Dr Funkenstein - Live Looping

[bagginz]

A bit of live looping for ya: http://vimeo.com/13405023

Equipment used:
Slaptop running Ableton Live using exclusively Live's internal plug-ins, NIO Audio interface, PEAK midi footswitcher, Digitech guitar multi FX pedal (including an octaver for the bass sound), Wah pedal, Novation Launchpad, Korg Nano Kontrol, Ibanez plank...

Cheers,
bagginz

[bagginz]

Nice! Makes me wanna get my guitar going again,

Thanks

I have a trapped nerve in my arm so I cant play!

Oh serious bummer.

I broke my thumb skiing a few years back, couldn't play for 4 or 5 months. It drove me nuts.

cheers,
bagginz

[MacGuffin]

nice little jam, made my morning


... holy shit, you're Cosmosis!
Seriously good music, I've been following your stuff since the 90's.

[bagginz]

nice little jam, made my morning

Thanks MacGuffin, glad you liked it.

It's lot of fun to play this kind of stuff. It's amazing what one can do with a couple of loops in Live - once one has the midi control all figured out and configured... took me a while. In fact the midi control is still a work in progress. There's a few things I'd like to do in my setup that I haven't figured out a solution for.

... holy shit, you're Cosmosis!
Seriously good music, I've been following your stuff since the 90's.

Thanks again. Glad you like the tunage

Montreal eh? I haven't played there for a few years...

cheers,
bagginz

[steko]

Nice one bilbo! Brought a big smile on my face!

Another guy, who needs a brain to midi hat…

[kb420]

That's not Dr. Funkenstein. This is Dr. Funkenstein:






Nice video. It sounds great!!!!!

[bagginz]

Another guy, who needs a brain to midi hat…

I've often thought about how much of a time saver having a brain-to-Midi converter would be...

Maybe a new plug for Live 9?

That's not Dr. Funkenstein. This is Dr. Funkenstein:

What? You didn't recognise me without the mask?

Nice video. It sounds great!!!!!

Thanks kb420

I'm really just a beginner at this looping on the fly business.

There's sooo much more that can be done in this area. If anyone knows of any sites or resources that specifically focus on Live Looping/configuring Ableton for live looping (pref. with good signal to noise ratio) I'd be appreciate any links...

Cheers,
bagginz

[mojofunk]

Fantastic! I could totally hear N'dea Davenport bustin out some vocals on that track. I especially liked how you do drum breakdowns - could you explain what you were doing to achieve that? Efx, muting, ?, ? Anyway I loved it, I'll check out more when I get home! Thanks!

[bagginz]

I could totally hear N'dea Davenport bustin out some vocals on that track.

I wish...

I especially liked how you do drum breakdowns - could you explain what you were doing to achieve that? Efx, muting, ?,

Sure.

The short answer is the drums were low-passed down rather than volume faded. (once or twice I stopped the clip after lowering the cutoff also)

If you want to know the full detalls, then there's the the long answer which needs some explanation so...



First off, the drum group channel in the Live mixer corresponds to channel 1 on the Korg Nano.

On the Nano there are four midi controls on each channel: a fader, a knob and two butttons.

Here's the details on the midi assignments for the relevant channels: the drum channel and the fx return channel.

_________________________________

Channel 1 : Drum channel

1. Fader 1 controls the cutoff of a low pass filter on the channel rather than volume (same with the bass channel) Relative volumes in the set are pre-balanced using the clip gain controls. This allows the top end-stop of the physical fader to be my reference* - so I can just slam up the faders to the stops and be at the right mix level - the old DJ trick.

2. The knob on channel 1 sends to a Dub Delay in Return 1 (a simple rack that consists of delay + autofilter)

3. Bottom button on channel 1 is a (momentary) switch sending to a huge reverb in Return 2 (you can see me using this to send just the snare drum in the loop to the big verb on the initial filtering up of the drums )

4. Top button on the Korg stops all clips inside that group. (In this particular case there was just one loop in the group.)

__________________________________



__________________________________

Channel 9: FX and Delay return channel.

