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

[Angstrom]

with regard to the two different methods of approaching the issue ... I wonder if it is possible to combine both.

the two methods seem to be
1: clip based
2: device based

Perhaps a combined method : a clip looping which is extended by a device
Where clip based looping writes to the disk as normal, and could also set the project tempo from the initial length and has the facility for overdubbing and unwrapping.
An extending Device could provide an interface for mangling the sound in the same vein as beatrepeat already mangles disk audio.

I certainly agree that any Live Looper shouldn't duplicate what other Loopers are already capable of, and it needs to make use of the power of the app and extend what is already there.
A Live Looper needs to be simple and easy to understand (unlike Mobius IMO !) but also powerful flexible and controllable.

In the third way
Live would write a wave in the usual extended manner to the disk - but in this new case we would hear the loop 'wrapped' on top of itself. The wrapped audio is handled by a RAM buffer which is duplicated from the wave which is written to disk, the extended original audio remains untouched on the disk.

The RAM buffer would then be available to mutation by Devices in the feedback loop (if you want to), this is not possible with other Loopers. That mutation is not 'printed' to disk and fixed - it would simply a characteristic of the 'Looper Device' parameter envelopes which were turned to alter the sound of the buffer.


I am not simply talking about a mere Looper Device here, a 'Long Delay' , but a more integrated connection between Device and Clip. All the existing devices are almost like 3rd party plug-ins, I see this Device as providing an extension to the clip functions into the domain of the Rack.



Benefits of this combined system:

if you play a mistake: you can step back in time on the 'master wave' which has been recorded to disk and delete back to any point! This is then put back into the RAM buffer.

To edit later: the original wave is fully extended on the disk, not flat and fixed. Changes can be made in the future - the performance of the Looper Device controls could be recorded as envelopes so that also could be edited.

To change the sound of the loop: the looping rack could be as different as you require, it will remain open to alteration for as long as you like. Add a chorus into the feedback chain and the RAM buffer is updated with what the loop would have sounded like.


I think something like this would address both sides of the argument, the clip based looping is intact - but if extended function is needed then the Looper Manipulation Device can be added.


Some might say this is hard to code, but it isn't too hard. In fact the majority of this is already in Live - simply load up a Drum rack and use it's internal sends to feedback a long delay (RAM buffer) and you can see the beginnings of a dual system disk wave to RAM loop. There are additional issues to address - such as what happens with the RAM buffer at Song Load, or jumping to an arrangement point for example. But these are not particularly show stopping problems, I have ideas there, but this post is long enough!

[pribeh_tom]

absolutely, totally want it. Great poll.

[samplehead]

Angstrom, that sounds pretty powerful and could potentially make Live the ultimate looper in addition to it's current abilities as a DAW.Sampler etc.

One thing I'm trying to grasp is whether your idea still encapsulates the idea of the multiple clips/tracks as part of one big loop? i.e. where Live itself is still the main "instrument" as opposed to just one of it's slots.

This is the most important aspect for me. Regardless how Live as a Looper is designed it must treat the entire Live Set as part of the looper. Not a looper inside a Set.

[Angstrom]

well, yes .. but it's a lot simpler than you might think

to straighten out the terminology:
an "Overdub" is one Live track which plays back 'overlaid'
While a Layer is a Live Track, which all play back in parallel.


For every "layer" of separate audio (rhythm, lead, pad1, pad2)you would like to record a Live track is the way to go, because you can mix them and use different effects and track sends on them Mute them.

That is pretty much what many of us do now (when using Live clips to loop), but we have no way of 'overlapping' the trailing tails of the audio of the clips bar end into the bar start . Not to mention more complex overlays.

So by adding an extension Device to a track - we would select a clip loop in that track to play back, and that device interrogates the extended audio to actually play back a composite.

So, a Live Looping set might contain 10 tracks, each with it's own loop going on. Perhaps only two or three require the extension of the Looper Device. The rest merely need to loop in the normal manner (no overlay). It would save resources for where the are actually needed.

I still believe that the clip should be able to do some form of looping on its own, but that the Device would provide extension to the functions available.

[Jeroen]

That's genious. So if i understand it well, use recording on a clip in serial and use a device attached to the clip to wrap it into a overdub loop or faded overdub loop,. i.,e. parallel , or any kind of effect.

Man, that should actually not be too difficult to implement. i hope the ableton see the "light" in your proposal.

[samplehead]

Don't forget first loop sets tempo/sync/quantization though!

[melocoton]

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.

So learn to play and don't fuck up. I vote for a true frippertronics style LOOPER with sound on sound. Not a track by track multitrack Kid BS thing which Live can already pretty much do.

[melocoton]

Do you think a looping effect is the way to go or do you think intelligent recording / playback of clips is it?

A looping effect that can be synced to the master tempo or run free would be great. That way you can put the plugin on multiple tracks and get multiple free running loops of different lengths. It should do sound on sound and have a button for reverse. Changing the loop length should also change pitch and there should be buttons for half speed, double speed, or changing by a semitone as well as a knob to adjust the time & pitch freely. There should also be a button to tap in and out of record mode.

[samplehead]

Just "first loop sets tempo/sync/quantization" by itself is all that one camp needs here (the Kid BS fraternity but with no click track!) so let's have that - it doesn't sound like a biggie.

As for all the sound on sound style looping. I'll take that too but please not at the expense of no "first loop...." functionality. This really sounds pluginish rather than a Live mode though and would be less marketable imo.

[melocoton]

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.

That's the only option that's really "live" IMO. Otherwise you're just talking about building up a bunch of looping tracks with the safety of undo and the ability to save them for later. So boring. Live can pretty much do that now.

