Dear Mr. Henke, we are voting now for Looper in Live 8!

babkubwa · Post by **babkubwa** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:20 pm

props again to angstrom -

the best looper I've found in or out of ableton live yet. abes have an amazing prototype handed to them on a silver plater there.

kramerica · Post by **kramerica** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:40 pm

babkubwa wrote:to the people who can't see the point in live including a live loop feature .... your comments just make me want to strangle something!!!

sorry to be such a geek,

but really - the kind of gigs this would create. Such a crying shame if Ableton gets this program so far and misses out on this one. Feels like they've come a thousand miles and are just an inch away....

excuse the dramatism and threats of violence, - too much lager/eggs

+1

This is such an easy concept to incorporate and I can't for the life of me understand why this is repeatedly overlooked. Gibson/ Oberheim has been using this technology for more than a decade.

The most basic looping feature that people want is: Real-time looping of the first riff (press/stomp #1 = "record"; press/stomp #2 = "stop record & playback", then MIDI syncing every additional loop to that original riff (if loop #1 = 86.5 bpm, loops #2, #3, etc. will be 86.5 bpm but at how ever many bars you want, perfectly synced with loop #1).

Right now you have to play to a click track or a pre-composed drum track or other sample loop to make sure your first riff is in time and synced with additional loops. This really kills creativity and doesn't make sense for people like me that are using odd rhythms which fight against click tracks and which would require time and effort to program even a simple drum beat to make sure the riff is played as originally intended. Plus, I'm not a drummer, so requiring me to program some beat may (and often does) result in me forgetting the riff I just thought up or the losing the interest in continuing.

nowtime · Post by **nowtime** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:50 pm

dj superflat wrote:what you've described (john) is really just a live multitracker, not a live looper, which provides real sound on sound recording, and all the nifty things you can do with that.

I agree.
A few points;

1 - One of the big benefits of sound-on-sound audio overdubbing on a single track is using the Feedback amount. You can create evolving loops that change over time. Raising the feedback amount has the newly played material sounding louder as the previous loops decrease in volume. Lowering the level records the new parts more quietly, while keeping the previous sounds at a nice up-front volume. And I'm not just talking about ambient loops. You can create intricate melodic and rhythmic textures and solos and harmonies that can't be done any other way. A very long Delay could come somewhat close but it is not the same animal. And as Superflat says, add to this a doubling and halving and reversing button for even more fun.

2 - Freedom from the sequencer. With a looper you can play from the heart or the earth or wherever you play from, loop it, and away you go. Try looping on-the-fly in Live without the sequencer being the boss!

3 - The convenience of having an 8-track looper on ONE TRACK in Live would be sweet. Imagine an unfolding submixer like in Drumrack! No muss, no fuss.

4 - Imagine looping a riff freely without the sequencer, having Live calculate the BPM and voila! Start dropping in whatever you want. The sound of your first loop would have a uniqueness of sound that is not rigid. Or you could be jamming with musicians, in the flow, in the feel, hit or kick your start button and loop button and you would have a very organic sounding loop, whether 4 bars or 32 bars, and again drop in some super-dialed drums or bass or what-have-you. It would REVOLUTIONIZE live electronica.

I'm gonna have to find a workable looper for Live, whether Ableton comes through or not.

Mesmer · Post by **Mesmer** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:01 pm

I agree with you guys.

In the meantime, I have found this to be _So_Much_Fun_
MLR+Monome

And there is another project to sync the controller to an Ableton Session... called Monochrome (haven't used that, though).

If only there was a way to hack away in Max/MSP and make it take control of Abe sound objects, channels, clips......

(oh wait...!)
My line of thinking here is this: if life gives you lemmons...
(and other BS like that

)

theque · Post by **theque** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:22 am

i think it is really important.

kid beyond is an ableton pin up boy, who is used to sell live. but his set up is very complex and requires bomes midi translator. not a very good advertisment for live.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:51 am

theque wrote:i think it is really important.

kid beyond is an ableton pin up boy, who is used to sell live. but his set up is very complex and requires bomes midi translator. not a very good advertisment for live.

very complex? maybe for an aussie.

it's just bomes and an FCB1010, lots of people are doing it.

a setting to set the global tempo to the same as the first clip you record would be sexy.

controlvoltage · Post by **controlvoltage** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 4:16 am

seems like you could have multiple tracks/clips sending audio to an aux bus or another track, and record a clip on the new track which would be a sound-on-sound mixdown of whatever was looping... this could all be mapped to your midi foot controller.

or if you use a PC you could use Audiomulch, which live-loops like nobody's bizness in addition to many other fantastico features. Unfortunately I can't reWire mulch into Live, or get them to share an ASIO driver... which has been annoying me for, oh, 4 years or so now (since I started using Live).

