voice activated looping?

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:50 pm

i'm working on an environmental feedback looping setup and i was wondering if any of you can think of a way to use audio to midi plugins to make a voice activated sampler/looping setup.

any thoughts?

Spiralgroove · Post by **Spiralgroove** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:01 am

never tried anything like that but it would seem logical to maybe set it up to trigger an instruction if there was a loud noise...
clap on clap off... the clapper!

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:55 am

My initial thought was: Way too convoluted to do that in Live.

Second thought was: Hey, that sounds like fun! Shouldn't be much of a problem to throw together a pluggo that did that, methinks. MaxMSP has a bunch of externals that create triggers from audio signals.

What was the idea: that an overhead mic of some sorts picks up the spoken words of participants, records them and loops them?

One potential problem would be the feedback. If you want sound-on-sound recordings triggered by the environment, then you will quickly reach a point where the direct environment isn't interacting with the piece anymore, but rather the sound system will be working with the reverberation of the room in an autonomous fashion - which, provided that the patch has been programmed to ride the feedback levels automatically can be a very cool thing.
The only problem is that you will probably end up with a rather annoying Alvin Lucier "I am sitting in a room" type of feed instead, if the system is too loud.

But yeah, feedback is the king.

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:04 am

i want to use sm-58s to record, but then have the audio trigger a clip on the iac bus that loops a two second sample, then mashes, delays, glitches, and fades it out over about 8 bars or so to avoid the sitting in a room effect.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:09 am

thing is, how will you know that the glitched out audio won't also trigger the recording?

And the way I see it the real main issue here is getting the audio in.

Pray tell, why won't an open mic input with a glitchy feedback line do? I'm just trying to get a better idea of the concepts...

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:23 am

the mics would be placed around a space in strategic spots, the music would not be that loud. i was hoping that i could set a threshold on the note on/off data.

once the note on was sent i would then modyulate or randomize which automation clips it triggers.

all automation clips would gradually strip the sample out of the mix after a few bars and then delete the recorded audio.

*sigh* · Post by ***sigh*** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:04 am

I can kind of think of a way of doing this in pd...and therefore in Bidule I suppose. pd being more...y'know...free.

does it have to be Live that you use to process and loop the samples?

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:43 pm

i'd really prefer if it was live, but i'm not hellbent on it.

i'd probably set up a slavesd laptop to do all the environmental munching and then perform off of the other one,

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:08 pm

Never underestimate white slavery, once you break in a cracker they're pretty handy to have around. Just feed 'em mayonoise on wonder bread with whole milk to fatten 'em up so they can't run away.

"I said LOOP, whitey!"

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:18 pm

i've found that you can find happiness in slavery....

pribeh_tom · Post by **pribeh_tom** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 7:04 pm

I'm not too sure what you're after but some guy in the MPC-Forums figured out that you can stick a microphone (with preamp) into one of the footswitch jacks (that respond to a foot-pedal) and correspondingly setup your voice to trigger whatever the MPC in question allows the footswitch to be used for. In the case of the MPC 1000 you can, thus, use a microphone to trigger a sequence, pad sound, and more.

I figure, if you tried to hook up a microphone to just about any footswitch jack (such as on a midi keyboard) you could use you're voice to trigger anything in Live that is midi assignable.

Peace,
Tom

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 7:11 pm

hey, that's pretty handy to know. the foot pedal we use for the live looping has a footswitch input.

stutter · Post by **stutter** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:27 pm

I certainly don't know enough to help, and maybe the mic->footswitch thingy has you sorted, but you should probably have a look at this:
http://www.koen.smartelectronix.com/KTDrumTrigger/
which allows audio to trigger midi messages after passing through a fairlyy detailed filtering stage.

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 6:36 pm

whoah! that actually helps a lot man. i think i might be able to use this to get it going. i'll let you know. got a big show planned next week though and won't be able to get on it for a bit.

thanks tho!

<3

stjohn · Post by **stjohn** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 7:38 pm

Machinate wrote:Alvin Lucier "I am sitting in a room"

TTTTTUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEE.

voice activated looping?

voice activated looping?

FOOTSWITCH.