Loop loader

FRIZZ plays loops from the SD card: your own, 8 banks of 15, one on each white key of the Loops page (SHIFT + the lower C#), and the recordings you made with TAPE (its cubbis) on the Cubbi page (SHIFT + the lower D#). A loop from the card is the loop, as if you had recorded it: LOOP, PLAY, the transport knob and the input/loop mix act on it the same way. This chapter is about getting loops onto the card; Playing loops is about the two pages and switching, at once or at the end of the loop playing, and Loops and scenes about switching together with a scene change in time.

A loop you recorded is gone once you switch to a loaded one. FRIZZ doesn’t save your recordings to the card, and there’s no way back to the recording.

Loops on the card

Put your loops in the folder FRIZZ on the card, beside the scenes and settings, named for their bank and key: a1.wav to a15.wav for bank a, b1.wav to b15.wav for bank b, and so on to h15.wav. The letter is the bank, the number the white key from the left (a1.wav, not a01.wav); upper or lower case doesn’t matter. A missing name is an empty key. To get them onto the card, use the Companion over the USB cable, lend the card to the computer as a USB drive, or use the launcher’s USB storage mode; FRIZZ reads the card when it starts, and again when it comes back from the computer.

WAV, 16-bit, 48 kHz, stereo or mono (a mono loop plays on both sides).
At most about 77 s: 16 bars at 50 BPM.
Anything else (44.1 kHz, 24-bit, compressed, longer) is refused: its key shows dim red.
A WAV with an acid chunk (many sample packs and DAWs write one) says how many beats it holds, and FRIZZ takes its tempo from that, if the chunk comes before the audio data in the file (the Companion writes it there). Otherwise FRIZZ guesses the beats (see A loaded loop is the loop).

The Companion

The FRIZZ Companion, pumpwerker.de/frizz/companion, is a web page that manages your loop banks over the USB cable while FRIZZ plays. Plug the CHOMPI into the computer, open the page and let it use MIDI: it shows what’s on the card, FRIZZ’s 8 banks of 15 with each loop’s name, and TAPE’s cubbis. Then:

Upload: drop audio files (WAV, AIFF, MP3 …) on the slots. The page turns each into what FRIZZ plays (16-bit, 48 kHz, at most about 77 s, a mono file stays mono) and writes its name and, where it knows them, its beats into the file.
Arrange: move, swap and delete loops between FRIZZ’s slots, or copy a cubbi of TAPE’s into one (TAPE’s own file stays as it is).
Confirm, and the page carries the whole batch out with a progress bar. A loop that plays plays on; its key plays the new file the next time you pick it. The bright key is the slot that holds the loop playing: moved or swapped, the light goes with it; replaced or deleted, no key is bright for it.
Browsers: Chrome, Edge and the other Chromium-based ones, and Firefox, which asks you once to allow a small add-on for the site. Safari has no MIDI for web pages.
Speed: uploads go over MIDI, about two minutes for the longest loop (16 bars at 50 BPM, stereo) and more on a slower computer; a mono loop takes half. For many loops at once, lending the card as a USB drive is several times faster (a card reader too).
While FRIZZ records a loop, loads one or saves to the card, an upload waits and goes on by itself. Lending the card to the computer stops an upload: the page waits, and once the card is back it sends that loop again from its start (the slot keeps its old loop until then). Switching USB audio on or off ends an upload. A card too full for a loop refuses it.
Nothing half is left: an upload cut short (the tab closed, the cable pulled, the power off) leaves the slot as it was. If the CHOMPI doesn’t answer (another firmware, or an older FRIZZ), the page says so.
The loops’ names are written into their files, and FRIZZ reads them, but only the Companion shows them: the panel has no place for a name.