Are there ANY live loopers here???

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
quandry
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Are there ANY live loopers here???

Post by quandry » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:17 am

Of course there are, I know I've conversed with at least a handful of fellow Live users here that perform live with Live, using it as a looping device to loop live instruments (guitar, bass, Per's sax, keyboards, vocals....). I just want to try to see how many people here are using Live to live loop, and what your thoughts are on 5, in particular with reguard to deleting flubbed clips on the fly. It seems I am the only live looper dissapointed by the continued lack of true midi "select on launch", absent since version 3??? Do no other live loopers make mistakes, or at least fear the possibility of not making a good loop on stage and having to deal with it???

With 3 and bomes/ox on pc, or midipipe/midistroke/controlaid on a mac, you could at least map a midi command to the "delete" key, and be sure that you could always delete a clip launching into recording via a midi foot pedal. With the absence of true midi "select on launch in 4 and now 5, the response is different than 3, and clips triggered with midi are not always selected under all circumstances. This is totally killing Live 4 and 5 for me as live loopers, am I totally alone here???

If you care about Live as a live looping device, please respond. Please check out my feature request here:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28694

We need to pipe up and get this crucial feature back in full, or be stuck using 3 forever. I know they supposedly brought it back in 5.0.2b6, but it is not the same as 3, not always 100% of the time (see other post). Thoughts or comments???

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

xuoham
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Post by xuoham » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:54 am

Hi Quandry,
i'm a live Live looper aswell, but a little OT since i don't record and use Live's delays instead... However, if you're curious, i have this 45mn looped guitar impro on this internet radio this month: link
Using Live's delays is very fast and precise and convenient. Only drawback: no undo! But it might be the beauty of it as well... Took me a while to make the right setup (for ex. delay feedback made by return track feeding itself instead of using feedback parameter, use of gates before the loops, with a 2 ms attack to avoid clicks, etc...). It's no hassle and a lot of fun.
Last edited by xuoham on Sun Aug 13, 2006 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

quandry
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Post by quandry » Fri Oct 28, 2005 3:20 am

xuoham wrote:Hi Quandry,
i'm a live Live looper aswell, but a little OT since i don't record and use Live's delays instead... However, if you're curious, i have this 45mn looped guitar impro on this internet radio this month: link
Using Live's delays is very fast and precise and convenient. Only drawback: no undo! But it might be the beauty of it as well... Took me a while to make the right setup (for ex. delay feedback made by return track feeding itself instead of using feedback parameter, use of gates before the loops, with a 2 ms attack to avoid clicks, etc...). It's no hassle and a lot of fun.
Right on, its cool to hear how differently we all use Live, I'm amazed at all the different approaches to this sublime application. Live definitely is a lot of fun. I guess the music I'm making live with Live is relying heavily on building up lots of layers of sound (like a full band) with live loops of instruments, but then exploiting the routing, effect, and crossfade possibilities of Live by mixing various elements in and out, and using effects to vary otherwise static loops. Thus, the delay option, though a very interesting musical approach, doesn't fit with the material I'm trying to perform. A few live excerpt examples:

http://www.em411.com/release/quandry_em ... slinky.mp3
http://www.em411.com/release/quandry_em ... ten_up.mp3

not our best stuff, but you get the idea...me on Live, bass, keys, live beats on a Drumkat, and my friend Kurt on guitar--Mixed Bag.

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

xuoham
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Post by xuoham » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:08 am

Yeah! Nice one... And you can play with the tempo, which is great and is impossible with the delays. Definitely,you said it, Live is a deep soft with so many approaches! 8O
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Paul

Per Boysen
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Post by Per Boysen » Fri Oct 28, 2005 12:31 pm

quandry wrote:A few live excerpt examples:
http://www.em411.com/release/quandry_em ... slinky.mp3
http://www.em411.com/release/quandry_em ... ten_up.mp3

not our best stuff, but you get the idea...me on Live, bass, keys, live beats on a Drumkat, and my friend Kurt on guitar--Mixed Bag.

Ryan
Nice music there! I like that cutting-it-up attitude! Also the accelerando finishing the first tune. Very cool!

