DJ looping

jomtones · Post by **jomtones** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:34 pm

HI I'm experimenting with using Live as a DJ tool and would like to use it to do some 'Fatboy Slim' style edits on-the-fly...

Specifically - get the current bar playing looping, and then successively halve the loop length until I get a buzz-drum style roll, then turn off the loop to drop the track back in where it was.

Can this be done natively with keyboard / MIDI shortcuts?

As I see it the steps I would need controllers for would be:

1. Set loop begin at playback position
2. Set loop length to 1 bar
3. Turn loop on
4. Halve loop length (repeat until satisfied)
5. Turn off loop

I know some of the shortcuts for this but steps 2+4 in particular are eluding me..

Also tried instajungle VST which is great for this, but unfortunately when you turn it off you get dumped back randomly into the track - it doesn't 'pause' it until you turn the loop off...

Any ideas on the best way to get this done? cheers!

buzby · Post by **buzby** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 1:36 am

hi man

if i understand the q correct

the way i have this set up is to assign a rotary to quantization in the launch box

i rotate it until i get a value i want - say launching at 1/4 and keep the play button pressed down on the clip that im launching or mixing in

to save any mix cues when want to launch the clip back into the track without this drum roll effect - i rotate it again until i get it back to 1 bar or 2 bars etc and then do a quick click on the mouse or button which is assigned to play and it drops back in nicely

something to watch out for is that when you have finished doing this that you return the clip quantize value to 1 2 or 4 bars and not leave it at 1/16 or whatever - as if you want to use this loop again and you have nt returned it to a whole bar value then it will obviously launch at 1/16 or whatever and may catch you by surprise and be off time

this works nice as well if you are controlling something else at the same time like beat repeat etc

hope it helps

buzby

pip · Post by **pip** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:52 am

Jomtones --
Heck yeah. You're asking for a classic, textbook usage of the Beat Repeat audio effect. Drag Beat Repeat onto your audio track that you want to loop (or onto the master). Start with the "default' values and tweak accordingly:
Interval: 1 bar
Grid: 1 bar
Gate: 1 bar
Output: Ins
No Tripl: On

Turn on the beat repeat and it'll start looping. Grab the grid knob and slowly bring it down, and you'll get exactly the effect you're asking for. You can map this to a midi knob, and then map the on/off to a midi button or a keyboard shortcut.

If you're feeling fancy, you can drop this into an audio effect rack. Assign the grid knob to a macro. Adjust it's macro mapping to be inverted; set a min of "1 bar" and a max of "1/256". Assign the chain select ruler to the same macro. Make two "dummy" chains at the beginning and end of the ruler that just "pass" the audio through, and then put the BeatRepeat zone to cover ranges from 2-127ish. Map this macro to a midi knob, as you sweep it from lowest to highest, it'll start from passthrough and go to shorter and shorter loops, and then at it's max it'll be passthrough again. Simple!

Hope this covers it! Be sure to tweak your Beat Repeat to sound the way you like it, let me know if you have any questions.
Keep on loopin'
--Pip

buzby · Post by **buzby** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:58 am

holy cow - that was a fancy ass reply compared to mine

gonna try that out tomorrow

cool - bzzb

jomtones · Post by **jomtones** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 8:35 am

Thanks for the replies guys... I'll have a play around with this but I'm not sure if it's exactly what I'm after.

Ok basically what I wanna do is say just b4 a drop in a track, grab a beat, loop it, drum roll it, and then unloop it and let the track to drop back in right where I 'paused' it (started looping), if you get my meaning.

It's a really simple technique I used to do in Traktor all the time - you can do it in a few keystrokes in that app!

If I understand rightly, buzby your method is only good when launching a clip? Pip, that sounds cool, but I've got a feeling the track will just continue playing in the background right?

pip · Post by **pip** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:12 pm

Ugh, yeah, you're right, it's just going to keep playing in the background. :-/
I wish I had a more elegant solution for you right now, I think it can be done with legato and dummy clips (isn't that our solution to everything? :-p ) but in the meantime; you can still use the beat repeat effect I described, but to prevent the track from "running away from you":

Double-click on your playing clip to display its sample view. By clicking on the "set" button for Position under "Loop" it will turn on the loop and set the beginning of the loop to your current position simultaneously. You can drag the loop length to smaller and smaller numbers on the fly (click on the sixteenths box and drag down) but that will only get you as short as 1/16. You can combine that with my previous method to get even shorter, and just uncheck the "Loop" button when you want it to resume normal playback.

