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

[Homebelly]

i think the best way to implement a looper is by extending the clip follow actions.
Instead of only options like next clip, prev clip also have options like:

- After recording one loop, record off and loop again.
- continue recording in overdub mode

Ofcourse there are some inconsistencies in the current philosophy, but I think the concept of clip envelope can be taken to a higher level

this would rock my world.
On a side note,, i would also love to see the master track be able to have clips assigned to it so that wole scenes could be controlled by follow action easily,,

[Jeroen]

Ha! Finally someone agrees. I think this is such a logical choice for Live to implement and avoid many issues. But since nobody responded I gave up. Bit of a latency in the response, but thanks!

[babkubwa]

Got a great deal with , http://www.absolutemusic.co.uk

I bought the RC50 at the same time as a HPD10 new for 553pounds. I think the RC50 was about 250 -

I got them to price match these guys -
http://www.totalmusicsupply.com/Models. ... elID=92749

[GUY SMILEY]

Robert Henke said it himself just a couple of weeks ago, "you looping guys be sure to remind us how much you want a looper" (that's not an exact quote).

Well here it is and now is the time. Let your voice be heard.

For those of you who think Live is already a looper, you haven't used an audio looper. It is very much a musician's tool unlike anything else that exists. An Ableton looper would be revelational. If you're not convinced, please discuss. Let's get this in 8!

what about angstro looper ? works a treat - even looks like its part of Ableton thanks to the GUI ? I was so impressed I donated !!

[tjwett]

...it would be great in 8 to overdub easily. Into the same clip.

why?

for one thing, that would be intensive on RAM, CPU and likely not an easy thing to code.

second, don't you find that rather limiting? what if you fuck up on the second pass? you've ruined everything up to that point.

and even more limiting; with everything sitting in a single clip you are then stuck within the routing bounds of that one track. if you have each pass on its own clip or track then you have a hell of a lot more options for effects etc.

and what if you want to actually do something with the material after the fact? if it's all mashed into one clip then that's end of it. with everything in its own clip you are free to do whatever you want with them later.

personally, if i was on stage i'd feel a lot safer knowing that every move i make wasn't the end-all and if i fuck up a pass then the whole thing has shit the bed.

if you want the best and most solid live audio looper money can buy then just download Live 3.

[Robert Henke]

Dear Forum Familly,

thanx for the input and the suggestions! The discussion is indeed highly welcome, the topic "looper" is something we have on our radar and your input certainly will help us to decide if and how we might work on things here in the future. Some things we would find interesting: Do you think a looping effect is the way to go or do you think intelligent recording / playback of clips is it? Which existing loopers do you like and for what reasons? Also feel free to add (detailed) suggestions in the Wishes Forum here.

Best, Robert

btw.: The correct title of this thread would be: "Dear Ableton Specification Group, we are... ". All important decisions about adding or changing features are made by a group of five, six people nowadays, after long discussions, to make sure the result works for a large number of users. I am part of this team of course, and I have a tendency to say: I WANT THIS. or I DO NOT WANT THAT TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, but most of the time it helps more to have good arguments

[glu]

A recording overdub that could layer loops and deactivate layers of loops --perhaps through racks--would tickle my fancy Mr. Henke.

[Jeroen]

As suggested, I would like a looping implementation by use of clip follow actions or something like this.

As a looping plugin I think Guitar rigs is not too bad. You can overdub on several layers and do several "undo" in case of "fuck ups".

[Angstrom]

The main features I like in a looper are

iterative 'fading' of previous loops
chopping and reversing of the buffer
An open feedback path (for insertion of effects)

In performance
When using loopers to perform music the crucial feature is fade, the fading out of the old loops to give audio space for the new ones. Because of the immediate nature of looping live it is important to have a automatic facility to place older passes increasingly further back in the mix. On my old looper I had the control 'touch' which used stereo trickery to help out here.

Another element that people like is layers, I use Live effect racks with a chain select to route the incoming audio into one of 3 loopers or to bypass them. There's an image below to illustrate what i mean.

In resynthesis
I also like to use loopers for studio re-synthesis, it is possible to create really interesting sounds by reprocessing audio on each pass. Using devices in the feedback path which enhance or produce harmonics means sound shaping is possible in a real 'hands-on' way.
My newer looper has a 're-trigger' which jumps the buffer read index to on-beat areas in the buffer. These jumps are written as audio back to the buffer and so are repeated. This is like a manually triggered beatRepeat. If I I am looping a drum loop and stab '3' four times quickly I will most likely get 3 snare drums extracted and then re-added into the loop.


Although I really like the idea of the looper being integrated into the clip / wave functionality, I am not sure if it would be possible to provide the crucial features such as fade, re-synthesis, etc. In addition - the performance GUI which is part of a Looper might sit uneasily with the currently cramped slip control area.

perhaps the overdub in clips must be a separate feature?




the looper I am currently using is this one I made myself - which is thrown together really, it is constantly in flux and a bit ugly.



there is a modulating delay in the feedback path.
You can also see the retrigger buttons at the bottom, I should probably use a 'map key-range to re-trigger start position' instead of 8 fixed buttons

I use 3 of these in a rack, like this :


the chain select will send my incoming instrument audio to one of the three loopers, 4 bar 8 bar or 16 bar (or bypass/clean).
This is my standard looping setup for just noodling ambiently

[Homebelly]

I can see two ways of doing this,,

1- in my mind the whole mess could be controlled from the master channel using some form of clip based follow actions and auto grouping of tracks that would then be able to control whole scenes in the session view.
part of this would be to allow you to define the number of channels that are controlled by the follow actions commands from the master channel, this number could be predefined as any number from one through to as many as you like or, until being told to stop by some external trigger once the looping performance is complete.
The clips would be created and armed in side the scene by selecting the the hosting track and then start recording based on a global quantize value, probably based on one bar increments, but there is no reason why it couldn't be a smaller note based value.
once armed and recording the clip will continue to record until you either leave that channel strip and move to next one, or pass on some other command to exit record mode.
The clip would then start to play back and loop based on the global quantize value.