I too do a lot of live looping with Live 5. But I tend to use less of Live's functionalities, except for using Live as a routing bay for MIDI controlling of third-part plug-ins like Augustus Loop (OS X tape delay simulator that let's you play the pitch of the looping audio while it's spinning in overdub mode) and some wonderful Cycling 74 Pluggo effects.

short example (guitar played live to a spoken word track):
http://www.looproom.com/flg/10_Looking_ ... itive_.mp3
Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
http://www.perboysen.com

Schmidi
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Post by Schmidi » Fri Oct 28, 2005 1:05 pm

cool stuff, lil archie bell and the drells huh?! Cool.
I guess I'm aiming for "live" music creation as well. I run my novation nova as midi channels 1-6 (each on its own track) and my microkorg as an audio in and as my controller. This allows for multi timbral use of the korg and controll of the allready multi timbral nova.
Then I bring in mostly premade drum loops and treat the whole affair like its a big dj set except I'm making the music as I go. I find techno, house, trance, and ambient to work best for the gear and my style of creation.
I really love the feeling of going in without a clue about what I'll make and often being surprised at the results. Keep on loopin!

Mbazzy
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Post by Mbazzy » Fri Oct 28, 2005 9:09 pm

Think live looping/improvising is to 99% of the Live users barren ground ... people tend to render their presequenced material to loops and loop it from there within Live ... full stop ... improvising for these people is turning a few efx knobs etc ...

But starting from a blank canvas ... oooh no .... I must say untill 2 years ago i was member of that first group as well, but after a laptopjamm I got hooked on the improvisational possibilities of electronic music (in some sense almost contradictionary to current EM if you see how linear it all is ... but it did fit my personal interests in the jazz scene) .. nowadays I build everything up improvising , looping, sampling, resampling .. as much as possible in realtime ... waiting for the happy accidents to happen .... haven't had to render a set in ages ... all recordings straight to stereo wav file (or if it's a piece I've already rehearsed and really want to record , I'll make kinda 8 track recording of it, but also played live )

Live (3.0.4) I'm mainly using as a virtual mixer and rack and to throw in the odd prerecorded sample .. most manipulations though are done in Plogue Bidule as this allows me more freedome in routing/.etc (as it is a fully modular host) ...

Referring to the "Mad DnB drummer" thread, I'd love to have one day the job Roli Mossiman has in Nerve where -in the best dub/dancehall tradition - the sound engineer is as much a part of the group and its sound as the performing musicians .
http://www.mbazzy.tk -
Mbazzy's "The dysfunctional playground, a scrapbook a bout the shape of useless things" now OUT on Retinascan - http://www.retinascan.de

quandry
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Post by quandry » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:04 pm

Mbazzy wrote:Think live looping/improvising is to 99% of the Live users barren ground ... people tend to render their presequenced material to loops and loop it from there within Live ... full stop ... improvising for these people is turning a few efx knobs etc ...
Thats what I was thinking as well...I too build ALL of my sets Live--zero pre-recorded material whatsoever--my set for the night starts out blank with no clips. Alas, though there seem to be few of us now, their is a growing number of live loopers in my region, performing live with various pedal loopers (boss, boomerang, line 6, etc.)--mostly guitarists, some good, some wankers. Nonetheless, it seems to be a growing market/trend, though I know for a fact no one else performing live looping in my region uses Live, and most have no idea of it existence/possibilities.

I think Ableton is seriously screwing themselves out of a fairly large market by not tying up the few loose ends of a)true midi "select on launch" like version 3, and b)an easily midi mappable "delete" key contained within Live to delete flubbed clips on the fly. Everything else is there--3 works like a dream--they just need to tie up these loose ends, and start to market themselves to guitarists--get a feature article in guitar player or whatever featuring some hot shit guitarist that live loops with Live. Guaranteed that the next few weeks would see a bunch of demo's and sales of Ableton by guitarists. As it is now, if loopers demo 5 to see how it stacks up against their Boss pedal, realize they can't delete an effed up loop, and its over before it began.


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

Machinate
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Post by Machinate » Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:27 am

Mbazzy wrote: Referring to the "Mad DnB drummer" thread, I'd love to have one day the job Roli Mossiman has in Nerve where -in the best dub/dancehall tradition - the sound engineer is as much a part of the group and its sound as the performing musicians .
oh man, I remember when Lamb was touring their Fear Of Fours album... their soundguy spent the whole gig dancing about, tweaking everything in sight... he had multiple feedback loops going on and he *clearly* new all the words of every song, so he could jump in with the right tweaks at the right time... awesome sight.

I look forward to the day where we can't tell the difference between techies and musicians... it'll come.
mbp 2.66, osx 10.6.8, 8GB ram.

robinschroder
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Post by robinschroder » Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:40 pm

Hi,

I have been experimenting with the demo version of Live 5 and am desperate to buy it as soon as I finalise on a new computer on which to run it (my old one's a bit slllloooowwwwww and Win 98 keeps crashing).

