Necroloop Guide.pdf

...a beginner's guide to

NECROLOOP

by Pluggotic

- what the hell? -

Pluggotic Necroloop is a pseudo real-time stereo slicer for buffer-freaks.

..what does it mean? or why the "pseudo", you might ask.

Necroloop is an effect that records incoming material in 8/16/32 slices and plays it back in horribly

twisted ways with it's live, sequenced editing tools.

Necroloop only demands for incoming audio and a running host. Just load it as a common stereo insert fx

and let anything run through, a drum loop, melodic instruments, vocals..or an entire mix.

As mentioned, audio gets recorded into 8/16/32 slices. Starting point and ending point of those slices can

be manipulated incessantly, intentionally and/or casually. Now, figure that when the end point is reached,

playback of that slice loops and starts all over again, unless the next upcoming slice gets triggered by the

internal synchronized mechanism. This first part alone of Necroloop is able, for example, to remix loops

or to perform rudimental timestretching...and yes it can roll, drill and shriek like it has a life on it's own.

Stop the party, it's not enough yet...just as the start/end points, the pitch of the slices can be optionally

manipulated within 10 octaves of range. Ouch.

Then, an effect from a selection of three can be applied onto the sliced/pitched material:

- a multimode filter (lp/bp/hp/notch)

- bitcrushing A.K.A. crude and rude resampling

- ring modulation, with a choice of four waveforms

...all this without mentioning the whole controllable patterns and parametric randomizations for each

section, the 32 subpresets for each pattern, slices reversing, parameters gliding...but.

BUT!

It all comes at a price...no, it's not cpu. Quoting my favourite tester : "...cpu hit is negligible...".

The double nature of the effect, one being the "live editor of recorded material" and the other being that it

must run in sync with the host, imposes that Necroloop suffers from latency. But this latency is fixed to

one or two measures of your music. Returning to the words on the beginning of this guide, "pseudo real-

time" means you'll be able to manipulate in real time what has been recorded one or two measures before.

Anyway...it's quite an organized mess. I firmly believe that Necroloop can give precise results, hit'n'miss

fashion, performance and even a touch of blasè algorithimic fun.

Everyone should use it on anything, shred it.

- main controls -

As the name says, this section hosts main controls for Necroloop record/playback engine, mixing and

latency.

From left to right.

nekrolution: just a funky name for the slicing resolution. incoming audio will be divided into

8/16/32 slices.

play: playback mode. > for forward, < for reverse. some good old swooshing for our slices.

adjust: for several voodoo and mystic reasons (groove and/or feeling), this control can be used to

adapt the slicing to a rhythm, a bit before or a bit

later...

xfade: Necroloop slices, that's for sure. this control fades the edges of each slice so no pops will be

heard. note: as I will explain later, this control fades

just pops created from the main record/playback engine, not the ones generated from

modulating start/end points.

bypass: bypass NecroLoop...fully dry signal, like this effect was all a bad dream. you're safe, now.

level: used to set Necroloop's volume.

view: chooses which pair of sequencers are shown in the second left half of the screen. hint:

colour coded...

delay: how much latency can be applied, one or two measures.

Ssync: this control is useless if you'll never use Necroloop on a externally midi-timed pc...it just

prevents "BPM-shaking" and that makes me a little less

paranoid when using this effect with my live pc-based electronic music duo, Steamheated

(www.myspace.com/steamheated)

- sequencers 1 & 2: loop start, loop end -

Let's meet the first pair of Necroloop's sequencers, "Loop Start" and "Loop End". Those sliders will

manipulate loop points of the 8/16/32 slices, as selected

with the nekrolution parameter. the black strip scrolling from left to right shows the current position.

simply "draw" with left mouse button on the sequence

to enter values. infos about step number and value will apppear in white on top of the sequence.

from top to bottom and then left to right:

ptn: pattern selection. works for both "Loop Start" and "Loop End" sequencers, 32 patterns to

store sequences.

copy: pressing the big black " X " will open a dialog box, choosing one of the 32 patterns will

automatically copy and overwrite the choosen pattern

over the current one. no sweat. (hint: "how to reset?" ...keep one of the 32 patterns blank,

et voilà copy the blank pattern over the undesired

ones.)