2- Another option might be to extend the idea of the "Split to midi" command in live7 where by the same track is able to host several "takes" creating a new clip on a mirror of the hosting track that are able to play back at the same time. This would mean that you would be limited to the same input/output source and also any FX, volume or panning settings that are on the parent channel. Once your performance is complete you could choose to keep it and have live turn these "Performance clips" into real copies on their own unique tracks, or maybe even merge them into one file in a kind of freeze/flatten type command.

The way i see it both these ideas could be used for either MIDI or audio,,,

[dj superflat]

there's going to be a divide here between (i) liveloopers like beyond and imogene and (ii) trad guitar looperists. while i use the former technique occasionally, so that you build up pre-planned songs a loop at a time, effectively having an on the fly multitracker, what's most useful for me -- and what live's least able to do at this time -- is real sound on sound looping. you need everything on one track/channel/clip so that you can then manipulate the entire loop at once, cutting out parts, reversing, inserting sound, on the loop as a whole. if things are divided up into separate tracks, that sort of functionality is hard to put together, because you'd need to be able to have some sort of track lock so you can punch in to all at same time, reverse a small section, insert some deadspace, etc.

with all respect to angstro, whose looper i like very much, i'm living on mobius these days, because it's waaaaaaaaay deep, actually an instrument (it's to most loopers what live is to most samplers), straight rip off of gibson echoplex with some added functions. and for those worried about losing ability to remix the various loop elements later, mobius permits you to save all layers separately, so you can go back and do whatever you want later.

more sophisticated playback options are just that -- playback options. true on the fly looping is something very different. i think it fits live, because you tend to use it live, and it makes live waaaaaay more appealing for guitar players, other trad instrumentalists.

as for GR III's looper, it's pretty lame, doesn't have any of the advanced features that make a real looper. you could do exactly the same as GR III looper now in live with a footpedal turning clips on and off. one big problem -- so far as i know, there's no nextloop/nextscene equivalent, so that you can switch between two loops for verse/chorus or whatever, you're just stuck with one loop. that's seriously limiting.

by contrast, in a program like mobius, you can have multiple loops, copy content from one loop to next, so that you can easily build up different parts of songs, breaks, etc. much like scenes in live, but you can have the next loop take timing or audio from prior loop, which scenes don't currently permit in any way.

[nowtime]

#1 WISH

First LoOp sets the tempo.


I'm jammin' a drum beat, foot-click START loop, foot-click END loop, Live 8 calculates the BPM and sets the master accordingly.

[nowtime]

#1 WISH

First LoOp sets the tempo.


I'm jammin' a drum beat, foot-click START loop, foot-click END loop, Live 8 calculates the BPM and sets the master accordingly.

#2 WISH = Overdub Feedback Level Percentage (in Electrix Repeater terms) or what Angstrom refers to as "iterative fading of previous loops"

If you've never played with something like this, there is nothing like it in the world. It is NOT just for ambient tempo-less sound sculpting. As you manually adjust the percentage of the fading of your loops you can create melodic magic. One hand on the knob and one hand on your keyboard.

[samplehead]

Wow, great to see Mr Henke has heard the call!

My vote is 100% for "intelligent recording / playback of clips is it" , not an "effect". If we want a sound on sound effect style looper then we don't really need Live at all, there's a dozen of them out there already, with various different features sets, and all are pretty fun, but there's definitely nothing Live about them.

The whole idea is to be able to run Live itself as a Live Looper, to get all track/clip session view beauty. It's almost there already, the main problem is first loop setting tempo/sync/quantization....

Clip Feedback Level would be welcome too, but I could do without that. That's the type of feature that's really part of destructive sound on sound looping, and probably evolved from the limitations of very early analog delay/tape loopers. It makes sense in SOS looping because otherwise saturation occurs too quickly, and if you really want that there's already a bunch of loopers that do all that jazz very nicely. It's not Live though ;)

[bigbadotis]

...it would be great in 8 to overdub easily. Into the same clip.

why?

for one thing, that would be intensive on RAM, CPU and likely not an easy thing to code.

second, don't you find that rather limiting? what if you fuck up on the second pass? you've ruined everything up to that point.

and even more limiting; with everything sitting in a single clip you are then stuck within the routing bounds of that one track. if you have each pass on its own clip or track then you have a hell of a lot more options for effects etc.

and what if you want to actually do something with the material after the fact? if it's all mashed into one clip then that's end of it. with everything in its own clip you are free to do whatever you want with them later.

personally, if i was on stage i'd feel a lot safer knowing that every move i make wasn't the end-all and if i fuck up a pass then the whole thing has shit the bed.

if you want the best and most solid live audio looper money can buy then just download Live 3. :)

The answer is a few posts down from yours:

you need everything on one track/channel/clip so that you can then manipulate the entire loop at once, cutting out parts, reversing, inserting sound, on the loop as a whole. if things are divided up into separate tracks, that sort of functionality is hard to put together, because you'd need to be able to have some sort of track lock so you can punch in to all at same time, reverse a small section, insert some deadspace, etc.