Live looping with floor control and midi translator

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Loopy-Joe
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Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 6:55 pm

Live looping with floor control and midi translator

Post by Loopy-Joe » Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:41 pm

I want to use ableton to do some live-on the fly audio looping using a floor control(fcb1010) and a midi translator(midistroke on OSX) to trigger a series of KEY commands when you hit a floor switch.....similar to how kid beyond uses it. Limited success so far in 5.2.

Can anyone provide detailed info about the most efficient way to set this up?
Ideal scenario is a START/STOP toggle on each track and a RECORD switch on each track(that deletes any previously recorded loop!).

So far I'm using a single scene with 5 channels.
Ideally you would FOCUS on a track and then use a COMMON TRANSPORT to control it (start/stop/clear/delete/record/reverse)but live doesnt work that way.
Start and stop is easy...problem is once you record into a slot...things get complicated. What's the proper sequence of commands to clear any existing recording and start a new one?

Focus select channel > Select slot >Clear slot >Record Arm >Select slot >Record

Seems staight forward but it doesnt really work.
How do you FOCUS on a channel?(above the first slot?)
Whats the proper squence of remote midi or key commands to achieve this simple action (Select a channel>clear its contents>arm and star recording)????

Any help would be much appreciated! thanks kindly

Loopy-Joe
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Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 6:55 pm

Live Looping

Post by Loopy-Joe » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:44 am

OK...perhaps a simpler question
ANYONE using Live for live..off the floor looping?
Some tips please!! on the best way to set up with a floor control
and perhaps using a midi translator(to stack some commands into multiple actions)?
to achieve a basic multi loop setup(record,stop,play,delete)

Gabe
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Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:48 am

Post by Gabe » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:54 am

MIDISTROKE!! If this works I'll cream my pants! I spent hours looking for something like this a few days ago, and then hours more futzing with Applescript, trying to trigger keystrokes. One thing though is that midistroke may translate midi messages into keystrokes, but can it be pointed at a specific application, or does it just dump into stdin > front application?

I'll do some research and get back to yall. This is exactly what I need to do.

Gabe

Gabe
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Post by Gabe » Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:22 pm

Definitely doable!

All it takes is some sort of midi controller assigned to a slot to record & playback. The tricky part is deleting the clip around the time you want to record another. That's where MidiStroke saves the day.

I mapped my sustain pedal (for lack of better foot controller at the moment) to the midi note corresponding to the slot (slotnote?) I want to record to. When I press the pedal, the midi event that triggers the delete key being pressed is sent 10ms before the slotnote so the clip will be deleted and recording will begin soon thereafter (I have record quantization set to bar). It's a little sketchy sometimes, and now and then the clip gets deleted but recording doesn't start. Setting the delay higher should take care of this, but I want to be able to hit the pedal at the last instant possible and still trigger the recording on time.

I think that the more robust system would involve two scenes. When you record the first loop, it goes into the first scene. When you record the second loop the priority action would be the recording, so that would go into the next scene and the first clip would be deleted once recording is underway. The "active" slot would toggle back and forth.

The biggest problem remaining is keeping the selected slot in the right place. With MidiStroke you can map midi to arrow keys (which will take care of the toggling mentioned above). If one midi->arrow key event somehow gets lost, the selected slot won't be consistent with the toggling & recording.

There's a foggy overview of one way to do it. I'm about to leave for a couple days so if one of you beats me to writing the interpreter, don't forget to share! I'll tackle it when I get back at any rate.

Gabe

quandry
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Post by quandry » Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:29 pm

There's tons of info of live looping on this site, a handful of us perform by live looping with Live--use the search to find a lot of threads about it--search for posts by me, and/or keywords like "live looping" or "kid beyond".

Basically, you can do most anything you want to with Live if you get creative, which sometimes involves using bomes or mac equivalent. Most people seem to run into the issue of only wanting to map a select amount (usually 5-8 ) of clip slots for looping, as you are limited by the number of pedals on the 1010 (and switching banks all the time sux). I personally just have my first scene worth of clips slots mapped--in between songs on stage I just highlight all of my loops with the mouse from the song I just finished and delete them, making room for a new batch of live loops. If you are into posterity and want to keep the loops, just highlight the loops with the mouse and drag them way down to another scene slot. Or, if you have to be hands-free: get Live 6, then choose "select clip on launch", then if you want to delete a clip that is looping in track 1: simply hit your midi pedal that you use to loop on this clip slot--this selects the playing clip (you'll need to select this clip in time with your global quantization so that it keeps looping regularly). After you select the clip with your midi pedal, you can hit a midi pedal that is translated (bomes or midistroke) to act as the qwerty "delete" key--this will delete your clip on-the-fly. This is a crucial fix in live 6--in 4 and 5 this feature didn't work. This is also how to delete a clip you flub while recording on-the-fly--just hit your delete pedal anytime during recording and your clip dissapears and you can try to record your loop again.

