Ableton Forum

Hi, I'm looking to creating a performance using a few guitars and drums. A loop pedal seems like the best route, but for a drummer to play over it, the loop has to be tight. There will be two of us performing.

The other option would be to set up a loop brace in the arrangement view of Live, punch in and out so the loop plays in time. The advantage of this would be that the guitarist who is recording the loop can have a metronome in a headphone mix.

Does anyone here perform in a band situation with a loop pedal or with Live?

I'd be interested in knowing how you go about it.

Thank you

If you have M4L, have a look at B-Keeper.

I don't currently have max for live. Thanks for the reply.

Live has a Looper effect. If your set is stopped, you can record into the Looper and set a tempo.

Either way, when it comes to using Loopers, the drummer has to follow, not lead.

Thanks for that, I'll have a look at the looper.

i play bass, synths, and ableton with a live drummer too,

The native Looper is awesome because it can set the tempo
one thing to note is that if you play at faster tempos over 140bpm the looper
tempo calculation will be half the actual tempo if it is 2 or more bars.
IE: a 180 bpm 2 bar loop recorded into looper will set the tempo as a 1 bar 90 bpm loop.

knowing this information is the majority of the battle so you can deal.
i have a dummy looper set up that does not record anything.. so i can just set the tempo with a 1 bar loop.

it is so much fun having a live drummer.. my drummer knows when the click is own we follow the click
and when the click is off (ableton clock is stopped) we follow each other.
i can then set the tempo or a loop based on how we are grooving.

Interesting! Do you have any live footage?

I do something similar with my band. Our drummer has a click when we are looping stuff. I set up a (dummy) midi clip that plays the length of the song. There is midi data in the clip that controls parameters of guitar effects and synths. By renaming the scene to a bpm (ex: "120 BPM") and triggering the scene for the next song, the click sent to the drummer is in the right tempo for the song and the rest of us just follow the drummer.

A footpedal can be used to trigger the scenes in order and also to control the looper effect.

Our youtube page has some live footage showing us creating loops and playing together. https://www.youtube.com/user/karasstheband/videos

Thanks very much, I'll check that out.