Sequence Your Live Looping (No Pedals Necessary)

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:09 am

I saw a lot of threads on live looping and the necessity of foot pedals so I thought I would remind everyone that you can use a midi loop to SEQUENCE your live sampling. You will probably even find this handy if you do have a pedal. Check it out:

Step One: Make a MIDI Loop

-plug a midi output into a midi input, or use the IAC midi loop in the 'audio midi setup' of you mac, or use any number of PC programs

Step Two: Enable 'Remote' for your MIDI Loop

-go to the Preferences > Midi/Sync and enable 'Remote' on the input coming from the midi loop

Step Three: Make a MIDI Track That Sends to the MIDI Loop

-shift-ctrl-T
-then go into i/o section of the session view and use the field labeled 'midi to'

Step Four: MIDI 'Learn' Your Record Slot

-make a clip on the midi track you just made, and then make ONE note in it. (when you are midi learning it is important to only send one note at a time. make your sequences later.)
-click play on the clip (make sure it is the only one), and then stop ableton. the clip's play button should now be lit
-press ctrl-M to enter midi mapping mode
-click the record button on the slot that you want to record loops to
-start ableton
-leave midi mapping mode

You should now have a clip which triggers another clip. check it out and make sure it works

Step Five: make a clip to trigger when you want to take a loop.

-iif you make a clip that triggers your midi note twice, it will record and then loop.

A Note on Latency and Triggering...

If you don'y have a crazy soundcard, chances are that this midi note will not come in exactly on the note you put it on. this means it is a good idea to move your trigger notes up a 16th note or two. the quantize will take care of any early notes.

GO FORTH AND DESTROY!!!!

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:52 am

Wow... lotsa views, but no replies.

Anyone try this yet?

You DO realize that you can use this to loop other band members without the necessity that everyone have their own midi controller right?

I thought you live band cats would be all over this one...

I probably should have given it a better title... live and learn

7G · Post by 7G » Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:22 pm

Can you please post an example template...I'm kinda lost here....

dascientist · Post by **dascientist** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:50 pm

I'm going to try this later. thanks

Doobie Dan · Post by **Doobie Dan** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 5:43 pm

If I understand this correctly... this is a technique for creating loops with only a single button? This would restrict the loops to a pre-set length, wouldn't it?

I'm trying to get one-touch arm/record on a particular track with a pedal, so this may be a step in the right direction...

Michael-SW · Post by **Michael-SW** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:16 pm

Doobie Dan wrote:If I understand this correctly... this is a technique for creating loops with only a single button? This would restrict the loops to a pre-set length, wouldn't it?

I'm trying to get one-touch arm/record on a particular track with a pedal, so this may be a step in the right direction...

Yeah, you could put in another MIDI note in the clip that is mapped to Arm.

adhmzaiusz · Post by **adhmzaiusz** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:58 am

WOW. thanks. Im impressed, but the looping thing is just the beginning. Im blown away because i didnt even know about the iac drivers function. now i understand. the possibilities will soon cause a meltdown in my mind. before i was always too lazy to start an app that had the same function as the iac, and start it everytime i used live. now just activate iac, and all the routings i need are already there, ready to go. thanks Phat.

Nightrider · Post by **Nightrider** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 8:36 am

anychance of getting a .als of this for osx IAC?

I'm having trouble getting it setup

pepezabala · Post by **pepezabala** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:18 am

the iac loop is a very crazy thing. it's a bit fiddly to set up, especially if you want to control more thant just one knob, but the possibilities are endless. I could imagine an automazeetized djingtemplate that mixes one track after the other with cool crossfader transitions, some effects on/off-action etc, and the only thing left to do for you is chosing the tracks ...

we should make a competition: Who sets up the craziest superautomated set?

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 4:25 pm

Doobie Dan wrote:If I understand this correctly... this is a technique for creating loops with only a single button? This would restrict the loops to a pre-set length, wouldn't it?