I know this method is getting sort of complicated, but I'm determined to get this working better in the future. There's times when I would like to use this effect myself. Luckily, pretty much everything described can be mapped to midi control.

As a Traktor user (since version 2!!!) I'm thinking of starting a thread called "Ableton for Orphans of Traktor" because I know there's alot of tools and effects from Traktor we want to see emulated in Live.

Anyway, I'll keep working on this, but I have final exams tomorrow so don't expect any answers within the next 48 hours

Good Luck!

--Pip

jomtones · Post by **jomtones** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 1:01 pm

Thanks for your thoughts... yeah that's exactly the kind of thing I'm hoping to achieve, but with keyboard shortcuts or MIDI as I can't be doing with mucking about with a mouse onstage... any way to do this? Can I set it to work the same way for any clip that happens to be playing?

Traktor orphans thread sounds like a good idea!

cavern · Post by **cavern** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:47 pm

i just use beat repeat. set "variation" to 0 and "chance" to 100%...then assign a knob/fader to "grid" and/or "interval" and a pad or whatever to activate beat repeat and adjust accordingly. make sure all the pitch functions, decay and offset are set to 0

jomtones · Post by **jomtones** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 11:31 pm

yeah that's cool but as we've been discussing the problem is, when you turn it off you get dumped back randomly into the track rather than dropping back in where you turned the effect on..

pghatak · Post by **pghatak** » Tue Dec 25, 2007 2:08 pm

Hi Pip
This is a nice trick. I tried doing it, but got lost, making the rack. Can you please send a rack of this if you have made it. This is useful for me, in my gig.

cheers,

DJ Pippins

pip wrote:Jomtones --
Heck yeah. You're asking for a classic, textbook usage of the Beat Repeat audio effect. Drag Beat Repeat onto your audio track that you want to loop (or onto the master). Start with the "default' values and tweak accordingly:
Interval: 1 bar
Grid: 1 bar
Gate: 1 bar
Output: Ins
No Tripl: On

Turn on the beat repeat and it'll start looping. Grab the grid knob and slowly bring it down, and you'll get exactly the effect you're asking for. You can map this to a midi knob, and then map the on/off to a midi button or a keyboard shortcut.

If you're feeling fancy, you can drop this into an audio effect rack. Assign the grid knob to a macro. Adjust it's macro mapping to be inverted; set a min of "1 bar" and a max of "1/256". Assign the chain select ruler to the same macro. Make two "dummy" chains at the beginning and end of the ruler that just "pass" the audio through, and then put the BeatRepeat zone to cover ranges from 2-127ish. Map this macro to a midi knob, as you sweep it from lowest to highest, it'll start from passthrough and go to shorter and shorter loops, and then at it's max it'll be passthrough again. Simple!

Hope this covers it! Be sure to tweak your Beat Repeat to sound the way you like it, let me know if you have any questions.
Keep on loopin'
--Pip

acki · Post by **acki** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 3:43 pm

And dont forget to Activate the Repeat button

nice trick, but it's no loop replacement. the tracks goes on while you repeat. in my opinion only useful for looping the out of a track in a dj set...

i hope version 8 will bring us sperate loop buttons for every track with 4x/8x/16x loop buttons...

jomtones · Post by **jomtones** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 2:23 pm

hmmm, I think all it would take would be a nice looping VST that could 'queue' up the rest of the track when you activate it... ie. hold it in a buffer at the point at which you activated it.

Or would this be a dumb way of doing it?

mr.ergonomics · Post by **mr.ergonomics** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 3:19 pm

I think it would be a way If there were a pause button for each clip (another useful feature! ). It's a problem when you just buffer 1 bar, while the track continues to play (re-entry is a bit problematic in this case).

btw. I you want this looping stuff too, look at my thread at the request forum

Patch · Post by **Patch** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 1:40 pm

This can be done natively using the clip properties. You need to:

1) Set a loop using the loop Position Set/Length Set Buttons
2) Click on the loop braces in the waveform view
3) Use CTRL+UP/CTRL+DOWN to double/halve the loop length
4) Turn off the loop to continue where you started looping

DJ looping

DJ looping

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Re: DJ Fatboyslim/BT style looping