Magnetic dance touch hold

Hey Jaak, for the magnetic dance, is it possible to have the touch act momentary when the mode is on? For example I’ll have it set to an interval, frozen, and then if I want to play a different note and re-freeze, at the moment I have to press touch off and then back on rather than press and hold and let go to capture the new freeze.

Also it would be amazing if the old freeze could stay until you then let go of touch and introduce the new note chord freeze.

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I think I understand what you’re getting at.

So if touch is latched, you’d like to be able to hold down the touch footswitch again to trigger the sampling of new audio and then when you release it will quickly fade out the old audio and fade in the new audio.

I’ll have to think about it. I agree that the process to get new audio into the buffer is not as smooth / elegant as it could be. I’m currently swamped at the moment but I really like this idea and can look into it sometime in the near future. It’s possible it could be incorporated into an update down the line.

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Yes that’s exactly it! I had the reverb on and the freeze chord from one note and wanted to go to the next freeze chord and effectively keep playing like that so to be able to latch off and re-freeze would be amazing.

The great thing about ribbons is that I keep finding ways of using it because it’s so flexible.

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That sounds a lot like the Electroharmonix Freeze pedal, have you used one?
It’s only function is pretty much what you are describing, if ribbons was able to do this it would free up some space on my board, the ehx freeze does have a great way of capturing and looping the sample tone, it is always quite musical and has a somewhat ‘organ’ feel.

I haven’t used it but it would be super useful to have and I think Jaak is up for implementing it :raised_hands::raised_hands:

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That would be fantastic! Thanks for suggesting that.
I have a Freeze and a looper pedal, I use the freeze a lot more than expected, it works in live jam settings and has less constraints than looping, but provides similar advantages.

I’ve been wondering about where to place ribbons on a pedal board, can it handle high input volumes? What’s been working for you?

Oh I use it exclusively with keyboards and it works perfectly, no problems with gain. I used it as a first pedal (for tape stuff) or last (touch effects).
It’s got so many different uses, I love it

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Ribbons can handle up to +2dBU, which is just a little lower than line level. That’s about 10x the level produced by most guitars, so there is a decent amount of headroom there. I have an MXR uni-vibe here on my desk and it clips at the same input level that Ribbons does.

Some pedals with extreme amounts of gain and high power rails (like a Klon) are probably capable of overdriving Ribbons input stage but I don’t know why you’d crank the volume that high anyway. It would be soo much louder than your guitar with no effects engaged.

It has a slightly higher output impedance than most DSP pedals, so a fuzz pedal can sound ok after it (No promises though. Depends on the fuzz. Some tone benders seem to play OK with it. Fuzz Factory…? Mmmmm …no way.).

The compression and filtering can be a great way to sculpt your sound before you run it into other pedals (beginning of chain) or it can be a great way of gluing all your sounds together (end of chain).

So yeah I would agree with @niko and try beginning or end of chain.

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Hey I’ve been messing with the magnetic dance touch mode and I’m wondering how T1 is meant to be used? How do I know which interval I’m tuned to? Thanks

You can listen for the interval changes as you turn the knob. The LED should also step as the intervals change but I will admit it can be a little difficult to notice it unless you’re looking at it carefully. Its challenging to display 12 distinct steps and stay stylistically consistent using our current LED framework but I tried my best.

image

My general approach to using Magnetic Dance is this:

I usually use it as a drone or freeze function. If I want it to be able to freeze any source material and sound good, I typically use the first three chords (unity, octaves, and fifths). Octaves and fifths will add a little harmony to your material while unity will be a little more like a freeze effect.

If I want something a little more strange or am looking for a little inspiration, I will use the other chords in the table and pick one using my ear. The other chords on the dial tend to sound best when the input material / frozen audio in the buffer is made up of perfect intervals like single notes, octaves, perfect fifths, or perfect fourths.

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Ok thanks, I was expecting the led to blink on each step, then I could count to what interval I’m on.
Yes there are a lot of interval options here it’s kinda crazy, unity, octave and fifth alone would have blown away the competition.

Thanks for the reply!

After I read your first comment I was thinking to myself, “maybe a blink would have been a nice way to convey the steps”.

I’ll add that thought to the list of things I’m considering for the next firmware update.

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To jump on this previous discussion, is there any way to have Magnetic Dance latch instead of being a momentary Touch switch?

Magnetic Dance can be latched using one of two methods:

  • A brief press and release of the Touch footswitch
  • While holding down Touch, tap Bypass

Gotcha–I can get it sometimes but not others…maybe my press needs to be quicker, thanks!

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Hi all!

+1 for the ability to smoothly transition between the frozen notes! I would really love that feature, just what I need for live use.

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The thing making the magnetic dance chord change maybe not so smooth is also, that if you have a frozen chord, and then swiftly (I use it with an expression pedal) relatch a new chord, the audio that gets looped is a much shorter buffer, which I guess, is because it only starts recording after the old loop gets turned off? Then you could have a smooth drone on the first chord, but the next gets really choppy. This is still so amazing, just my two cents for improwement:)

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Yes you’re correct. There’s a little more info in this thread but I’ll be making some improvements including “double buffering” that makes this smoother. The buffer will start filling up while the current micro-loop plays back so if you bring a new loop forward it will be longer and less choppy.

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That’s so great, thank you!

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