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Recording a 37-second loop with the Red Panda Tensor.
The Tensor records a 9.6-second loop, but you can record a much longer, normal-speed, lofi loop. So how is this possible? When playing loops, the Speed and Pitch knobs normally lower pitch and slow down playback. But if you record a blank first pass of the loop with lower pitch or speed settings, the second pass becomes a normal-speed loop that’s 37 seconds long. This article shows you how.
How to record a 4x loop with the Red Panda Tensor.
- Set the Pitch knob to 7a.
- Set the left footswitch to L.
- Set the Hold toggle to Ovr.
- Tap the Hold footswitch and record the initial loop with no audio. It will record for 9.6 seconds and then turn green.
- Tap the Hold footswitch again to record normally. The loop will now last 37 seconds.
Once the loop is recorded you can speed it up with the Pitch knob. With careful tuning, you can use the Speed knob to lower pitch during playback.
What’s it good for?
- longer, non-metered loops at normal speed
- rambling pads long enough they don’t sound repetitive
- an endless stream of random variations on the original loop, jumping in pitch as it haphazardly plays the grains forwards and backwards (with the Dir switch at Alt and the Rand knob at 12n)
- extending the length of octave up loop to 18 seconds
- adding length to stereo loops to 18 seconds
Loops over a minute.
Even longer loops are possible. If you turn the Speed knob down to about 2p when you set the Pitch knob at 7a, you can stretch the normal-speed loop more. The longer the loop, the more lofi it gets. You’ll also lose the ability to pitch down the loop during playback.
My take.
Longer loops give you one more function that makes the Tensor an indispensable tool on your pedalboard. This technique also works when you turn Tensor into a Frippertronics delay.
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