Looping: Managing accuracy and starts for percussion/real time playing

[IMage_Engine]

Hi All
I have seen a couple of posts but Im getting pretty frustrated;
Im a long time user of live (2010) and have generally used it electronically and the following is not an issue if clicking buttons etc.

Over that period I have migrated to fairly diverse percussion exclusively and while I still use electronics in the playing eg HPD20, Wavedrum, I major in recorded acoustic percussion in a live context with a number of others in the group. Using Live is a big part of that. What has always been an issue is that Im using a foot controller to cut in loops and as Im playing the on beat of the 1 in the bar within 10ms, it truncates the portion of my downbeat (the bit before the record starts)
In the past with other methods, I would just record a longer bar and then slide that 'note' slightly backward in time...but a far cry from just recording hybrid loop/impro...this doesnt obviously work for real time.

Doing this live in Live is an issue, you can hear the trim taking away the thump and whats worse, is that if I then go back later in the studio, the pre thump is missing from the recording or the on beat at the end of the loop is slightly different and glitches/clicks/clunks when looping back around
If I play the on beat slightly late, it trashes the micro groove

I simply want real time performance...well at least a simple compromise...it is very constricting and analytic...completely destroys feel when you are having to left brain that

So for the actual acoustic players of percussion/drums or anything that is real time critical...how are you doing it?

Its almost like it needs a real time macro to do some actions in this situation

[IMage_Engine]

Seriously???
No one else actually uses Live as a realtime performance tool for percussive real instruments and not notice this?

I did the steps manually and basically it needs to grab the last on beat hit and paste the portion after the loop end bracket back over the beginning at eg 16th or similar beat...this seems to be work but it would be nice if Live allowed for...well basic live performance stuff like this...its a bit half baked unless you are button pushing/using quantise/midi

[DunedinDragon]

I don't know if this is even relevant to what you're doing or not, but I do use Ableton in a live environment to provide various session backing instruments including percussion, but for percussion I use a Beat Buddy and control the Beat Buddy via a MIDI out track from my Ableton scene that starts and controls the various percussion parts on the Beat Buddy. I chose to do it this way because the Beat Buddy already has all the capabilities for coordinating the beat between different drum segments such as fills, transitions, main beats, alternative beats, endings and so forth. So all I have to do in my track is select the correct Beat Buddy song and start the track (which coordinates the start of the Beat Buddy with the Ableton session) and everything else is perfectly coordinated.

[IMage_Engine]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Unfortunately not the same...as mentioned backing tracks are all pre recorded etc so you can do what you want

I def dont use Live for backing tracks...playing in a group with real peeps is the magic...other than very simple synthetic loops etc but I could do that on quantiloop without all the overhead...its brilliant but suffers from the same thing...although if I cant get a solution with Live, Stephan Marx (quantiloop author) is pretty responsive.

I play in a group of 4 and I will have different acoustic percussion which I loop as we are playing and build up with the rest of the group...the record channels are coming from the mixer so I can also snap diff players so they can do layering (for impro)

So my question on relates to...well...Live being used lived for real time.
I thought there would have been a lot more people playing real instruments/with Live in this context but it seems to be 'button' more than it used to be.

The issue is only really noticeable in timing critical stuff...that appears no one else is using it for...one of those cases where tech is the master but it could be dealt with by Live

BTW if you want a much simpler (4 track) setup without all the Live overhead...try quantiloop...it has built in support for Beat Buddy

Cheers

[[jur]]

Are you recording in to Looper or into clips?

Im using a foot controller to cut in loops and as Im playing the on beat of the 1 in the bar within 10ms, it truncates the portion of my downbeat (the bit before the record starts)

Does Live "truncates", or are you lacking precision because of latency or simply because live looping is hard and needs a high level of precision etc... ?
Or maybe I don't fully understand you, and you are talking about this?

you can hear the trim taking away the thump and whats worse, is that if I then go back later in the studio, the pre thump is missing from the recording or the on beat at the end of the loop is slightly different and glitches/clicks/clunks when looping back around

Well, that's the nature of a loop, and people often use tricks like a slight reverb to hide the cuts etc... I heard that the Loopy Ipad app has recently implemented an awesome feature to prevent these hard cuts, so it means that:
a) it's doable
b) if it's doable, that a very valid feature request for Live!

[IMage_Engine]

Are you recording in to Looper or into clips?

I tried looper but now its just more flexible to record into a clip

Does Live "truncates", or are you lacking precision because of latency or simply because live looping is hard and needs a high level of precision etc... ?
Or maybe I don't fully understand you, and you are talking about this?

Micro groove/feel of course relies on periodic specific timings eg Djembe Fola. Its never about playing to strict grid unless you are an 80s drum machine baha. So intrinsically the on beat feels right when its slightly in front of the beat...so the on beat record of the clip is truncated in most cases unless I play behind the beat in more laid back which is far less critical anyway is its usually slower tempo.
In reality, even with midi emulating a real drummer, there is actually the attack portion and first part of the kick that is actually on the beat...midi is always behind because the sample starts from HF tick rather than the quarter wave of the LF (sub actually) transient. In a live situation with 1000w in the sub...its a noticeably (physical not computer IO) latency (imvho anyway).

