FUCK YEAH MAKE STUFF
Anyway, for what it's worth, my current setup is as follows:
"Main Mic" — static SM-58 and pop filter, used for vocals and sometimes micing the acoustic guitar
"Hobo Mic" — portable SM-58 on a gooseneck, used for micing whatever the hell I want to in the moment
"Little Synth"— Alesis Micron (which also has an SM-58, allowing for vocoder-ness)
"Piano" — Casio Privia, which I can also use for e-piano and string sounds
"My Tablet" — I love the app Nanoloop, for creating background loops from a tone sequencer
"Electric Guitar" — Schecter Blackjack signal from a lil' Peavey practice amp
all output to:
"Red Mixer" — the instruments are all fed into the old FIYH mixer board, which is a Behringer somethin'-somethin'
outputs to:
"Akai Head-Rush E2" — bought it for its looperness, I use it now mostly as an echo/delay pedal
outputs to:
"Ditto Looper X2" — my main loop pedal
outputs to:
"Silver Mixer" — the old-old FIYH mixer. This mixer devotes one input to the "final" pedaled output from the Ditto looper, one (safety) input to the fresh signal out of the Red Mixer, and one input to the headphone signal coming out of the Mac. All of these signals are combined and
output to:
1. the Mac, which is the main audio-recording computer
2. the PC, which is the main video-recording computer, by way of an M-Track USB audio interface
and
3. my local soundsystem, speakers or headphones, for live-monitoring in the room
The long and short of this is that — by simply moving my "all the time" laptop over to the music area and plugging in the webcams and M-Track — I have the ability to pick an instrument, adjust the sound I'm making with the instrument, adjust the specifics of the delay-pedal effect I apply to the instrument, and then record that instrument into loop. The way the Ditto works, I have the ability to "undo-redo" the most recently recorded instrument. Between the ability to tweak the instrument sound, the delay effect sound, and then do a re-do take if necessary, I can improvise everything on the fly and (theoretically) not get trapped into keeping something crappy in the loop.
In case I happen to use this set-up for building out a real song instead of a live-loop performance, the Mac — the computer I'd be doing that editing on — is sending its headphone signal into the actual Silver Mixer. As in, the Mac's microphone and headphone jacks are both being fed into the same mixer. (This doesn't present a feedback problem because my software setup on said Mac does not include live play-through.) This whole rigamarole is to benefit the "audience" of the video recording — any sound editing I'd be doing on the Mac is also being fed into the Silver Mixer, which means that the PC will always hear whatever the fuck I'm doing, whether it's live-loopin' or editing audio. If you were to play a YouTube video on the Mac, the webcam audience would hear it, in other words.
This has been a long, evolving process. We're only one or two versions into builds that have actually worked.
*curtsey*
Teague Chrystie
I have a tendency to fix your typos.