Yet another live looping question.

metaxy · Post by **metaxy** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 12:20 am

For the zero people in here who don't know, what I have in mind is the loop building style popular among guitarists (eg, Robert Fripp or Howie Day) that's ordinarily done using devices like the Line6 DL4 or the Gibson Echoplex. The Kid Beyond demo video shows it.

So I have two questions: One, is this a natural use for Live? In other words, will I have to set up tons of MIDI->keystroke mappings for my foot controller like Kid Beyond and generally be hackish, or is this the sort of thing Live was made for?

Secondly, it appears that, other than the undo feature, all the looping delay units I'm aware of (and Guitar Rig's loop machine) don't seem to have a way to take away tracks in mid-stream. That is, you couldn't cut out the rhythm part of a tune unless it was the most recent layer you did. The question is, is it also reasonably within Live's capabilities to add the ability to delete older loops (eg, a row of four buttons on the foot controller that deletes the most recent, second most recent, and so on)?

If Live isn't really the tool for this stuff, then what is? I mean, the loop machine in Guitar Rig does what a looping delay does, but it doesn't have the more advanced features you'd expect from software like the one I just described.

Thanks a lot,
Alex

metaxy · Post by **metaxy** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:27 pm

Alert me if bumping isn't within forum protocol, but:

bump

jerry123 · Post by **jerry123** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:44 pm

I've been using an FCB1010 foot controller and it makes thing very easy. You don't need a complex system to do live looping. Basically if you have enough control to arm and record an a few tracks and navigate the clip view, you don't need to be a MIDI genius to get a great guitar looping setup.

gerard · Post by **gerard** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:54 pm

Well if your only wish is to loop guitars I'd recommend the Boss RC-XL 20 or even the RC-50 Loopstation. I've tried to combine digital stuff like my PODXT with a poweramp and guitar with computereffects, but never found the sound I liked. Maybe it's me but for playing acoustic music, contrary to electronic music, I try to stay away from computers and use "real" gear.

GaryTracks · Post by **GaryTracks** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 7:00 pm

yes you need to hack to do this. no Live does not currently support overdub-style looping. But it CAN be done. i haven't messed yet with "midi translator" software.

maybe my eyes will be opened when i do

Live 7 will finally cater to the loopers of the world!!

Note: with the mouse, Live's realtime looping (once there is ALREADY a tempo set on the sequencer) is second NONE.

GaryTracks · Post by **GaryTracks** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 7:02 pm

yeah the new Boss multi-pedal looper looks BOMB!

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 7:57 pm

--> metaxy

No, unofortunately your guess is correct; Live wasn't designed for overcub style live looping. I and others have been posting wishes for this since Live 3.0 and so far the only thing we have got is the little Freeze Loop button on the Ping-Pong dealy plug-in

)

What you want to do is possible in with the freeware XP software Mobius, http://www.zonemobius.com/. Many users run Mobius VST inside Live. In Mobius you can layer parts into different loops for each part of the song - intro, verse, stick, chorus etc - and then you can jump between those loops to create an arrangement on-the-fly. EVERYTHING i Mobius is assignable to external MIDI control; you can reverse a loop for the last quarternote before kicking into the chorus in the next loop etc etc...

Too bad there's no Mobius for the Mac. But for me it was worth buying a PC laptop only to be able to run this wonderful software

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 4:34 am

metaxy wrote: Secondly, it appears that, other than the undo feature, all the looping delay units I'm aware of (and Guitar Rig's loop machine) don't seem to have a way to take away tracks in mid-stream. That is, you couldn't cut out the rhythm part of a tune unless it was the most recent layer you did. The question is, is it also reasonably within Live's capabilities to add the ability to delete older loops (eg, a row of four buttons on the foot controller that deletes the most recent, second most recent, and so on)?

Alex

maybe I didn't understand everything properly, but it seems like he's asking about not doing overdub style looping like a loop pedal with everything on one "track". As others have mentioned, doing overdub style looping ala most loop pedals is not inherent to Live--mobious or angstro looper are some alternatives for this.

