any benefit looping a MIDI section?

[williemyers]

hey all,
is there any advantage - - CPU and/or memory-wise - - to Looping a MIDI section, as opposed to copy & pasting a bunch of bars?
thanks

[wvandyck]

Good question.

My hunch is that with fairly current computers the real issue is the cpu hit from running VI vs the MIDI data.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The only advantage is if you are procrastinating or stuck and need a diversion to drive you crazy. In terms of notation it makes a lot if sense to use a repeat.

[stubbsonic]

Not a direct answer, but if you haven't settled on the part, it is easier to edit a looping part than many pasted iterations of it.

[dewdman42]

Looping MIDI is hugely beneficial to the composing process. I miss Studio Vision.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Looping MIDI is hugely beneficial to the composing process. I miss Studio Vision.

I used to use it (maybe too much!) in SVP and I miss that app as well. But I have truly abandoned the idea of exact repetition in my work. I deplore it. Give me variations!

[dewdman42]

Oh yea for sure. Composing and Production, two different things really. When creating and working out ideas, the ability to quickly loop things and reuse bits here and there, gets things flowing. I agree with you though, the final production needs to be linearized in order to create variations, some subtle, some not.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...the final production needs to be linearized in order to create variations, some subtle, some not.

[williemyers]

thanks, guys....good answers, all!

[frankf]

.... I agree with you though, the final production needs to be linearized in order to create variations, some subtle, some not.

I love new verbs!



Frank Ferrucci

[Shooshie]

Looping is fast, but it's not flexible when cutting up sections and reorganizing them, or copying a few bars in/out. If the DAW were smart enough to fill-in the looped section when you do things like that, it would be great. Maybe some do. Maybe DP does. I wouldn't know; I've used looping so very seldom that I can only just remember how. As with MLC, to my ears anything repeated exactly is not doing all it can. That said, the greatest composers all repeated stuff verbatim. Sometimes it was a form in itself (Baroque binary form, for example), sometimes it was the exposition of Sonata Allegro form, and sometimes (Debussy, for example) it was to give the listener a chance to savor a passage and comprehend its function. I think Debussy was more likely to repeat a couple of bars verbatim than Ravel, who was always changing a pattern here or there. So, everyone does it, and it can be very effective, but when it's used to fill up space, that's where I draw the line.

Shooshie

[bayswater]

Sometimes it was a form in itself (Baroque binary form, for example), sometimes it was the exposition of Sonata Allegro form, and sometimes (Debussy, for example) it was to give the listener a chance to savor a passage and comprehend its function.

I always assumed it was because when you heard a piece before recordings were available, there was a good chance you'd never hear it again. Now, you might hear it a few hundred times. For me, the best songs have a magic section that only plays once.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...the greatest composers all repeated stuff verbatim. ...
Shooshie

And other times, not so much... watch at least the first 10 minutes. Great stuff, if you like that "academic research, science stuff."

I do.

http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1967/199

I never play ANYTHING the same way twice (even the classics). Not always by design, but more often than not.

[Shooshie]

Sometimes it was a form in itself (Baroque binary form, for example), sometimes it was the exposition of Sonata Allegro form, and sometimes (Debussy, for example) it was to give the listener a chance to savor a passage and comprehend its function.

I always assumed it was because when you heard a piece before recordings were available, there was a good chance you'd never hear it again. Now, you might hear it a few hundred times. For me, the best songs have a magic section that only plays once.

Our ears are desensitized with recordings, and that's a shame, really. The repeats serve a purpose, and that purpose is the reason they developed the forms in the way they did. I'm not going to get academic on you, but I just want to say that it took me 30 or 40 years to fully appreciate the repeats in baroque binary form and sonata-allegro form, as well as many other forms. But in those two forms and in the special forms of bourees, gavottes, minuets and the like, the repeats really have an impact on the balance of the piece of music.

Forms developed to fulfill certain expectations that are derived from the way we are wired up. They weren't arbitrarily created for us to have to sit through endlessly. If you're fully engaged with the music at hand, the repeat becomes a very desirable, very moving part of the experience. But if you cannot engage with the music — which is usually the fault of lackadaisical performance — then the repeats drag a bad experience on interminably.

When you hear someone like Henryk Szeryng playing Bach's partitas and sonatas, you just don't want it to be over. Even with the repeats, it ends too soon. Many performers use the repeat as an opportunity to improvise and embellish the music with ornamentation (in jazz we just call it taking a solo), and that's a valid option, too, that keeps the music more entertaining.

But unless the form calls for it and the music exploits that aspect of the form, simple looping of music is like listening to fingernails on a chalk board.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

One of my pet peeves is song structure that starts with
four bars of a bass;
then four bars of bass and guitar;
then four bars of bass, guitar, and drums;
then four bars of bass, guitar, drums and something else;

and THEN, finally, the dang song.

When a song starts that way, I feel like going for coffee. I could probably get back in time for the song, if it's worth it. C'mon, folks! Hit me with your best shot! Give me something to sink my teeth in on the first bar! Think "Beethoven's 5th!"

Shooshie