the “clicks” are some of the things that first drew me to mlr/mlrv/rove and all its variants back in 2011. those little audio discontinuities and glitches from jumping between points, nonlinearly, within any given sample. those are a great deal of mlr’s charm, and especially why i liked the configurability of @Galapagoose’s mlrv; being able to adjust clickiness with its micro-fade length controls.
other things i love about mlr: discovering new things. whether from feeding it field recordings or acoustic melodies. the hidden steady rhythms that come from unusual “inner loop” points; when the whole sample is broken down and sifted for new textures and tiny rhythms. same for repeatedly flipping play direction: precise, or even sloppy/unstable timing, reveals new material, without otherwise altering the original sample.
mlr is constantly rewarding, especially when fed the simplest sounds. a single loop, duplicated across 2 - 4 tracks in different play directions and speeds, builds up kaleidoscopic tumbling melodies. a short rhodes, piano, or harp phrase; anything with quick attack envelopes, set against a longer field recording that loops in the background. with norns mlr, it’s so easy to build whole songs just by changing play speed & direction, and recording those gestures…and then recording play position/cuts, and then running the whole unsynced mix through delay and reverb. ambient bliss.
this can be the main point of a song, or the mlr layers can be put into the background, so that those gently-chopped glitches float up to the surface occasionally, then fade away to make room for the rest of the instruments. it’s really easy to lose track of time this way; letting the pattern recorders freely run their unsynced loops.
and all that is just for prepared samples that i put into norns in advance. @tehn’s original norns mlr video/demo offers tantalizing hints at what can be done when live-recording material on-the-fly.
sometimes, i’ll record samples without listening to them any further, put them on norns, then take the box out into the wilderness at home or abroad, and just see what happens. let things unfold in those different settings; surrounded by beautiful nature.
for me, mlr is a means of musical discovery. it continually surprises and delights. even when given samples that i recorded in advance, mlr produces things that are new to my ears; unique. melodies and moments that i had never imagined. known audio that is recombined, merged, split, reordered, rephrased; remade into something unknown and lovely.