rate: sequencers rate, control works for both "Loop Start" and "Loop End" sequencers. example:

"1" means 1 cycle per measure.

seq: turn sequencers on & off.

chaos: randomly generates remixed sequences out of the current one, pattern after pattern. the

result could be reversal, or the first eight steps

swapped with the other eight steps, who knows? the only certain rule is that it doesn't add

or take anything from the value of each step, it just

shuffles them around. nice for a fill or for that "never the same once" feeling.

quant: values quantization. this will "lock" step values to fixed intervals. it means that if you'll

set all the "Loop Start" step values roughly around

the middle, you'll know for sure that the slice playback will start from half of the slice,

perfectly tuned and timed.

rise & fall: those two parameters will enable step values to "glide" smoothly from one to another. rise

sets the rising time, fall the fall time. use the same

value for both if traditional proportional gliding is required.

note: the playback system doesn't feature any zero-point-search feature, and this means that every

playback which has "Loop Start" and "Loop End" points on

a non-silent wave will inevitably "pop", regardless of how you set xfade .

note again: when "Loop Start" and "Loop End" values collide, ergo are the same, no sound is produced. a

loop of pure, digital void, if you appreciate the

romantic side of the story...so keep it in mind, specially when "chaos" and "quant" are on.

it will sound like traditional gating, if you wanna turn cons into pros... :-)

- sequencers 3 & 4: loop start jitter, loop end jitter -

The next sequencers control randomizations (jittering) for "Loop Start" and "Loop End". Those jitter

sequencers can be accessed and edited by pressing the

view control in the main section until the label "S/E Jitters" (start/end jitters) is displayed.

Randomizations can be controlled, for each step and in various amounts. For example, if you want your

first step of "Loop Start" to be randomized in it's entire

range, just leave "Loop Start" 's first step empty, and turn "Jitter Start" 's first step to the max.

Modulations in this section can be tamed for subtle effects, or full,

for total nonsense.

All the jitter sequencers in Necroloop run at the same rate of their main sequencer, "S/E Jitters" runs at

the same rate as "Loop Start" and "Loop End".

from top to bottom and then left to right:

ptn: pattern selection. works for both "Jitter Start" and "Jitter End" sequencers, 32 patterns to

store sequences.

copy: pressing the big black " X " will open a dialog box, choosing one of the 32 patterns will

automatically copy and overwrite the choosen pattern

over the current one.

random: randomization rate. a step of jittering isn't just a single randomized pulse. with this control

you can set, for example, four randomizations per

steps...or even more! and less too..if you want to keep the same value for more than a step.

seq: turn sequencers on & off.

chaos: randomly generates remixed sequences out of the current one, pattern after pattern.

X2: range of modulation. on=100% off=50%. a quick way to cut/boost the mess.

- sequencers 5 & 6: pitch, pitch jitter -

The next sequencers control pitch and pitch jittering. They can be accessed and edited by pressing the

view control in the main section until the label "Pitch" is

displayed. Differently from the other sequencers, "Pitch" is bipolar, which means that the zero value is to

be found in the middle, from middle to top for positive

values, from middle to bottom for negative values. "Jitter Pitch" runs at the same rate as "Pitch".

from top to bottom and then left to right:

ptn: pattern selection. works for both "Pitch" and "Jitter Pitch" sequencers, 32 patterns to store

sequences.

range: range of modulation, in octaves. from one to five.

rate: sequencers rate.

seq: turn sequencers on & off.

chaos: randomly generates remixed sequences out of the current one, pattern after pattern.

quant: note quantization. this will "lock" step values to note intervals, for proper melodic

intonation.

rise & fall: those two parameters will enable step values to "glide" smoothly from one to another. rise

sets the rising time, fall the fall time. use the same

value for both if traditional proportional gliding is required.

random: randomization rate.

seq: turn sequencers on & off.

chaos: randomly generates remixed sequences out of the current one, pattern after pattern.

X2: range of modulation. on=100% off=50%.

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