1. Fader controls volume,

2. Knob controls delay feedback. (at 100% delay feedsback continuously via the slightly sweeping auto filter)

3. Bottom switch (toggle) sends dub delay return into the huge verb in return 2.

4. Top button: Drums, Bass and Pad (Rhodes) groups can be momentarily switched to a fx group (before being sent to the master out) which contains an auto filter inserted across the group (with lfo mod and bandpass selected). This is controlled by the top button (momentary) on channel 9 - You can hear this in action a couple of times when I operated this switch on bar 8 of the 8 bar phrases. It gives a stereo panning bandpass fitered effect.
__________________________________


The basis for the track consists of just two loops and a crash sample: a one bar Rhodes piano riff and a two bar drum break. The Launchpad was used to trigger these three clips individually or altogether as a scene.

I knew what bassline I was going to play (via an octaver btw) And a rough idea of the rhythm guitar part. Footswitch took care of dropping in and out recording for the loops.

The arrangement was made up on the fly by using the mixer: dropping channels in and out, filtering them down and back up, fx send tweakage and some improvisation on guitar.

The challenge with this type of thing for me is to strive to keep it interesting for the listener by varying the arrangement at sensible intervals. The temptation of course is to hit the groove and go off on an endlessly wailing solo over a loop for 10 minutes - fun for me but for nobody else...

Hope some of that made sense.

Feel free to ask any other questions.

Cheers,
bagginz


* When the faders are maxed on the Korg, I've set the Live's midi config. so that the fader reads 0.0db inside Live.

[mojofunk]

Well . . . brilliant! You have definitely succeeded in keeping the arrangement interesting and kinetic! Taste, style, tone and technique are all in evidence, in droves. This is how I also strive to use Live (haltingly), and I will be trying out some of the ideas you outlined above (thanks!). The octave divided guitar is very effective, also - I had some Digitech stuff back in the 80's, and I haven't given them a fair listen since, my impression was always that they were tweezy and digital (and they were - in 1982!), but you pull excellent tones from that. I suspect that you'd do fine with a 100$ guitar played through an AM radio . . . I will be listening, and interested in the music you make! Later, man.

[bagginz]

You have definitely succeeded in keeping the arrangement interesting and kinetic!

Thanks

I had some Digitech stuff back in the 80's, and I haven't given them a fair listen since, my impression was always that they were tweezy and digital

Lol! Lots of that rack stuff from back then was just awful. I've had my fair share of dodgy rack gear.

The octave divided guitar is very effective,

The Digitech pedal that I used in the vid (RP350) contains the same pitch shifting algorithm as their now classic "Whammy Pedal."

It's not perfect, but it's head and shoulders above my Octaver stompbox with *much* faster tracking, and creates far fewer artifacts. Not particularly expensive either. In fact the whole multi FX pedal costs little more than the Whammy Pedal alone.

Incidentally,wWith these new amp modellers, I find it's a case of trawling through the various amp models and cabinets to find the good one or two that are lurking in there somewhere, among all the naff ones. It helps if you know what you're looking for.

Again, they aren't perfect, but close enough to get on with the job of making music. And I can't argue with the convenience of having a Marshall stack and a Fender Twin and a massive array of stompboxes, Wah and stereo FX inside a little box that weighs 2 kilos. Great when I have a laptop, controllers, guitar etc. to cart to gigs.

Cheers,
bagginz

[bagginz]

In fact the midi control is still a work in progress. There's a few things I'd like to do in my setup that I haven't figured out a solution for.

Hmm, I'm stiil attempting to come up with a good solution for a problem with recording clips on the fly and I'd appreciate some input from any Live boffins here.



Problem: (Working in Session view)

I work my way vertically down through my set by triggering scenes one after another.

At various points, I'd like to record a loop in the clip slot in the scene row.

Cool.

Problem is that when I switch to the next scene down, the looped clip stops playing because the stop button in the next scene stops the clip.

O.k. Fine. So I remove all the stop buttons vertically in the channel(s) that I wish to record in. Now my loop keeps playing when I trigger new scenes. But now that I've removed the stop button, it also removes (for reasons that are not clear to me) the ability to record into that slot.

So I cannot record my any new clips into the current scene that's being played.




Is there someway around this I'm not seeing?

Bear in mind that I'd like to avoing using looper if at all possible.

The main reason that I wish to record into the current clip slot is that I want to keep all the clip information updated and displayed on the Launchpad alone - in a bid to free myself from the bane of electronic live music performance: staring into a laptop screen onstage.

