Ableton Forum

Great little effect, but I feel like it could be more user friendly, at least initially.

Here's what I've been wanting to do live: to be able to loop a phrase, play over it for awhile (not overdubbing), then stop the loop playback as I resume playing that original loop again myself (using a MIDI foot controller to trigger both Looper's stop and clear), so I can make embellishments on it, loop it differently, or conclude the song.

The Looper has given me a few troubles with that:

1) whenever I hit stop on the Looper, it hits stop on Live's global transport (since I have song control set to "start and stop song"), which, for some reason, cuts out any MIDI input while I'm pressing stop. Therefore, I can't smoothly transition from a loop playback to me actually playing that looped phrase myself, since the stop button cuts off my sound.

2) I want to Live to help me out with quantizing my punch in/punch out points, so that my loops are more consistently in time. But the only way that I see that I can do that is if I set my tempo first, turn on the metronome, hit Live's play button, then punch in and start playing at the start of the metronome's next bar. That just seems ridiculous to me. I'd have to wear headphones onstage or something to follow the metronome. Isn't there an easier way to get consistent, clean loops from Ableton's Looper?

3) I can't overdub. Whenever I loop a phrase, and the orange bars then say I'm in overdub mode, it only stays in overdub mode for three beats or so then automatically switches over to play mode. wtf?

Thanks so much for all the help folks. I love playing with the Looper, but this stuff just has me in knots.

Kyle

Youd have to play the settings.

try this

Song control change to start song only
Tempo control to set and follow song tempo
Set the quantize setting to your choice, maybe 1 or 2 bars for example
Set record x bar then choose if you want to go to play or overdub

Having more then one pedal for control might make it easier on you too

Save your settings as preset so you dont have to start over everytime.

Now you can start playing with nothing in background, Hit record on the 1 of your phrase and hit it again at the end of it
That will set the tempo of the set to what you just played

Give that a try tell me how it works for you

Hi Dragonbreath, thanks for the advice. Your suggestions are actually similar to what I already have setup. Except for a couple things:

1) u suggested set song control to "start song.". The problem I have with that is that once I do hit stop so I can resume playing that looped phrase myself (like I mentioned), the Live set keeps playing, ticking away in the background on the global transport. The problem comes when I want to then seamlessly punch back in again after that, without stopping. Since Live is now still playing, the looper's punch in point is quantized to Live's global grid, meaning It won't start recording again when I tell it to. How am I supposed to work around that???

And, like I said, hitting the global stop at any time while playing cuts off your sound while you're pressing stop, rendering that option almost completely unworkable.

2) I have my quantize set at 1/32 at the suggestion of someone else. I'm not really sure what would be best for my situation. Would one or two bars be any better? I remember trying one bar for awhile, but still, my loop beginning and endings are still too inconsistent, too off time, to use on a live performance.

Lets clear a few things here so I can help you better.

Im assuming your playing guitar with a laptop and interface.
Are you using any clips in ableton or a you using only as loop pedal?

If you no clips pressing the record the first time will set the punch in and the second time the punch out.
If you dont want a metronome your gonna have to practice to getting it right.

Otherwise If you use clips in the background there playing on tempo so that could replace the metronome because it would be part of the music...


Anyways maybe give some more detail of whats going on

I'm using a laptop with a MIDI keyboard and also a guitar. For now, I only want to be looping one of them at a time. I'm not using any clips. I'm just wanting to use an FCB1010 foot controller and one Looper in the way I described earlier.

Did this part ever get solved:
"3) I can't overdub. Whenever I loop a phrase, and the orange bars then say I'm in overdub mode, it only stays in overdub mode for three beats or so then automatically switches over to play mode. wtf?"

I am using Live 11 suite and the exact same thing is happening to me. Looper is set to overdub after the initial loop. It doesn't overdub, it only plays it, then if I try and overdub it cuts out after 3 beats. If I pause the loop playback and then start it again it clears the whole loop. Please help.
Running Mac 12.1 with Ableton Suite 11
It happens whether I use my mouse or my foot switch and the same on all the loopers set up in the Project.