Ableton Forum

I apologize if this has been covered before, but I was unable to find a specific answer by searching the forum.

I use Live 6 and an FCB1010 with acoustic guitar to create multi-part performances in a live situation - kinda like Kid Beyond but with guitar. Everything works great as long as I set my tempo ahead of time and play to the metronome, but there are occasions where I'd rather play freeform for the first pass, use a pedal to set the loop point, and then have everything subsequently quantized to that.

I did find posts where people referred to VST loopers such as Mobius, but someone I spoke with recently said they thought that Live 7 allowed this. I can't find any confirmation.

Thanks, -Jamie

Impossible...

This might not be a solution if I'm not understanding your question, but if your looking to set the tempo whlie your playing freeform and then to hit play when your ready for the pre-recorded stuff and have it then match up, you cold assign a midi controller to the "TAP" tempo button and hit play when your ready for the rest to come in. ...just you would have to be actively tapping out your tempo as you play to maintain consistency.

Thanks, but no, that's not what I'm trying to do. I have no pre-recorded material - it's all built up from scratch using the FCB1010 to enable clips for recording and playback.

For example, with nothing recorded, I'd start clip "1" recording and play 4 bars at my own tempo, then stop recording (using the foot switch). Clip "1' would now be looping over my 4 bars, defined by when I started and stopped recording. I'd now like to arm clip "2" and have it start recording at the top of clip "1" - in other words, quantized to the length of clip "1", or some division thereof.

With Live 6, the only choice is no quantization, in which case it's impossible to synchronize the loops with my foot, or quantize to the metronome. I want to quantize to the length of a "master" clip.

Does this make sense?

makes sense and it's a very requested feature, many people says it cramps their style.

feel free to make a lot of noise about it, many of us want this feature.

Robertsonics wrote:Thanks, but no, that's not what I'm trying to do. I have no pre-recorded material - it's all built up from scratch using the FCB1010 to enable clips for recording and playback.

For example, with nothing recorded, I'd start clip "1" recording and play 4 bars at my own tempo, then stop recording (using the foot switch). Clip "1' would now be looping over my 4 bars, defined by when I started and stopped recording. I'd now like to arm clip "2" and have it start recording at the top of clip "1" - in other words, quantized to the length of clip "1", or some division thereof.

With Live 6, the only choice is no quantization, in which case it's impossible to synchronize the loops with my foot, or quantize to the metronome. I want to quantize to the length of a "master" clip.

Does this make sense?

Wouldn't this be problematic, because if your off by just a single beat in stopping the clip, your timing would be off from there on? I can only imagine this working, if it were to take the start and stop time and then divide that into for bars to create the "master" clip.

Again, if you're just off slightly, it would loop either the extra beat, or be minus a beat if it stopped too early, all of which is entirely possible while playing live unless you're Dennis Chambers.

if I'm still not understanding this correctly please just call me out... not trying to be stubborn, but want to understand this correctly since Tone Deft pointed out it is a much requested feature.

i assume it could work quite easily, though i may well be way off here; all you'd need to do is tell live how many bars/measures you're going to play, then record your riff (no metronome). the instant you hit stop, in a millisecond live calculates the tempo from the duration you played and the bars/measures you pre-specified, and loops it almost instantly. in an ideal world...

No need for me to call you out - this is a great discussion and a good question. I believe what I am asking for is similar to the way hardware looping pedals work.

Let's assume there is no metronome. For the first clip, while I am playing, I press the pedal at the top of a bar to start recording, and again at the top of bar 5 to stop recording and define the loop point. I'm making the assumption that I can do this accurately enough that it sounds good. Live would not quantize this, but would simply loop over the time between pedal pushes.

I know this much can work because I believe that this is how many people use hardware looping pedals.

For remaining clips in that scene, all starting and stopping of recording would be quantized to the length of the first clip. Live wouldn't necessarily know the tempo or time signature of the material in that loop, but as long as it synchronized to the length of the clip, I'd have what I wanted.

If it could also quantize to integer divisions of the master loop, then I believe that would allow clips to be different numbers of bars so that, while your master loop might be 4 bars, you could do a 2-bar rhythm and everything would line up.

to describe from scratch...

no metronome, no set notion in mind on what the tempo might be, you just play a musical passage live then you step on a pedal at a completely random time and Live starts to loop your music.

then you listen for a bit to your loop, jam a bit, whatever.

you step on a pedal and Live loops for the same amount of time as your first loop.


it's having the first loop take on a completely random length (like recording with quantize off) and having Live loop record ALL the takes after that in perfect sync to the first loop.

hth.

... and what garyboozy said above would work too - just a refinement of what I was talking about. Telling Live what's in the master clip, i.e. number of bars and beats, might allow for more intelligent quantization.

Okay I believe I get it... Simply put, it would loop but not be guaranteed to be 100% accurately lined up with what you've recorded, but just good enough to play what you intend?

I was a drummer for many years, so automatically I'm listing to timing and the slighest offset of it, can be disturbing in SOME music settings, but then again, the only drummer I've ever heard with timing like a drum machine is the one I mentioned before... Dennis Chambers. Crazy good.

I can see why people would want this and I do think it should not be hard to create, since it is simple math... even allowing to play different multiples of bars, but within the tempo created by the master clip. I don't think I would use it, but I'm all for allowing more flexiblity within Live... besides its most often that the slightest of human error is what sounds great.

I would be sold on the idea if it is like what garyboozy said about telling it how many bar/measures and then quantizing the duration of that clip... because IMO it would be easier to loop an "unperfectly" lined rythm in for a longer duration than four bars (duration of course depending on tempo) without it being noticable.

...well, throw my vote in for this as an added feature in the future

elxicano wrote:Okay I believe I get it... Simply put, it would loop but not be guaranteed to be 100% accurately lined up with what you've recorded, but just good enough to play what you intend?

I was a drummer for many years, so automatically I'm listing to timing and the slighest offset of it, can be disturbing in SOME music settings, but then again, the only drummer I've ever heard with timing like a drum machine is the one I mentioned before... Dennis Chambers. Crazy good.

I can see why people would want this and I do think it should not be hard to create, since it is simple math... even allowing to play different multiples of bars, but within the tempo created by the master clip. I don't think I would use it, but I'm all for allowing more flexiblity within Live... besides its most often that the slightest of human error is what sounds great.

I would be sold on the idea if it is like what garyboozy said about telling it how many bar/measures and then quantizing the duration of that clip... because IMO it would be easier to loop an "unperfectly" lined rythm in for a longer duration than four bars (duration of course depending on tempo) without it being noticable.

...well, throw my vote in for this as an added feature in the future

+100000