compared to c-drone, there are several changes here: I've taken the setup out of Ardour and into Carla, so rather than multitracking, I'm doing everything live here, and only with one guitar, an acoustic tuned 'baritone', a 4th down to B, very slack strings.
Bringing sound-on-sound delay, drone- and arp instrument into Carla, had the principal advantage that I could integrate everything with my existing, dynamic, 3-channel guitar FX rack - you may remember, an expander, plus several sidechained comp/gates are making it so that the guitar is routed into clean or dist channels depending on playing dynamics, while a 3rd channel is flying in some mystic sound tail - now what I'm doing here, is routing exclusively the clean part into the long, pseudo-loopy (92% feedback) sound-on-sound delay. Like that, I can use lower intensity playing to 'fill' the loop with bass, harmonic, & other elements, while when I 'shift gear' and solo, this sound will pass via a different channel, and not muddle up the playback loop.
Another trick I'm using here, is setting the host BPM to 1/4 the real value, e.g. 30 for 120 BPM - this is so that when using host sync on the delay, the largest available delay value, a whole note, is becoming 4 bars in fact. It also implies e.g. putting Helm's arp on 1/32 notes, in order to get real 1/8ths
.(suggestion: update the existing delays with host sync cap, to allow larger note values like 2, 4, 8 whole notes, or optionally, free n/m values, for odd time signatures and/or polyrhythms. Also optionally, expand max delay times, I didn't find over 8s. Why? Host syncing delays, in a capable host like Carla, are a powerful, modular, and cheap alternative to loopers) (as a perfectionist side thought, host sync could benefit from bi-directional communication with the clients: the common denominator of the note values the synced clients are using, together with the audio sample rate, would determine the necessary rounding of the global BPM value, such that all existing fractions can resolve to whole number frame values = no delay loop sync drift even in hours. Or in other words, the allowed real increment value, in frames, for the host's BPM setting, would depend on what the clients are dividing the beat by. Maybe this adjustment should happen on the fly, since opening the same project with a different sample rate, could change the math)
If there's any demand, I shall be happy to upload the entire Carla patch. I'm still on 2017 AVLiux - it feels so great to know your tools, to be able to focus on creativity rather than adapting to the inevitable (or are they?) new features coming with updates. Now, perhaps, I'd be ready to migrate to something newer, w/o a feeling of getting rushed all the time; as a free user decision rather than an imperative. We'll see, first, I want a large external hdd, as a prerequisite and aid for backing up & migrating.
Enjoy, and never mind the horrible mistake I'm making right when opening my solo - such is impromptu recording ..
