Advice on getting started recording and looping instruments?

[turnstylenyc]

Hi all,

I seem to be having trouble getting started recording and looping instruments in Live. It's my first time using software like this, so please pardon my simple questions. Here's what I'm doing:

1) I'm playing around with keyboard or guitar, and decide I like something.

2) I tap my tempo into Live (I mapped the "q" on my laptop to tap tempo).

3) I start the metronome or a simple drum, arm the Audio In track, click a record 'circle' in a clip within the armed track in Session. Then (after recording has begun) I reach down and start playing.

4) So now I'm recording, and I play the part I like several times, and then reach up and press the laptop space bar to stop.

Is that right so far?

The real trouble I seem to be having is when I then open the clip, and try to adjust the loop start/stop, it usually doesn't loop nicely.

Also, when I try to record additional loops (eg, a bass part or whatever) often the rhythm/timing seems significantly off.

I'd love to hear any tips from people who like to use Live to record and loop physical instruments.

Thank you kindly!

(EDIT: ps, I don't really understand warping, quantization, etc., and I'm not even sure if that's relevant here -- I haven't changed any of those settings from the defaults.)

[turnstylenyc]

Why not just set a tempo in Live that you are happy with and record some stuff to that? Stick to whole numbers to make life easier. Tap tempo is more for working out the tempo of a tune really. Don't record in loop mode, loop it afterwards.

Thanks for chiming in. I'm starting off by noodling on guitar or keyboard. If I stumble onto something I like, I tap that tempo into Live (and then I tend to round it to the nearest 5).

Quantization means pulling events onto a grid. There is a record quantization which will tidy up any notes you play out of time. You can set the amount it does that, so it corrects bad notes but doesn't lose the human feel. Forget about warping for now, you don't need it yet.

The problem I seem to have is after I've recorded, I'll open the clip and try moving the loop start/end bars -- but it almost never sounds right at the loop point -- so I'm wondering if there's a common procedure to fix that.

PS: do people tend to do this sort of recording in Session or Arrange?

[bosonHavoc]

Practice playing with a Click track

check out live looper and really get to know it

get a good feel for Ableton's Clip quantization settings
ableton is a giant looper
and looper expands on that

[Vios]

Is the driver error compensation setup correctly? This will cause your audio to be delayed and so not aligned with the beat signature in Live due to driver recording delay. You can set it up correctly by going View->Help View. The click on "Learn to setup your audio hardware"

[turnstylenyc]

Is the driver error compensation setup correctly? This will cause your audio to be delayed and so not aligned with the beat signature in Live due to driver recording delay. You can set it up correctly by going View->Help View. The click on "Learn to setup your audio hardware"

Ha, by "driver error compensation" I thought you were referring to *ME* -- now that would be a feature I could really use.