less other tuplets in the quantize options is disappointing. Perhaps beat divisions of 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 could be added in a future update.
The developer lists “Polymetric and Polyrhythmic” in their feature list, and I understand why. However, as common as those words are thrown around, they often refer to fixed step rates, which is useful and interesting, but there’s so much more that could happen with different rates being available.
The ability to change tempo dynamically is really cool. I wonder if in a future update they might add the ability to automate the tempo with a CC or with some other kind of automation lane.
I’d also love to see the ability to “fire” sequences from those big beautiful buttons–rather than having to turn a knob. But if the sequences can be fired via MIDI learned notes, that’s great.
In your nomenclature here you talk about “fixed step rates”, I see as the “rhythm part”, meaning that they’re “only” polymetric. Polyrhythms is when you can set up quintuplets etc OVER the normal rhythm. And yes, that part is often lacking. Perhaps it’s the adherence to “ticks” that makes this tricky, for instance quintuplets work at 480ppq, but septuplets are just an approximation at that point.
Yes. Variable step-rates would require a decent clock resolution. And if beat-clocks are the “tick” size, then that’s just 24 ticks per beat, what is that, 32nd note triplets? The question then is how much wiggle room there is in the system to make more unusual tuplets possible. Since there is swing in 1% increments, I’d imagine the internal clock resolution is there for some other note values.
Though I don’t see myself messing with 11 steps per beat– there are ways you can make interesting kinds of grooves by taking those kinds of step rates and making normal-ish shounding beats that have a certain quirk to them (like variations of “swing”).
This is a cool product, but I’ve made a personal pact that if a sequencer can’t let me explore that kind of stuff, I’m not gonna bother with it.
Wondering why a lot of this can’t be programmed on that Organelle right next to this. It should have the necessary HW and PureData can do this kind of midi processing.