I'm trying to get one-touch arm/record on a particular track with a pedal, so this may be a step in the right direction...

with the 1010 footboard, you can send multiple cc messages per pedal, so you could easily set up pedals to arm and trigger recording with one press. The trick would be making sure that pressing it the second time to loop your clip doesn't turn off the record arm as you are finishing recording your clip.

I appreciate the innovation in the original idea here, but don't you still have to trigger the clip with something? ie a mouse, qwerty key, or in the case of guitarist and bassists out there, a midi foot pedal? At which point it might be easier to just do it the normal way and have control over your loop length...

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 5:23 pm

Nightrider wrote:anychance of getting a .als of this for osx IAC?

I'm having trouble getting it setup

i have an iac template that demonstrates many of the utilities of the driver, but it is for students only. if you don't want to be a student, send me an email and you can download it with a word document to explain the different features.

there are many benefits of using the iac bus that you can't get with a foot pedal. being able to take full advantage of scenes for one... you can have a scene trigger an automation clip which triggers another scene after 32/64 bars or whatever. it kills follow actions because you can hop around like a madman and trigger a ton of things simultaneously.

give me an email at [email protected] and i'll sort you out.

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 9:30 pm

for those who want to access my templates + literature for free you can hit up www.blog.myspace.com/thephatconductor it's probably easier than using the search funtion here.

peace!

d

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:07 pm

btw, I tried this and augmented it a bit:

I've set up my guitar to come in as an external input, armed to record that input, but I will actually be recording clips on another track.

I've set up a second track to accept input from that first audio track, this is my "routed guitar input".

On a third track, I take a blank MIDI clips, put a note in it, send it out to a MIDI yoke that is set up in prefs for track output and remote input. The clips is four beats long, the note comes sometime in the last beat. My clip launch quantize is set to one bar.

There are some backing tracks, one with a drum loop, one with a bass, one with a chording generated from the bass note. But one midi track is only for the "automation track" with an empty MIDI clip in the first scene of some number of bars for a 'lead in', all of these clips in scene 1.

All the MIDI clips for this are loops.

The second scene has my 'one note' MIDI clip in the same track as the lead in. The drum session track has all stop buttons removed.

I start that one note clip playing, then I go into MIDI map and click an empty clip slot, in the same scene, on the routed guitar input track. I let it play until the MIDI map indicates the clip record button will be armed by the note in the automation clip.

I repeat this for four following scenes, copying the one note clip and changing the note in each 'triggering clip' so it activates the record button on it's counterpart in the routed guitar in track.

(all recording happens in the routed guitar in track, live input is in a separate track, routed to the, uh, routed guitar in track)

Then, I assign follow actions for the all of the lead-in and triggering MIDI clips. The last one in the row plays "any" of the previous, just for grins.

I arm the guitar in, and start the first scene, so just drums are playing. I play along with the drums and bass maybe, maybe not. I see the second scene clip flashing, indicating it will play, it plays and recording starts in my routed guitar track.

After a bit, my routed guitar track is filled with 'captured guitar stuff' and I am playing along with it through the primary in guitar track. If I get tired of one of the captured clips, I lean over to the keyboard and delete it, and in a little while it fills in again. Actually, what would be cool is some kind of 'midi mappable quick-move to Live Clip folder'.

I'm on a really slow connection so I can't upload screenshots, etc, but I hope this helps, if anyone'd like a video of this PM me and if I get enough asks I'll put one together eventually and get to a faster connection to put it up somewhere.

Nightrider · Post by **Nightrider** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:38 am

here is .als

http://download.yousendit.com/7F0BECAA767E7DD8

enjoy

electropoet · Post by **electropoet** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:24 am

This right here is the single greatest tip on this entire board.

If you are a dj then you can probably ignore it.

If you are a live musician who wants to use Live as a glorified echoplex/AKAI MPC/Roland MC-505/808/909...

...then this is the tip that will revolutionize what live can do for you.

period.

It essentially turns live into a player piano which trigger the recording of loops in any pre-sequenced way you can imagine. The limit is now in the mind of the programmer. The ultimate one man band live looping sequencer. I knew live was cool when I started using it back on version 2...but when I found this by phat conductor last year...it all came together.

Thanks a million dude.