While the name “Echoplex” conjures the image of a simple vintage analog tape delay unit, the modern day diigital version is capable of some sonic magic that you can use to seriously enhance your live performances and recordings. This is the first in a series of Tech Tips designed to show you the some of its possibilities.
How to create the illusion of rhythmic repetition where there is none.
This is a technique employed by electronic music composer Steve Reich in his groundbreaking 1966 composition, Come Out. In essence it involves taking a repeated phrase, (in Come Out, the phrase was “come out to show them.” Once it starts, you hear the phrase over and over again. The same phrase is on another channel, which starts out in sync, and then advances ever so slowly until you hear what sounds like reverberation until it sounds like a slap back echo, which also creates very interesting and changing rhythmic patterns. In actuality, you’re not hearing any repetition of that sort. The phrases are constantly in motion. The modern way to achieve this effect is with a DAW and a Gibson Echoplex. Simply take a vocal or instrumental phrase in a DAW and either set it to loop independently, or copy the phrase for as many measures as you’d like the effect to continue. Then record the loop into the Echoplex, (or you can dump a loop from the Echoplex), which uses a Global/Local MIDI clock system that allows the slaved unit to lock up with the sequencer without drifting, even if the loop start point on the Echoplex is moved by one of the following de-aligning functions:
- StartPoint
- Sample Triggering
- Mute-Undo (restart loop)
- Reverse
- HalfSpeed
- NextLoop (Each loop keeps its own local MIDI clock
counter) - Stopping and restarting the sequencer or drum machine
This feature lets you shift the loop freely away from the downbeats of an external sequencer to create the interesting rhythmic effects we mentioned earlier. The Echoplex keeps track of the external sequencer’s downbeat and clock as a “Global” clock, and the local loop’s start point as a “Local” clock. This allows the Echoplex to shift loops out of alignment from one another without losing sync, and then realign them perfectly with each other again at will.