my $.01

Ryan
Dell Studio XPS 8100 Windows 7 64-bit, 10 GB RAM. RME Multiface, Avalon U5 & M5, Distressor, Filter Factory, UC33e, BCR-2000, FCB1010, K-Station, Hr 824 & H120 sub, EZ Bus, V-Drums, DrumKat EZ, basses, guitars, pedals... http://www.ryan-hughes.net

gsinibaldi
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Post by gsinibaldi » Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:27 pm

I've had some success with this:

http://gamingmouse.com/weapon.php?pid=30

Its basically a mouse you put on the floor. You can program the 4 buttons in a bunch of different ways, create different mouse profiles, etc. I do all my keystroke mapping in Live then use the fragpedal to trigger the keystrokes. Works pretty cool

G

Gabe
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Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:48 am

Post by Gabe » Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:57 pm

That's great that Live 6 finally has more midi mapping features. Alas, I cannot afford the upgrade, nor a new computer to run it on. Believe it or not, I'm using a Powerbook G3 @ 500mhz. Live 4 runs well enough, but don't try to run any other apps. Live 3 was actually better, I own 4 not 3. 3 was a little better at remote control as well.

I don't even want to have to look at my computer when I'm playing, so I'm attempting to completely control everything via hardware interfaces. I've pretty much figured it out too. Overall, it sure would be nice to have Live 6.

It would be great if Ableton employed a few people to comb the forum archives and populate a knowledgebase so this kind of info was easier to locate. If anyone wants to hire me to do exactly that, PM me!

Gabe

Loopy-Joe
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Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 6:55 pm

Post by Loopy-Joe » Sun Dec 31, 2006 5:53 pm

Thanks guys!
Need some time to chew on this.
I did search the forum as suggested but didn't find alot of info so I posted this.
Sounds like 6 deals with the crucial issue of deleting a clip on the fly
and mapping to the arrow keys opens up some possibilities.
The ideal wishlist feature would still be a dedicated common transport that works on the focused track or clip so loopers could set a few common commands on the floorboard and simply select the track or loop to operate on.
And the obvious one is audio overdub...
anyway
cheers..thanks
and goovy new year!

Gabe
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Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:48 am

Post by Gabe » Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:01 am

starting a new thread

fatrabbit
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Post by fatrabbit » Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:37 am

Look at Mackie Control emulation (search) - any MIDI controller can be set to perform some nice functions that this provides (undo, delete etc.).

EDIT: Another point reading some of the posts above - in MIDI map mode there is a mapping that appears under the main scenes so that it plays/records whatever clip slot is highlighted in the channel (so you don't have to map a specific foot pedal to a specific clip slot). I've explained it craply, but it's in the manual.

Loopy-Joe
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Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 6:55 pm

Post by Loopy-Joe » Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:05 pm

I assume your refering the the "track launch btn" and not the "track title bar"
The manual is vague about the specifics of some of these actions.
If anything the pop up info is more revealing....still, there's some funky things happening when you stack midi commands using a translator...a series of commands like select,delete,record ...are sketchy...but thats still 5.2

Gabe
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Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:48 am

Post by Gabe » Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:42 am

So, allegedly Live 6 can delete clips via midi... Anyone know how to do this?? I'm poised and ready to buy it if this can be done.

Gabe

jackmazzotti
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Post by jackmazzotti » Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:40 pm

gsinibaldi wrote:I've had some success with this:

http://gamingmouse.com/weapon.php?pid=30

Its basically a mouse you put on the floor. You can program the 4 buttons in a bunch of different ways, create different mouse profiles, etc. I do all my keystroke mapping in Live then use the fragpedal to trigger the keystrokes. Works pretty cool

G
would i be correct to assume that i could do the following with that 4 button gaming mouse in L6?

use 1 botton to scroll up and 1 to scroll down clip slots
i button to start midi recording on the selected clip and the other to stop

if so then I am buying it

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