Doing it the Kid Beyond way

[ze2be]

Im not a vocalist, but id like to do some of the same loop recording techniques as kid beyond.

Im building a midi controller with loads of triggers, but you could use any kind of midi trigger for this.


What id like to do, is having a lot of things hapening with the push of one button: select track and its instrument, arm + record. Press again: Stop record and continue to play recorded loop, in perfect timing. Say I have 16 of theese triger buttons, each presenting a track 1-16, and its instrument.

In photoshop its called recording and playing back actions. You just hit the record actions button, do all the things youd like to do, and then you hit stop. You have now recorded a sequence of things to happen, and you can play back that sequence with one mouse click.
Ive just started working with midi ox, which means im pretty green with it! Also ive just downloaded Midi Translator.


My question is obiously how to do this, and which midi program is best/most eazy to use with it.
Also im curious to know about diferent "action sequence techniques", and what works best.


btw, Ive read all the kid beyond interviews. It doesnt say anything more then that hes using midi translator to do it.

It would be cool to have some step-by-step videos, explayning different techniques of doing this! It would help out a lot of live users.

Kim

[Hatchets McGee]

one of the programs you could have a look at is plogue bidule
www.plogue.com

i use it for simple things, like having one fader control multiple parameters

put in the legwork, and you can do all kinds midi processing...

[quandry]

check out these two threads:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

The first one shows you a way to set up Live so that you can have any number of tracks armed for looping but not have them monitoring the input. Thus, with this setup, all you have to do is set up one foot pedal for the clip record slot in session view. This one pedal (I just used a fixed cc from my 1010) can then be used to both trigger recording of the clip, as well as trigger it to stop and loop. By having the global quantize set to "bar", and monitoring the click on headphones (or making a custom beatbox click and having it come through the mains, or whatever you want), you can have loops that are perfectly in time, perfect start and end points. What you're asking to do doesn't require a complicated multiple commands per patch setup, just one pedal per clip slot. Of course you can get more complex, and if you want the luxury of deleting messed up clips, there are some caveats (see the threads above and links within these threads).

There is a ton of info and people's personal setups on these forums for live looping. I think that everyone does stuff differently, so there's no one prescriptive way of doing it. But reading some of the links, searching the forums, and understanding Live, midi, and your controller will get you far. Basically, the most important thing is figuring out what you want to do with your set, then going about implementing it. Pretty much anything is possible with Live, midi ox, bomes midi translator, and sometimes more complex things like Mackie Control emulation and auto hotkeys--it really just depends on what you are trying to do. The photoshop actions are great, but there's nothing like that in Live. However, midi ox, bomes, and/or auto hotkeys can get you close. But again, if you just want armed tracks and clip slots mapped to pedals, see the first link--simple.

[Machinate]

max, max, max, max, max!

*ahem*

[crawls away to program ridiculously complex midi transformer]

[ze2be]

Basically, the most important thing is figuring out what you want to do with your set, then going about implementing it. Pretty much anything is possible with Live, midi ox, bomes midi translator, and sometimes more complex things like Mackie Control emulation and auto hotkeys--it really just depends on what you are trying to do. The photoshop actions are great, but there's nothing like that in Live. However, midi ox, bomes, and/or auto hotkeys can get you close. But again, if you just want armed tracks and clip slots mapped to pedals, see the first link--simple.

That was quick and very helpful! Thanks a lot quandry!

Theres two diferent modes id like to work with. Bouth use midi clips, not audio clips like kid.

1. Recording loops live like Kid Beyond, but with synths and samplers. But intended for quick song writing and aranging in the studio, not aranging everything on stage. I want some pre-programed events before going to the stage, which leads to:

2. Performance mode: trigering clips, as well as playing some synths live. I want to use more random clips then KB, so there will be a lot of follow actions and random note filters pre-programed, so that when I launch a clip, it want be the same loop again and again.


It will take some study, as expected! Ill start reading thouse threads right now.

@machinate. I understand that Max is great. A friend of mine have programed an exelent audio loop recorder/player with it, that does things Live cant. I will be using it together with Live in the near future. But Max seems much more complex then what I need to do. In my situasion, less is more! I guess what you are tryin to say is: "take it to the ...!"