You say there are a dozen loopers out there but where is a good one that can do multiple tracks synced together with different bar lengths? Or multiple loops NOT synced together to create a constantly evolving texture? With the ability to reverse or change the pitch and speed of any layer independently? Software or hardware, if you can name one I will buy it tonight.

EDIT (oh and not a $1500 rackmount device with a crappy 80s interface like the looperlative).

[samplehead]

You say there are a dozen loopers out there but where is a good one that can do multiple tracks synced together with different bar lengths? Or multiple loops NOT synced together to create a constantly evolving texture? With the ability to reverse or change the pitch and speed of any layer independently? Software or hardware, if you can name one I will buy it tonight.

EDIT (oh and not a $1500 rackmount device with a crappy 80s interface like the looperlative).

Ok, but what you are describing here is not really sound on sound, i.e. multiple tracks, different lengths, THAT'S Live now too! The problem is still "first loop". All the extra traditional sound on sound features like reverse/speed/pitch sound great to me, as long as we get to have multiple tracks, different lengths etc (which to me suggest Live itself as a looper not a looper inside Live, but that's just me :)

[nowtime]

Do you think a looping effect is the way to go or do you think intelligent recording / playback of clips is it?

... and there should be buttons for half speed, double speed, or changing by a semitone as well as a knob to adjust the time & pitch freely. There should also be a button to tap in and out of record mode.

+1

Half speed and Double speed at the TOUCH of a button

[babkubwa]

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.

wooaaah that looks a lot of fun! can we have a go angstrom, can we have a go, please please please

[melocoton]

Ok, but what you are describing here is not really sound on sound, i.e. multiple tracks, different lengths, THAT'S Live now too! The problem is still "first loop". All the extra traditional sound on sound features like reverse/speed/pitch sound great to me, as long as we get to have multiple tracks, different lengths etc (which to me suggest Live itself as a looper not a looper inside Live, but that's just me

I want multiple tracks with sound on sound though for the best of both worlds. For example track one could be a dense ambient drone thing made of a hundred passes of guitar. That's just one track, one layer. I don't want to deal with 100 separate tracks for each time I went through the loop and added a little something! And I don't care if it's destructive. I want to be able to deal with that as one chunk of sound. Then track two can be a new loop of bass or whatever and that can do sound on sound too.

This is why I think a simple sound-on-sound looper plugin would work the best. That way for multiple tracks you simply stick another looper plugin on a new track! Dead simple. You should be able to see a waveform display of the loop and from there you should be able to drag it into the session or arrange when you're done with it. Or what if you could drag an existing loop from session into the looper and add some sound on sound overdubs to it. Then when you're done drag it back into session and have a new loop.

Imagine something like this. Lets say you wanted a complex set up with a single guitar as an input and you wanted to build up 4 independent tracks, each with lots of sound on sound layering. Plus you want to record the live evolution of the whole piece at the output. So you would start with one input track routed to your four loop tracks. Each loop track gets the loop plugin and the output of each loop track gets routed to a second track which is recording the output.

Hit record to start the whole session and start recording the overall output of the 4 loopers to 4 different tracks. Hit record on looper 1 and play a bassline on your guitar. Hit record again on looper one and the line you played is looped from the point where you hit stop. It could have three options for the end-of-loop: 1. let the loop run freely so that it starts looping exactly when you hit record the second time 2. quantize the loop length to correspond to the project tempo (kind of like how clip triggering can be quantized now) 3. Use the second hit of the record button as sort of an advanced tap tempo and actually change the master tempo to match the new loop you've created.

Then you can hit the half speed button and there's your bassline. Move onto the second track to create a thick drone pad of tons of guitar layers and do the same on the third track. These two tracks could have different arbitrary loop lengths not synchronized to any number of bars so that the overall drone sounds like it's constantly evolving. Then on the final track you could get a several bar long sound on sound thing going and solo on top of the whole thing, add arpeggios and little harmony pieces and stuff. Let's say on this one you let it gradually decay as you keep constantly adding to it.

The end result would be a 4 track live recording of a performance that is actually made up of dozens if not hundreds of different layers added sound-on-sound style on top of each other. Each track would have a different loop length, two of them quantized to a certain bar length and two of them totally free running. You would have a level of overdubbing and detail that would be totally impossible and unwieldy to duplicate on a track-by-track based looper with no SOS or with too complex of an undo scheme. And yet you would have the flexibility to be able to remix the whole thing and edit each of the four individual tracks.

I don't know of a single hardware or software device that offers all of these options in a way that is straightforward, musical and easy to use (not to mention affordable). Some of the rack based loopers like the echoplex or the looperlative might come close to this but they don't seem like appealing, approachable instruments to me and their prices are quite high. Polar might come close but I'm not going to switch to DP to find out.

[melocoton]

Also, I think there are some benefits from a looping plugin within live that you wouldn't get from "live itself configured to act like a looper."

1: You could have additional effects inserted before and after the looper. Plugs before the looper obviously get printed right to the loop while plugs after the looper effect the whole output. For example you might put a distortion plugin on the input so that you can add some SOS layers that are distorted and others that are clean. But then you might want a slowly shifting phaser on the output so that it doesn't abruptly change at the loop point or so that you can turn it off and leave the loop unaffected. I'm not sure how routing like that would be possible if you simply used Live's clips as your loops. Or at least it wouldn't be as easy.

2: You can do crazy things like have one looper feeding into another which is a lot of fun if you've ever used looping pedals.

3: Adding the looper as a plugin (with some integration to Live's tempo, etc.) would mean little to no changes to the existing Live interface.

4: The looper plugin could be sold as a separate add-on if Ableton thinks this would be too expensive or too much of a niche thing to develop as part of an overall update.