Tutorial: LYRA-8 “Park & Ride” Looping (Hedra, Blooper, Whammy V, Timeline, Microcosm, Polymoon)

In this video I will guide you through one of my approaches to making soundscapes. The main idea of this video is to use what I call “park and ride” live looping technique. This is when you use an in-between phrase sampling. It may be a looper after another looper or a looper after any source of constant sound. I use the LYRA-8 by Soma Laboratory as the main instrument. This is a sophisticated synth that may produce rather simple wave forms though. I tuned 8 sound generators of LYRA-8 to: E1, G1, D2, G2, B2, D3, F#3, A3. My looping device will be the BLOOPER by Chase Bliss Audio. It is placed in the middle of the signal path – right after the Meris HEDRA pitch-shifter. It is very important to have HEDRA prior any looper, because it works badly with intervals. This is why I try to play very simple intervals like an octave or 5th with HEDRA. A word about my signal chain. LYRA-8 is plugged into the Fishman AURA that I used as a Tuner and EQ with a bit of Compression. Then the signal goes to the Strymon Riverside for some heat and boost. The next is the Meris HEDRA set in mono with a pattern of – 1) root note, 2) -5th, 3) -1 octave, 4) 1 octave. This harmony then goes to the BLOOPER that stands for the “park and ride” looper. I can sample a phrase from LYRA-8 with the BLOOPER and let it sound as long as I need while having time to change LYRA settings, notes . But that is not the end of the pitch-shifting story. There goes the WHAMMY V next to the blooper and I can change the pitch of the loop further. I set the WHAMMY to “minus 2” (two half-notes down). The rest of the signal is: Strymon VOLANTE, Hologram MICROCOSM, Strymon TIMELINE, Meris POLYMOON, Strymon BIGSKY. A hefty bunch of pedals I should say… All that goes in stereo to the RME FireFace UC audio interface. I start with recording of ~ 9 second loop. This is long enough to avoid that feeling of a constantly repeating short cycled sample. I’ve closed the loop and starts overdubbing. I add REAPEATS gradually. I raise the BLOOPER’s VOLUME and turn down the LYRA’s VOLUME at the same time. Tweak the HEDRA’s MIX up and down to play with the amount of pitch-shifting. Slowly turn the LYRA’s VOLUME down. It is already sampled in the BLOOPER and if it goes playing on the overall volume will go out of the control. I have already overdubbed new notes to the BLOOPER. Since its REPEATS are set to 100% old layers will not fade away as long as I overdub new layers. I use the WHAMMY V pedal (it is down on the floor) to change the pitch of the BLOOPER. The BLOOPER is on, the volume of the LYRA-8 is turned down – now I can change the notes the LYRA-8 will play. It is a common way to use coins to connect two pins of the LYRA-8 – an analogue of traditional keys. You can use the TIME knobs to create twittering sounds. In this case I use the Strymon TIMELINE ICE algorithm and play with two knobs: TIME and REPEATS. I can also play with the BLOOPER’s functions like STEPPED SPEED and FILTER or SMOOTH SPEED now. Sometimes I wait for the loop to be overdubbed several times with the REPEATS set to 40%. It removes transients and makes the loop more consistent. Closer to the end my idea was to start reducing high frequencies slowly on every pedal that was on the table. Doing so I can recreate the sound going far away, dissolving somewhere in space and time. One of the most obvious ways to cut high frequencies was to use the BLOOPER’s FILTER. Why not to change the BLOOPER’s tuning again? I used STEPPED SPEED modifier to make the loop much slower… and yes, less high frequencies again. Why not to bring the loop back? Like a glimpse of sunrays when the Sun has already crossed the horizon. I used the BLOOPER’s FILTER again. After I’ve turned the BLOOPER off I’ve started to add the Meris POLYMOON’s FEEDBACK to ~ 90%. This made it suck all the dying trails from the pedals effects and all the noise they make. Thus I got another sound source – Noise that was processed by the POLYMOON’s SLOW phaser and panned left to right. Thanks for watching! Please subscribe! Gear used: Soma LYRA-8 Fishman AURA SPECTRUM DI Strymon RIVERSIDE Meris HEDRA Chase Bliss Audio BLOOPER Digitech WHAMMY V Strymon VOLANTE Hologram MICROCOSM Strymon TIMELINE Meris HEDRA Strymon BIGSKY Strymon ZUMA Shot with Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Canon 35 mm f2 IS Fotga IR Cut Filter