This is the art of rhythm vs product ie quantise (which of course is fine when used in context; Kraftwerk Robots is great with that and one of my favs for that genre). Machines force this as well (my early experience being drumatix/synsonics/Korg sq10 etc)

This is additionally why a lot of current music is so static/sterile in timing; in many cases, hard quantise is the go to; oblivious to the subtleties of human response.

Now extending to pitch and timing of the most expressive instrument in the world....the voice...absolutely hate the amount of autotune. No doubt will look back and say...what was all that??? (compulsory auto tune); Its just horrible as a side note.

Well, that's the nature of a loop, and people often use tricks like a slight reverb to hide the cuts etc..

Sure...but reverb etc is all a pretty ugly workaround when you consider timing elements (and what you get to feel) is pretty much dry; you definitely wouldnt want to add reverb to 50hz...it turns to mud pretty quickly. Ideally you want uncluttered pure waveform for that sort of kinetic energy and hence why sidechain for kick>bass in now such a recognised thing. It may be a bit noticeable in a bedroom...but wow...in a PA it is of course huge...hence why I put up this post.

I think the best compromise would be the end beat crossfading on to the start of the clip...not perfect but at least the play is always good and the only lost snip is on first launch of clip eg 1/32 (user defineable) of the following bar being the 'hold' value and then a user definable xfade eg 10 msec

Maybe its just because Im getting older and maybe a bit better in playing (which is bound to happen with practice...I am def no guru) but its really
noticeable and very annoying these days.

Appreciate your reply

[[jur]]

Are you starting/ending your clip recording with quantization??

[IMage_Engine]

Are you starting/ending your clip recording with quantization??

Yes, of course.
Everyone else in the band is playing to the click at that time...so I didnt think there were really any options?
(the iem control has a switch to put click in/out so its not too much of an issue)

Have thought about it a lot...not sure how else it can be done without the end xfade as previously mentioned...unless you have something in mind maybe?

[chapelier fou]

Use looper with overdub instead ?
This way you can capture sound instantly and still having it looping on the grid.

[IMage_Engine]

Um but I need it to be looped on the grid as per the post?
Im playing with other people/instruments/arp etc or sometimes by myself.
I know I can use set & follow tempo but I find this very flaky...I will normally set a tap with my foot to get everything close in that case and then start looping
Still clunks on the loop around too

[IMage_Engine]

Im wondering...does no one else struggle with this???

Im doing tracks now and its really super annoying...
Sure If you are doing hard quantised clips etc but music is about feel and the micro position of rhythm is critical...I guess
Previously doing loops on hardware samplers, you could xfade the end with the beginning and feel would be retained

I guess no one else notices else there would be a lot more noise here...but I encouraged you to even tap out a rhythm with feel and try looping it...something with early on beat and shuffled 3rd note...it just doesnt work
Not without recording a longer bar, exporting with an extra bar in front and end and xfade in eg Wavelab which has built in functions...then you really get it...
Anyway

[IMage_Engine]

This is still the most annoying feature of Live, well should I say missing feature
Im tracking atm...all live played and on certain beats of the bar, the beat is played slightly early as part of the micro groove
BTW this has nothing to do with clip quantisation etc unless you want to be a robot or you just do edm with quantise on everything
When professional musicians play, they have mastery over feel and this can be seen in how they play around the beat... which equals groove...and its just not happening in Ableton. We do want to grab loops spontaneously during the play as well on some of the album tracks so this is absolutely killing it

This is so frustrating as a reasonable workaround would be to allow a loop to include the pre on beat sound of a loop eg 50ms and cross fade or cut the end into the loop much like old hardware samplers could do

When the loop is started it also cuts off the pre on beat eg kick because the feel is ahead of the beat.
This is NOT midi, This is not trying to squash the humanity out of the playing
When real musicians, actually ones that play an instrument, together in a room with each other, all the emotion is present, when excited in chorus etc the tempo is slightly higher, playing is louder and yes, the beat moves ahead
When laid back groove is happening its behind the beat = emotion

Please reply if you are going to have another suggestion about straightening it up.
I just want to produce music with real people, with real tools that deal with humanity

Does no one else even notice???

Please HELP!!!

Cheers

[chapelier fou]

To me, a looper with overdub always on and some trick to punch in/out the source into it would work as long as you are ok with defining the loop length in advance.

[IMage_Engine]

Cheers
There are a number of peeps playing and ableton follow the tempo
That might be ok with 1 person playing...I appreciate your gesture...but yeah thats not going to work.
What is needs is a function where the last (defined) window at the end of the loop can be spliced realtime to the front of it. It wouldnt matter if you were on the beat as it means silence is applied but if its the beginning of a eg down beat kick, it would splice back at the beginning and everyone would be happy as you could turn the option off for those who dont care

At least for those actually producing, a loop xfade function would be good enough for the time being

As mentioned above, Loopy Ipad seems to do it??? A $29 ipad app

[chapelier fou]

There is probably a M4L solution for this, but it can be super tedious when trying to fit different situations.
Assuming you're in 4/4 to keep it simple, basically, triggering a clip record should happen on beat 4 (or beat -1 if you preffer) instead on beat 1, and then, if you re-launch the clip manually it should move the start marker to beat 2 of the recorded clip so the actual first beat is at the right place.

In this scenario, you could use global quantization, but the recording should be triggered before beat 4 for obvious reasons.
Am I right ?

I could give t a try to code it because I think it's an important matter, but with absolutely no promise, especially for the "when" (I'm super busy).