But, if you want to have your loops seperated into tracks, Live is an amazing looping tool when coupled with a footboard like the fcb 1010. Yes, you can very easily get rid of older loops--you can stop them, delete them, turn off monitoring for that track, or crossfade them in and out--there are many ways of doing it hands-free. imho, and ymmv, I think doing loops on seperate tracks is way more flexible and dynamic than overdub looping--you can individually control pan, volume, effects, sends/return effect, crossfader, etc. for each loop, and bring loops in and out of the mix. To me, this is a lot more fun that a bunch of mono loops stacked up where you can't take any one loop out, you can't change the effects settings or volume, etc....

As far as the Kid Beyond reference--he's chosen to do everything hands-free using only the midi foot controller, and has a pretty complex setup where one foot pedal press does many things at once. This is not necessary for looping with Live--it can be much simpler. Anyhow, Live is a great looper, and there are many people using it to loop instuments live. fwiw, here's a duo I was in doing all-live looping with no pre-recorded material:

http://www.ryan-hughes.net/MixedBagFrameset.htm

good luck, and search these forums for a lot of info on live looping with Live.

Ryan

metaxy · Post by **metaxy** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 6:30 am

Thanks for all the input so far.

That's right, I did mean with the loops on separate tracks. I can see in retrospect that I seemed to be rather intently referring to overdub looping, whereas I was just namechecking that approach to clarify the type of music building I had in mind, but I'm glad some of you got the idea despite me. Whatever advantages there are with manipulating the thing as a single building track (what are they, anyway?

), I'm not interested in that right now.

So if anyone who did say this was hackish would clarify whether they thought I meant actual overdub-style looping, that'd be great--though I'm very tempted to believe quandry and jerry123 since they actually make music this way.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 6:47 am

this sort of looping is how I make my music. In fact, this is how many of us make our music, some just do it in non-realtime, with a mouse, hitting stop every now and then.

You don't need to hack anything. This is one of the biggest problems with the Kid Beyond videos - which are great, and from meeting the guy I can only say that so is he.

A footpedal will get you a looooong way.

laurentius · Post by **laurentius** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 5:42 pm

my personal dream would be to combine overdub style with seperated tracks, since there is always some stuff that iwanna do in overdub mode to quickly get a fat fundament. with seperated tracks it would take too long and be too much switching...
anybody could explain how to this freeze function for overdub styled looping?

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 6:03 pm

mobius does exactly what your are asking for -- you can have multiple loops/overdubs on a track, and then switch to other tracks as well. it's also very easy to midiassign in mobius.

the other option is having something like angstrolooper on live tracks, so that you get the overdubbing aspect and the track aspect (i think it's kinda redundant to use mobius inside live, though it has many nifty features). live itself, however, is not well suited to anything more than being a live multi-tracker, because there's no equivalent to a feedback control, so you need someother app if you want that sort of functionality.

live also doesn't really offer a multiply fuction, though you might not need it if you're just recording quantized loops of different lengths on different tracks.

and live has no equivalent to undo (which is available on SW like mobius), but you're asking about deleting older passes, which i agree is not something most apps do. however, the equivalent would be fairly easy to set up in live, by muting tracks (rather than actually deleting).

so i don't think live's really set up to be a live looper in the same way guitarists tend to use that term, but you can get very close using freeware, and have the additional bonus of fx on each track you use. and the midiassign isn't too difficult (you don't have to go to the same extremes as someone like kid beyond. but i still think it's tricky in live to have different parts of a song (you can use scenes, but it requires somewhat odd workarounds).

laurentius · Post by **laurentius** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 6:43 pm

so what software would i use on a mac. still i want to stay in live because i run my sequences there. if there is some add. plu i would be willing to try...
thnx,
lars.

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 7:12 pm

laurentius wrote:so what software would i use on a mac. still i want to stay in live because i run my sequences there. if there is some add. plu i would be willing to try...
thnx,
lars.

Throw in the AU Plug-in Augustus Looper for overdub loop building. It's like a tape delay on acid.

http://www.collective.co.uk/expertsleep ... sloop.html

laurentius · Post by **laurentius** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 8:20 pm

thanks for that. right now i could not install it. but i will figure out...

Yet another live looping question.

Yet another live looping question.

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Re: Yet another live looping question.