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Looper's Delight
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> I'm looking into a foot controller for
> hands-free operation my laptop /
> Ableton Live setup.
I believe I'm a bit late in this discussion,
because you've already received your
Behringer, but...
I love my Ground Control Pro. I've done
about 175 shows with it since November
2003 -- including 9 shows in the harsh
Nevada desert conditions of Burning Man
(65-mph duststorms!) -- and it has never
failed me.
When I first started looping with Ableton
Live, I bought the Behringer FCB 1010, but:
a) It was too long in my rolling carry-on bag --
a big drawback for touring.
b) On the unit I bought (new) from Guitar
Center, one of the two expression pedals
didn't work at all. This I took to be a bad
omen.
These, combined with some posts on LD
saying that the Behringer was slightly
cheaply made and somewhat beastly to
program, led me to the GCP. The digital
display comes in very handy as well.
That having been said: I don't program
the GCP very heavily. I keep things on
their standard settings for the most part,
and let Bome Midi Translator translate
the events into keystrokes. So other folks'
posts about fewer momentary switches
and so on, I couldn't speak to. (Although,
after reading that post, I realize that
using some momentary switches would
be very useful to me...)
> stompbox-style switches ... which, wile very
> sturdy, take more effort to trigger in time.
> Since one of the uses of the pedal will be to
> trigger clips in live, I need to have pretty
> exact timing.
True. My stuff is mostly all quantized, so as
long as I hit a given trigger before the right
beat, I'm okay. But even in non-quantized
situations, I've found the triggers to be very
responsive.
As to the loudness of the triggers, they are
certainly a bit louder than the FCB -- it's sort
of a little metallic squeak -- but it's never
been a problem for me onstage, and all I
use to make my loops is a mic and my mouth.
The only non-sturdy part of the GCP is the
power cable. It's pretty thin. I called the
company and bought an extra one, knowing
that it would crap out some day. Two weeks
ago, it did -- at a gig. Worked fine in soundcheck,
was DOA when I got up onstage. One tug
too many, I guess. Boy, was I glad I had the
backup cable in my bag.
Moral: always carry a spare for every cable
in your rig -- power cables, MIDI cables, mic
and output cables, etc.
You can watch me using the GCP here:
http://www.ableton.com/index.php?main=artists&sub=kid-beyond
More videos coming to my own site soon.
Andrew Chaikin, aka Kid Beyond
andrew@biggerbread.com
email@kidbeyond.com
http://biggerbread.com | http://kidbeyond.com