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 4:20 am

controlvoltage wrote:seems like you could have multiple tracks/clips sending audio to an aux bus or another track, and record a clip on the new track which would be a sound-on-sound mixdown of whatever was looping... this could all be mapped to your midi foot controller.

exactly. motherbrain only made a few posts but this one is priceless:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20174

forge · Post by **forge** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:01 am

eisnein wrote:oh yeah- also for the ability to just be able to loop without warping........

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=75828

bigbadotis · Post by **bigbadotis** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:02 am

Tone Deft wrote:
theque wrote:i think it is really important.

kid beyond is an ableton pin up boy, who is used to sell live. but his set up is very complex and requires bomes midi translator. not a very good advertisment for live.
very complex? maybe for an aussie.

Replace "very complex" in what theque said with "needlessly complex" and I think his statement is very accurate.

How about instead of the motherbrain solution we:

1. Drop a looper on a track.
2. Loop as much as we want, infinitely, without having to setup a track in advance for each iteration of a loop.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:10 am

bigbadotis wrote:
Tone Deft wrote:
theque wrote:i think it is really important.

kid beyond is an ableton pin up boy, who is used to sell live. but his set up is very complex and requires bomes midi translator. not a very good advertisment for live.
very complex? maybe for an aussie.
Replace "very complex" in what theque said with "needlessly complex" and I think his statement is very accurate.

How about instead of the motherbrain solution we:

1. Drop a looper on a track.
2. Loop as much as we want, infinitely, without having to setup a track in advance for each iteration of a loop.

how is using live and bomes "needlessley comlex" honostly? how bout this, a little idea I've had..... "do what it takes to get the job done" sounds like a plan to me.

I mean really, once you get bomes set up all you do is double click on live and double click on bomes and you're going perfectly. so thats 4 clicks with a bit of preperation...

nowtime · Post by **nowtime** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:39 am

Johnisfaster wrote: how is using live and bomes "needlessley comlex" honostly? how bout this, a little idea I've had..... "do what it takes to get the job done" sounds like a plan to me.

I'm sure that I, for one, will get into Bomes someday and wonder why i hadn't sooner.

But this live multi-track loop recording (ala kid beyond) is only one aspect of a Looper. Audio overdubbing is a very important element, as is freedom from the sequencer for the initial loop. This is the Ableton Looper that I propose we vote on. It should also not take up your whole screen, but should exist on 1 track.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:52 am

nowtime wrote:
Johnisfaster wrote: how is using live and bomes "needlessley comlex" honostly? how bout this, a little idea I've had..... "do what it takes to get the job done" sounds like a plan to me.

I'm sure that I, for one, will get into Bomes someday and wonder why i hadn't sooner.

But this live multi-track loop recording (ala kid beyond) is only one aspect of a Looper. Audio overdubbing is a very important element, as is freedom from the sequencer for the initial loop. This is the Ableton Looper that I propose we vote on. It should also not take up your whole screen, but should exist on 1 track.

the thing is this, live isn't intended to be a live looper. if I came up with this idea of using the clip colors to draw pictures in session view and then other people started doing that and we demanded that live give us extra features to make drawing pictures in session view easier to do do you think they should listen to us? no cause they are gonna make the program what they vision it to be and what will sell more (which I hate to say most users of live aren't live loopers)

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:10 am

Johnisfaster wrote:the thing is this, live isn't intended to be a live looper.

I couldn't agree less.

Live makes a great looper, so much so that DAW users who don't know Live think of it as only for loop based toonage. Kid Beyond and others are using it for Live looping with great success. maybe it's far removed from how you work but Live has outstanding potential for a live looping tool add on.

I'm not hip to the overdubbing thing, isn't that destructive? I'd rather have take after take from track to track so that each overdub is another clip, then I can sort through each take later. maybe sub-tracks like an expanded drum rack that can be folded in and out.

'needlessly complex' works for me, I think we all agree there's a widget that Ableton can give us that does what a Bomes script would do. I ended up going to max/msp to make one for myself but would still love to have built in functionality into Live.

the guys who have been asking for the global tempo to be based on the first recorded loop are onto a great idea.

theque · Post by **theque** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:23 am

well, bomes is pc only. so a problem there. secondly you gotta pay for it.

really allowing live looping within live should be a feature, especially when one of the artists who promotes the company is a live looper.and that feature is not part of the program.

just seems a little silly. and really is not a massive advancement in technology.

Dear Mr. Henke, we are voting now for Looper in Live 8!

Ableton Looper for Live 8