[ze2be]

one of the programs you could have a look at is plogue bidule
www.plogue.com

i use it for simple things, like having one fader control multiple parameters

put in the legwork, and you can do all kinds midi processing...

Thanks, it looks nice and tidy on the screen shots!

[quandry]

Theres two diferent modes id like to work with. Bouth use midi clips, not audio clips like kid.

1. Recording loops live like Kid Beyond, but with synths and samplers. But intended for quick song writing and aranging in the studio, not aranging everything on stage. I want some pre-programed events before going to the stage, which leads to...

One thing to note when recording midi loops--if you play parts that stretch across two measures (like pads) sometime recording midi loops can miss a whole chord. For instance, lets say you are recording a four measure loop, but on the fourth and final measure, you hit a chord on the second beat that you hold until the second beat of the first measure. If you try to record this as a midi loop live, your sound can get cut off sometimes. Overdub mode can help, but I haven't had the best of luck with midi looping in comparison to audio looping. I guess for me a lot of my synth loops have things like the above, with either chord stretching across the bar, or delays that build up some ambient sound etc. ymmv. If you are using external synths and samplers, it might be easier to record as audio (or both!).

[ze2be]

Theres two diferent modes id like to work with. Bouth use midi clips, not audio clips like kid.

1. Recording loops live like Kid Beyond, but with synths and samplers. But intended for quick song writing and aranging in the studio, not aranging everything on stage. I want some pre-programed events before going to the stage, which leads to...

One thing to note when recording midi loops--if you play parts that stretch across two measures (like pads) sometime recording midi loops can miss a whole chord. For instance, lets say you are recording a four measure loop, but on the fourth and final measure, you hit a chord on the second beat that you hold until the second beat of the first measure. If you try to record this as a midi loop live, your sound can get cut off sometimes. Overdub mode can help, but I haven't had the best of luck with midi looping in comparison to audio looping. I guess for me a lot of my synth loops have things like the above, with either chord stretching across the bar, or delays that build up some ambient sound etc. ymmv. If you are using external synths and samplers, it might be easier to record as audio (or both!).

Yes, one of the reasons I dont want to do midi recording live on stage! Rather do audio recording, then. Ill only be using vsts, so I only bring a controller, laptop and soundcard when giging. I have some hardware synths in the studio, and when recording them, id be using audio, not midi. Because I dont want to drag them with me!

But for quick building up and jaming out grooves, id like to do it this way, with midi. I dont want to be mousclicking in front of the screen to much. I want to do everything from the controller, just like KB. Then later edit if wanted. Its a great way to get going, instead of fidling to much with mouse in the midi edit view. Which can be tedious, boring and not very dynamic. This way its more like just playing the guitar, with your advanced 8 track casette loop deck!

Ill have to come up with some kind of standardized system.

[quandry]

I forgot to mention (and you may already know) you can route a vst's sound to an audio track, and record the vst's output as an audio loop, avoiding the problems I mentioned.

fwiw, I perform live with Live a lot doing all live looping (no pre-recorded clips at all) with a pretty complex setup. I think that from an audience perspective, yes mousing around the whole time isn't that exciting. That said, there's lots of things you can only do with a mouse (input routings, live 3 style scrubbing, etc.), and some things can just be faster to do with a mouse for me at least. I think sometimes people can take it too far to the point there they don't want the computer even visible on stage---whatever works for them, but I don't feel a need to hide the computer or not use a mouse once and awhile--reguardless of whether things are hidden or not, the computer running Live is an instrument, and I'm not ashamed to display it, and the mouse may as well be the equivalent of the guitar pick--it's a tool to get things done.

[ze2be]

fwiw, I perform live with Live a lot doing all live looping (no pre-recorded clips at all) with a pretty complex setup. I think that from an audience perspective, yes mousing around the whole time isn't that exciting. That said, there's lots of things you can only do with a mouse (input routings, live 3 style scrubbing, etc.), and some things can just be faster to do with a mouse for me at least. I think sometimes people can take it too far to the point there they don't want the computer even visible on stage---whatever works for them, but I don't feel a need to hide the computer or not use a mouse once and awhile--reguardless of whether things are hidden or not, the computer running Live is an instrument, and I'm not ashamed to display it, and the mouse may as well be the equivalent of the guitar pick--it's a tool to get things done.

