Live as a guitar phrase looper in realtime??

Share your favorite Ableton Live tips, tricks, and techniques.
Guest

Stopping recording...

Post by Guest » Wed Jun 23, 2004 8:10 am

I am also new to Live and planning to use it for a similar purpose. There is a lot of good advice here about setting the quantization to 1 bar so you have time between pressing the record pedal/key and actually playing.

My problem is I also want recording to automatically stop after a specific number of bars. Is this possible? I find that I am somtimes a few moments too late hitting the pedal to stop recording my loop, and it ends up adding another bar of silence at the end of the recording. Any way to do this?

Guest

Post by Guest » Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:16 pm

for stopping, you'll need to either use the mouse or assing a midi key or foot patch to the stop clip button on that track. I guess you could also experiment with different luanch options (one shot, repeat, ...). The 1 bar quantization thing is so you have 4 whole beats (a whole measure) to hit the midi control to trigger recording. Thus, there is no need to wait til the exact moment and possibly be late--you have four whole beats to hit the pedal--don't wait til the end. Works great here.

Ryan

Lucid
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Location: Boston

Post by Lucid » Wed Jun 23, 2004 3:03 pm

I use the "launch scene" button mapped to MIDI controller, when you launch a scene that has a clip recording, the clip will drop out of record and immediately begin playing.

Guest

Post by Guest » Thu Jun 24, 2004 12:39 am

So there is no way to make it automatically record 2 bars and then stop, without having to hit a pedal or click the mouse immediately before the end of the 2 bars?

Do you understand my dilemma? Most of my loops need to be recorded right up until the end of the looping timeframe (2 bars), and if I hit the pedal to mark the end of the loop a moment past the end of the second bar, the program automatically adds silence that lasts as long as the set quantization.

Lucid
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Location: Boston

Post by Lucid » Thu Jun 24, 2004 1:00 am

you just got to try and hit it >before< the end rather than after. foot pedals are the way to go FCB1010

Guest

Post by Guest » Thu Jun 24, 2004 3:22 am

Ah-ha. I figured it out. Maybe this is simple common knowledge around here (I said I was new), but I just discovered that you can hit the "stop record" button ANYTIME within the assigned quantization before the end of the loop.

In other words, if my I'm recording consecutive 2 bar loops, and my quantization is set to 2 bars, I hit "record" and it starts recording at the beginning of the next cycle. I can then hit "stop record" anytime during the loop, even right at the beginning, and it will stop on a dime at the end of 2 bars. I don't need to hit it at the end.

Anyway, hope this helps people in my predicament.

PS. I have a FCB1010 en route UPS ground. Can't wait.

Lucid
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Location: Boston

Post by Lucid » Thu Jun 24, 2004 3:57 am

Right, you got it!!! :idea:

Machinate
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Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2004 2:15 pm
Location: Denmark

-even better:

Post by Machinate » Fri Jun 25, 2004 9:19 am

The FCB1010 can send several cc-numbers with one preset - you can actually send both the start AND stop commands with one press of a button - you just need a midi monitor to find out which controllers get sent first, and map that cc to the record clip button, then map the second controller to stop, set the quantisation as required and go :-)

I haven't tried it with my fcb1010 yet, but theoretically it *should* work.

Andreas

Guest

Post by Guest » Sat Jun 26, 2004 6:01 am

This is an interesting idea, but wouldn't you need to send the stop signal after recording had begun? This would be nearly impossible, since you'd always be sending both signals before recording begins. Am I wrong?

Guest

Post by Guest » Sat Jun 26, 2004 12:00 pm

you are right. I think that method wouldn't work, and would obviously limit you to a fixed length loop if it did work. The best way is to set the global quantize to "bar', and hit the foot pedal anytime during the measure before you wish to start/stop recording (=two presses per loop)

ryan

parke02
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Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:53 am

Post by parke02 » Tue Jun 29, 2004 5:40 am

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ambiloop/

freeware looping program. maybe a little easier to setup for live looping.

Lucid
Posts: 259
Joined: Tue Sep 02, 2003 1:26 am
Location: Boston

Post by Lucid » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:37 pm

One other thing - make sure you use "trigger" launch mode if you want your recording audio clips to begin playing instantly upon the scene/clip launch that brings you out of record.

novakaine
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Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 3:51 am

Re: Bomes worked well, looper solution

Post by novakaine » Fri Dec 03, 2004 4:02 am

Lucid wrote:I got this to work with Bomes, MIDI Yoke, and the FCB 1010. Works great.

Select and arm tracks 1-5 by pressing pedals 1-5

Tap Tempo - pedal 6

Scene Up - pedal 7

Scene Down - pedal 8

Launch Scene - pedal 9 ( Enter clip record for selected/armed track , Exit clip record and begin immediate playback )

Delete - pedal 10 ( Erase mistakes on current clip without stopping the music or touching the keyboard )


I am monitoring inputs directly from my hardware, so "Monitor from Live" is turned off globablly.


Bomes made it possible, sweet. Awesome tip, thanks.

Lucid, how did you select AND arm tracks with pedals 1-5? By simply arming a track, one cannot launch a recording of that track just by triggering the "launch scene" function as you have programmed into pedal 9. My experience has led me to the dead end that one has to press the "arm for record" button, then the recored button itself in the track (scene launch did nothing after only "arm for record" was triggered). Probably a misunderstanding on my part, but I would like to know if you found a method to trigger a clip recording by triggering the "scene launch" button.

novakaine
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 3:51 am

Post by novakaine » Fri Dec 03, 2004 4:13 am

Doing!!! I figured out one needs to select "start recording on scene launch" from the misc menu in preferences. That explains how you triggered a record off of the scene launch button!

kimyo
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Location: new rochelle, ny usa
Contact:

i promised my jamman that i would never leave her...........

Post by kimyo » Tue Mar 01, 2005 10:12 am

after many many late nights and way too much coffee, i finally have live tweaked to do live looping. it totally kills the jamman, in fact it is like having 8 jammen all midi'd and mixed together.

this is the result:
http://www.iosonic.com/video/anareal.wmv

or

http://www.iosonic.com/video/anareal.mov

all live looping (except for 2 drum loops). no overdubs. i still have to get levels fine tuned. and this method eats up an unimaginable amount of disk space.

the quality of the wmv audio isn't that great. if there is any interest i'll post an mp3 of the audio - it is clean, the live effects are awesome.

this video makes me feel like the star wars kid.

equipment:
live 4
line6 echo pro delay
rode nt1a mic
evolution uc-33
behringer bass v-amp pro
behringer fcb1010 midi foot controller
alesis qs7.1

i use pedals 1-8 to fire the slot buttons for tracks 1-8, which are also set for monitor off. pedals 9 and 10 move the scene up or down. i am using 2 measure quantization, although sometimes i switch it down to one. track 11 monitors the live audio coming in, i would have had tracks 1-8 feed off of 11, but i couldn't get them to be mono tracks that way.
Image

ableton live is absolutely insane. worse than cocaine. like sneaking up on god and licking her on the back.


a guy named kim

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