Ableton Forum

I have major issues with looping.

My main problem is that I cannot work out how to get the loop to start at the right time.

Say I've got 4 tracks and I want them ALL looped, but they come in at different times. When they play the first time around, they're all fine and in time with each other, but then obviously when they go into their individual loops, they all go out of time because some of them have a long pause at the beginning (where at the beginning of the song they didn't come in yet).

HOW do I overcome this!? It's driving me insane. I've read the manual, I've done some tutorials on You Tube but I just cannot work this out!!

I thought I had found the answer when reading about Simpler, where you can use the percentage thing to control where it comes in, but I'm not even sure this would work, AND I can't use this same controller for Operator.

I want to loop in Operator AND Simpler AND Impulse, dammit!

Realize that a "loop" means two things (or more).

For clarity, lets define two things.

a clip is a soundfile you recorded, which may have a pause at the start.
Some people call these "loops" but don't do it!

a loop is the length of time you define in a clip which plays over and over and over once the clip plays through one time.

to keep your loops syncrhonized, make sure the loop length is set to the same amount of time, or an integer of eachother. i.e. 4 bars for clip 1, 2 bars for clip 2, 4 bars for clip 3. You set loop length in the clip window

Now, two loops might not sound "in sync" based on two (or more) things:
1. They don't start at the same time. the amount that they are off will remain constant
2. they are at the wrong speed. the amount they are off will change, creating a weird polyrhythm of some sort.

If our loop lengths are set to the same amount, then any further sync issues can only be #1, not #2. (unless you change the bpm of one clip)

Adjusting the Start Time of the loop will fix this and bring two loops into perfect sync. the proper Loop Start time is going to be dependent on the audio in the clip. Do this by eye or by ear. make sure the loop starts right on the beat.

Lastly, we've set the Loop lengths to be equal, the Loop Start times right on the beat... now we have to worry about the Clip Start and End points. If you have a 4 bar loop, but 4.365 bars of audio that plays before loop mode is engaged, you'll probably not be in sync. Make sure that your Clip Length is an integer... 4 bars long, 8 bars long, etc. Changing the Clip End marker to 8.0.0 (or whatever) is the easy way to do this, and will preserve any "silent pause" timing you want

Also look into "warping audio". If you trigger audio samples or the entire track, warping allows you to sync bpm and start playback on the first beat. Do some research on warping there is plenty out there.

Good luck...