Ive been thinking about that too. My solution: http://www.icuiti.com/index.php?page_id=10

About the pre-recorded clips, im planing to have a very high re-trigger resolution. So that I can retrigger them so fast, it sounds like im playing. But DJ/scratch style. Well, im doing that live, but its just that it will sound quantized, and when I let go, and start jaming on another tracks, the one I left behind, will loop in a random program. Or ill just mute it, or solo it. This is how im planing to work. Ive tried it a few times, and it works fine.

People have diferent wants and needs. Id like to stand upright, playing an instrument, and as much as possible not look at a screen, but out on the audiance, and on the band members. But if I need to look at a screen, thouce icuti glases would be the shit!

[buzzcock]

What I'm not sure I get about Kid Beyond's methodology is why he maps all the midi trigger data to key strokes. What Live commands need to be Key-mapped and not MIDI-mapped?

Someone please enlighten.

[ze2be]

What I'm not sure I get about Kid Beyond's methodology is why he maps all the midi trigger data to key strokes. What Live commands need to be Key-mapped and not MIDI-mapped?

Someone please enlighten.

Because Lives internal maping can only do one thing at the time. With something like Midi Translator you can do multiple operations, with one key stroke.

[quandry]

What I'm not sure I get about Kid Beyond's methodology is why he maps all the midi trigger data to key strokes. What Live commands need to be Key-mapped and not MIDI-mapped?

Someone please enlighten.

Because Lives internal maping can only do one thing at the time. With something like Midi Translator you can do multiple operations, with one key stroke.

sort of. One given midi command, like a fixed cc of midi note can only control one parameter in Live, true. However, pedals like the 1010 can send multiple commands at once--two fixed cc commands and one note on/off (along with two exp pedals and 5 program change commands (which Live doesn't recognize for mapping yet)). Thus, you could send multiple midi commands with one pedal press to accomplisj certain things. afaik, Kid was using midi ox and bomes to essentially use one midi command from his ground control pedal board to accomplish many things in Live (it appears he is now on a mac using a mac equavalent, probably midipipe and/or controlaid). By using Bomes midi translator, you can have one incoming midi command that triggers any number of keystrokes that can be mapped in Live, so that one pedal press can do a number of things in Live.

Something else to look into is the DM2midi software that is free (like ox and bomes) that pdoom wrote to translate the usb signal from the DM2 into midi. It is an amazingly deep way to control Live with midi--you can make any control on the DM2 control any number of Live parameters--I have a button that resets over 60 faders, pan and send knobs parameters to their "zero" position. I mention this because I have read that you can use DM2 even without a DM2--you can route midi from a controller via midi ox then map any number of midi commands to be triggered by one incoming midi signal from a hardware midi controller. You could then assign these midi commands to Live, and have a bunch of things triggered in Live via midi.

Anyhow, these are some of the availible options. Again, it really depends on what you want to do with Live, how you want to use it. I don't find the need to have multiple commands from a pedal press in Live to do live looping. some people do. worth checking this setup to save record arming mapping:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

[buzzcock]

I don't find the need to have multiple commands from a pedal press in Live to do live looping. some people do.

I'm getting into looping and I'm curious about how you all work. Anyone have some examples of multi-function key/midi strokes they use, either for live loopin or otherwise?

So far, I'm using a simple live looping setup with no multi commands (based on the motherbrain5000 example), but i'd love to learn more from those of you who do.

[MrYellow]

No need for multiple commands.

The play/stop button for each track is assignable.
The up/down scene buttons.
The arm buttons...

Arm track 1
Arm track 2

Start recording track 1
Stop/Start playback track 1 (same footswitch)

Start recording track 2
Stop/Start playback track 2

Down

Start recording track 1
Stop/Start playback track 1

Start recording track 2
Stop/Start playback track 2

Down, rince, repeat.

What could be more simple?

-Ben