Currently I have to scroll up to check if my newly recorded clip is playing and then back down to the active scenes, which as the set goes on becomes a longer and longer process...

Each "track" in my set contains about 5 or 6 contiguous scenes. Consisting of:

an intro scene or two, a build scene, main section or three scenes then a breakdown scene - > Intro to new track and so on...

I want to be able to record a loop anywhere inside these 5 or 6 scenes per track - whenever the fancy takes me...

Any suggestions or creative solutions would be most appreciated.

cheers,
bagginz

[Lazos]

I haven't tried this specifically, but I've done a fair bit of clip looping (pre L8) and prefer to use Looper now. However:

Maybe you could create multiple guitar tracks to individually arm for recording on the fly, then "stairstep" your recordable clips slots back and forth in session so that you are not stopping a previously recorded clip by triggering the next scene. I don't have Live open atm, so I don't know how it would work in practice. It may not be the most economical way, since it entails toggling the arm record buttons on multiple tracks Or could you just zig zag two tracks with opposite and alternating stop buttons removed? I'll have to try it tomorrow, off to stack some zzzzzzz ssss now. Maybe someone has another idea?

Great video, btw. Creative looping!

[3dot...]

groovy shit man... !

about looping ...
I used to do this in L7 for looping :

get bomes midi translator
assign a key sequence -

enter(stop recording and start looping clip)-->
alt+up up(goes to track header)-->
ctrl+d(duplicates track)-->
alt+down(jumps back to clip)-->
right(goes to duplicated track)-->
delete(deletes duplicated clip)-->
enter (record new clip)

(to be triggered while already recording a clip)

so..insert this sequence for 1 key using 'bomes'.. bomes will execute it in less than a second when triggered
(enter-->alt+up+up-->ctrl+d-->alt+down-->right-->delete-->enter)
oh.. and have 'select clip on launch' enabled of course..
and the clips should be in 'global quantize' mode

you can automate different key sequences.. using this method..
and condense them to 1 midi note

another approach is to make for instance ..an 8 audio-track set..
where all channels are receiving from same input..
have 'exlusive record buttons' in prefs..
all tracks set to 'auto' for monitor
then you just need to map the lowest(/highest) row in the LaunchPad to the 8 tracks record buttons
you can switch recording between the tracks (only 1 at a time)
and record throughout the LaunchPad grid
(you lose 1 row of button real estate for the rec buttons)
..an obvious plus for this method is that you can set up each track with a different fx-chain and move between them..

other options...
if you have m4l I believe some custom looper can be made..
or at least a device to control your set for looping

cheers and good luck ...stay funky

[bagginz]

Hi Guys,
thanks for your input.

Or could you just zig zag two tracks with opposite and alternating stop buttons removed?

@Lazos,

That could work, but would involve me having to think too much.

I'm trying to set it up to be as idiot-proof as possible (which is actually a requirement in my case )

I already have too many things to think about onstage - managing guitar sounds, managing the arrangement, guitar improvisation, live mixing, interacting with the audience etc. - and my little brain is running at close to full capacity. So I'm anxious to make it as easy for myself as possible, with the minimum of thinking and clicks.

@3dot

Thanks for the Bomes sequence, that may well come in very handy.

I was trying to avoid using a 3rd party app. and hoping to do it all inside Live, but I think it may be necessary to use Bomes. It also opens the possibility to delete clips via my footswitch. Hmmm.

I bought Bomes a while ago, but never managed to get my head around it. Are there any videos around that explain it step by step?

another approach is to make for instance ..an 8 audio-track set..
where all channels are receiving from same input..have 'exlusive record buttons' in prefs......"

...."you can switch recording between the tracks (only 1 at a time)
and record throughout the LaunchPad grid (you lose 1 row of button real estate for the rec buttons)

Though this doen't fit into my current Live setup* it's opened up some interesting ideas and is food for thought.

* I'm trying to keep the tracks displayed on the launchpad to just 8 maximum, so I only have to scroll vertically. I'm grouping tracks to accomplish this.

Again, one less thing to think about and saves getting lost in a sea of lights - which btw can happen if I stop all clips, because the reference point on the launchpad (green lights) disappears completely, leaving just a grid of amber lights (Remember, I'm trying to get away from the laptop screen onstage)

Thanks again guys for the taking the time to reply and suggest some good ideas. I appreciate it.

cheers,
bagginz