Live looping?

[GaryG]

Anyone ever done much of it?

I've only ever played around with a single delay line, building loops then letting them fade before adding new material.

Thinking about trying something a little more involved (seperate loops, muting, overdubbing etc), read some tutorials on achieving this in Reaper or Ableton but wondering if there's a simpler route.

Did have a look about Mobius too which is probably exactly what I need but... sounds complicated. I like simple. :D

Should mention I have some pedals I'm adapting for midi use so midi control is good.

cheers.

[seismic1]

I have seen a lot of clips on KVR where people have been using Mobius. It does seem to be reasonably popular with the live looping community.

[Nemo]

I've got several hardware units that accommodate looping, including a Boss and a couple by Eventide. What I really want is a Looperlative. On the software side there is also Ambiloop, which is stand-alone only. It's free! You have to join the Yahoo group though.

[GaryG]

Cheers, never heard of ambiloop before but it seems to work well out of the box with minimal configuration. Will probably play with it for a while and see if I need go the mobius route later or not.

Thanks.

[Nemo]

Excellent, Gary! Yeah, ambiloop is pretty cool. In a way, it's kind of like the Looperlative. Which, unfortunately is out of production at the moment. That one is done by a former employee of Apple and is absolutely incredible in both sound quality and ease of use. The reason I mention the Apple affiliation is that he must have carried over the Apple way of doing things into his own products. The Boss stuff, etc. simply cannot hold a candle to it. Either way these two are excellent tools for looping without them getting in the way of creativity, which some of the other options sometimes tend to do.

[aoVI]

Back in the late 80's I had a Digitech 2 second digital delay pedal and live looped on bass all the time. I would get something going then the drummer would slide in. Lots of fun. I also used to do it with the DX7 and go for hours...well, maybe like minutes, but enough to where even I was ready for it to end. :whiteflag:


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[Nemo]

This looks promising

http://www.rolandus.com/blog/2013/04/04/boss-rc-505-loop-station/

RC-505-Blog.png


The only questions/issues I have right off the bat are:

a) Connectivity (better, but maybe still not enough)
b) Can't tell yet whether the individual tracks are truly completely independent as they say or whether they are really in some way tempo dependent on each other (I'll believe it when I see it).

I like having completely independent start/stop sections and volume directly accessible.

[GaryG]

This looks promising

Interesting. I'm wondering if by independent tracks they just mean it's not one big delay like units of old, individual parts can be muted, overlayed etc. Hopefully foot controllable over midi?

[phoenstorm]

I think Ableton had a "looper" instrument since version 8 that might be worth checking out - provided you already use live in some form.

[robojam]

Looks like Mobius has undergone some updates since I last used it. Might try it again sometime.

Anyone know if it's 64 bit yet? Nothing obvious on the site.

[Nemo]

Interesting. I'm wondering if by independent tracks they just mean it's not one big delay like units of old, individual parts can be muted, overlayed etc. Hopefully foot controllable over midi?

AFAIK, this kind of looper is not a delay unit. Just like the Looperlative is not a delay unit. In this case it's probably some kind of hard drive (since you can record up to three hours) and then you can play your tracks back while adding other sounds via other tracks. Each track can be set to repeat once, repeat infinitely, or play backwards. I believe it IS foot controllable, but for the new RC-505 you would have to plug in your own expression pedal and foot controller. That's because this one looks like it's meant specifically for table top use.

The RC-300 is what you would want if you want foot control:

http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/1182

[Duckett]

Well, in Windows-VST-land, there's this, which to me is a good balance between something old-school delay-line like the venerable Elottronix, and the complex Mobius, which I admit to downloading, trying to use, becoming
frustrated by the learning curve, and henceforth giving up on. I also have and use Ambiloop, which is very nice, but as mentioned before, standalone.

[seismic1]

I forgot about Elottronix. I used that on one of my tracks. That was great for simple Frippertronics-style looping.

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

Awesome topic. Downloaded Mobius tonight and installed it. Definitely going to give it a go one of these days. Hey, maybe on the Sample Challenge #2.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions you guys.

Cheers.

-S1gns

[Toaster]

Audiomulch contains loopers you can use directly with VSTs. I've used it a heck of a lot to perform live tracks: http://toaster.bandcamp.com/track/variant-iv for example is 100% live through audiomulch, using a turntable, VSTs and an Eigenharp. It can also be used for things which require more precise timing than I am used to.