Jon,
> > A company called Kahler used to make an item called the "Human Clock" in
> > the late 80's that does exactly what you want. It takes a 1/4" signal in,
> > averages it into a tempo, and then sends that tempo out as a MIDI
> clock. I
> > don't know how hard they are to find these days.
>
>Bruce,
>Was there not also a box along similar lines called a 'Garfield Master
>Beat'? Or was that a SMPTE/MTC solution? I seem to recall it was out
>around the same period as the Human Clock?
Yes, as I recall, there might have even been a third box that did about the
same thing. I never owned one, but from the reports that I received, all
of the boxes did pretty much what they were supposed to do, with the Kahler
as the king, such as it were. Unfortunately, the expectations were too
high: bands tried to use them for all sorts of music, including ballads,
reggae, and jazz. In retrospect, the expectations were almost absurd --
how can you ask a reasonably-priced machine to follow music with an uneven
tempo, in real time? -- but they managed to kill any demand for the
products, nonetheless. Kind of a shame, because they would lend themselves
to many genres: dance, techno, funk, punk, etc., etc. We would probably
be in the third or fourth generation today.
Regarding click tracks: I played live in a MIDI'ed rock band with a
drummer, and it is a difficult proposition at best. We had probably the
most ideal situation possible: a very groove-oriented drummer who enjoyed
working with sequencers, who played an mostly-electronic kit, in a band who
played only canned arrangements of songs (no extended solos and such). The
drummer was ready and willing to put on a set of headphones with the click
track, even though it diminished his ability to hear the rest of the
band. Even with that background, it was very stressful for him: While any
of us could pull the band off the click by getting over-enthused, only the
drummer could pull us back -- and the audience would certainly fault him
for any tempo mismatches.
Regards,
-BW
--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ www.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group and HiNote moderator
978.386.7389 voice 978.964.0547 fax
bruce@...