Realtime Looping ESSENTIAL CONFIG

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motherbrain5000
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Realtime Looping ESSENTIAL CONFIG

Post by motherbrain5000 » Wed May 25, 2005 6:31 pm

When using Live as a realtime looping station this is a convenient setup:

Creat a track whose input is the external signal. Disarm the track but set the 'Monitor' status to 'ON'. Put various plugins on this track and set a pedal board to turn them on and off. (chorus, delay, etc.). Call this track GUITAR (or whatever).

Now, set up several Tracks that will hold loops. Call them LOOP1, LOOP2, etc. Set the 'Audio From' on each of these tracks to GUITAR (the track that you created above). Hold down CTRL while record enabling each loop track. This will enable them all simaltaneously. TURN the 'Monitor' status of ALL the loop tracks to 'OFF'! set a pedal board or something to stop and start loops in each LOOP track's clip slots.

This eliminates the need for something to record enable the track each time you want to record. Plus it centralizes your effects. Effect the signal on it's way to the loop (rather than at the loops output). Sound comes out of these LOOP tracks only when the loops are playing. The sound of your input is always heard (cause it's the only thing being monitored).



I posted this cause I see a lot of people talking about live looping and record enabling the track each time. As you can see, it's uneccessary.

Image
Last edited by motherbrain5000 on Fri Jan 15, 2010 4:07 pm, edited 3 times in total.

jace
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Post by jace » Sun May 29, 2005 11:57 am

nice one buddy nice 8O
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willum
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Post by willum » Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:56 am

This tip totally rocks! Previously I had a template set up where one pedal sent a "select+arm" for each channel. As you can guess, the whole arm/disarm toggling made this very difficult to use. As if that weren't inefficient enough, I had efx on each destination track rather than on the master.

Your solution is ideal in so many ways. Now I plan to set up my pedalboard as follows:
Pedal 1: select/launch channel 1
Pedal 2: stop clips channel 1
Pedal 3: select/launch channel 2
Pedal 4: stop clips channel 2
Pedal 5: prev scene
Pedal 6: efx1
Pedal 7: efx2
Pedal 8: launch scene
Pedal 9: stop all clips
Pedal 10: next scene

Then I just repeat the same thing for the next two channels on another pedalboard preset. One variation might be to do away with launch scene and stop all clips to make room for more efx, but I kind of like having those.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your solution. Thanks so much for posting it! The screenshot was very helpful as well.

eblomquist
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what kind of pedal board are you using?

Post by eblomquist » Tue Jun 14, 2005 11:17 pm

what kind of pedal board are you using?

TheAnimal
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Post by TheAnimal » Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:09 pm

Thank you for posting this good idea!

Machinate
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Post by Machinate » Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:36 pm

yep. This is the way to go.

All my looping tracks are also bussed to the same track, so that I can compress and filter the lot as one group.
mbp 2.66, osx 10.6.8, 8GB ram.

Pilgrim
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Re: Realtime Looping ESSENTIAL CONFIG

Post by Pilgrim » Thu Jun 16, 2005 2:35 pm

motherbrain5000 wrote:When using Live as a realtime looping station this is a convenient setup:

<snip>

I posted this cause I see a lot of people talking about live looping and record enabling the track each time. As you can see, it's uneccessary.
Wow! Made my morning!
You qualify for your handle, MotherBrain5000!

Pilgrim

funkateer
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Very, very helpful. One issue remains ...

Post by funkateer » Sat Jun 18, 2005 7:24 pm

This is working pretty well for me with an FCB1010, as long as I record audio. It is pretty convenient to dedicate one bank per loop.

I am having one problem, though. Possibly a newbie MIDI clip issue unrelated to this configuration. I am using Reason as a rewire slave, but am having difficulty recording new MIDI clips. I can record the audio output from the Reason instruments fine, but I am unable to capture the midi input into a clip.

jamesp
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Post by jamesp » Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:38 pm

I want to add my thanks for this tip. I've still got one question, tho'.

I've mapped my keyboard to fire (iow, record) clips. Unfortunatly, the previously recorded loop stops playing when I fire the next clip. Any way to force the loops to start over and keep playing as I record the next one? TIA.

funkateer
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Post by funkateer » Sat Aug 13, 2005 4:53 pm

One problem I have with this configuration is that I while I'm playing the bass and recording the loop, I don't want any audio (for either the audio track or the associated loop track), as it sounds wierd 'chorusing' with my bass rig. So far, I haven't found any way to keep audio flowing from my audio track to the loop track without the audio also finding its way to the output bus.

The best I've been able to come up with is to deactivate the loop track while recording, but that would require extra footswitch taps, and is kind of awkward. Any suggestions?

kimyo
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Post by kimyo » Wed Jan 04, 2006 1:19 am

funkateer wrote:The best I've been able to come up with is to deactivate the loop track while recording, but that would require extra footswitch taps, and is kind of awkward. Any suggestions?
set the monitor on your loop tracks to "off". the bass will come through on the input track, you won't get any audio from the loop tracks until there are loops playing.

jamesp: use multiple loop tracks, if you'd like use a send to route them all to a 'mixdown' track, (keep it on the 'b' side, your loops on 'a'), tweak the mix, grab a mixdown track, crossfade to 'b', stop the loop clips, rinse, repeat.

gregmcnichol
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Post by gregmcnichol » Sat Jan 07, 2006 3:37 pm

Insted of using this set up i use Loopy llama for audio looping, if i did do this set up how do i prevent the second loop from becoming out of time with the first? The reason i have to use the loopy llama is because it forces the loops to stay on time all the time.
G4 iBook 1.25 gig RAM Tiger , Ableton Live 5, M-Audio Audiophiler Firewire, FCB1010

TheAnimal
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Post by TheAnimal » Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:55 pm

I'm not shure whether or not I understand your question correctly. But usually you would use quantization to get loops with exactly the same length. This has the disadvantage that you cannot "play" the tempo in the beginning but you have to "set" it instead. As far as I understand Loopy Llama has the big advantage of being able to just play and say stop when the loop is over and then all additional layers have exactly that same length (or an integral multiple?) from there on. It would be very nice if we could get this as a feature in Live.

gregmcnichol
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Post by gregmcnichol » Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:34 am

Yeah i was vert dissapointed i bought live before i found out live couldnt do sound on sound looping
G4 iBook 1.25 gig RAM Tiger , Ableton Live 5, M-Audio Audiophiler Firewire, FCB1010

sweetjesus
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Post by sweetjesus » Sun Jan 08, 2006 7:50 pm

gregmcnichol wrote:Yeah i was vert dissapointed i bought live before i found out live couldnt do sound on sound looping
i feel for ya buddy

same sadness here

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