I am keen to use Live to do live looping and have worked around the difficulties associated with launching clips by using a Behringer BCR2000 along with a dual footswitch. Running a slightly modified version of Namehei's Mackie Control Emulator in Live (see Namehei's thread on this forum) and on the BCR2000 enables you to launch a selected clip by pressing one of the BCR's buttons (equivalent to the Mackie's 'Zoom' command) OR by clicking footswitch 1. This means you can start and stop a clip looping using this footswitch, then select a new clip and use the same switch to build up your arrangement etc. etc.

There are two options I have tried for footswitch 2. In the Mackie implementation, if you hold down the key equivalent to 'Option' as well as the aforementioned 'Zoom' key, you can stop your current clip recording and have have Live not play the clip immediately after. So, if you assign a latching footswitch to the 'Option' command, if you go wrong you can hit footswitch 2, then footswitch 1 and then footswitch 2 again (to cancel 'Option') and at least your mistake doesn't loop around and you can move on to another clip and try again. The other nice one for fast layering is to simply assign footswitch 2 to the 'move to the next clip' command, so you can build up an entire arrangement really fast without ever touching the keyboard or the mouse. Plus you don't have the complication of having to assign individual footswitch controllers to each and every cell.

(Edit)
Actually, with a foot pedal like the FCB1010, you could have these functions too (if you didn't mind the entire thing being tied up by the Mackie Control mode in Live) - all you'd need to do would be to rip the controller numbers from Namehei's implementation on the BCR2000.
(/Edit)

All the best,
Robin

quandry
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Post by quandry » Sun Oct 30, 2005 7:20 pm

interesting approach, Robin. I'll have to play around with it and see how it goes, sound like it could work for my delete problem
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

montrealbreaks
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Post by montrealbreaks » Mon Oct 31, 2005 12:52 am

Hey Ryan, long time no talk! How's Charlottesville?

Yeah, after Laptopalooza when Live 4 came out I started live looping, but I was recording midi clips playing Reason or a VST instrument, and then bouncing to audio and continuing to loop...

These days I start a set with 4 audio tracks on the left, receiving audio 4 midi tracks on the right with VSTis which output. I have a Bass VST synth, Percussion (Battery 2), and two other instruments which I sometimes change up running. I record the midi, and the audio of these improved phrases goes directly to my monitor channel but not the master out. This makes sure I have a good product. After 1 (or maybe 2) passes, I hit record on the particular audio track, and start recording and then looping.

I use an Akai MPD-16 for drums, a Remote 25 for keyboard and mixing, and a Nostromo speedpad for triggering the records and triggering clip plays on the consolidated audio clips.

Here's my question:

Does this count as Live Looping? I start with no audio files... But I don't actually mic anything acoustic up, and nobody hears what I looped until I have the midi clip playing the riff I want with the sound I want and then I record it in the audio.

Marcus

I have changed my username; Now posting as:


M. Bréqs

quandry
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Post by quandry » Mon Oct 31, 2005 1:00 am

hell yeah that is live looping in my book--good to hear from ya, Montrealbreaks. That is an interesting approach, why am I not surprised that you have a unique approach to this? Its like a hybrid DJ inspired live looping thing, and I'm sure the end result is smoother coming out the mains that the way I loop, where I'll occasionally flub a loop i'm playing live, or I'll have the levels or pans where I don't want them until I get my loop ang can jump to a fader. I guess a bit of the obvious immediacy of the crowd seeing you play what they are hearing is lost, but I'd have to think that people watching what you are doing can put it all together after a few tunes. Glad to hear about your setup--sounds cool.

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

louZ
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Post by louZ » Mon Oct 31, 2005 2:07 am

have you checked out the Kid Beyond video?

http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=a ... kid-beyond

quandry
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Post by quandry » Mon Oct 31, 2005 2:14 am

yeah, it is interesting. I personally think his "hands-free" approach is extremely limiting, but by using Bomes he is definitely getting about as far as you can without using your hands. He got roped into the Live 5 discussion on harmony-central.com when I raised my issues with no possibility to delete a clip on the fly in 5, due to lack of proper midi "select on launch". I was sure he was still using 3, but apparently had just switched from 3 to 5 and is cool with not being able to delete clips--ballsy. I like the luxury of knowing I can delete a clip on the fly, which is why I still use 3.
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

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