Re: New user of Ableton seeks help using it to replace loop pedals

[Philip Conway <Philip.Conway@bristol.ac.uk>]

I use Ableton's Looper effect quite a lot.  It's very easy to use, there's nothing much to explain really.  If you can work a loop pedal you can work Looper.  I like it a lot and it's a great composition tool but there are a few niggles with it, the main one being that it doesn't crossfade loop ends properly so you can get clicks and pops where the loops join.

The main issue with 'going computerised' is equipment -- having a solid and reliable laptop, audio interface and foot controller.  Once you start tinkering with the likes of Mobius the sky is the limit in terms of complexity but you can still keep things as simple as you like.  Speaking of Mobius, if your friend just wants to loop then that can run as a standalone, it doesn't need a host.  But then if she wants to experiment with various effects then Ableton is an excellent host, though others could work as well.  Reaper, for one, is massively cheaper, is very stable and has extremely flexible audio routing capabilities.  It isn't designed to be used live like Live is but if you just want a flexible host for plugins it could work well.

Long story short, Ableton would probably work very well for her purposes but there are alternatives.  I think they still have a 1 month fully functional trial period for Live.  Probably worth checking out.

On 7 April 2013 20:07, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote:

After watching the video, my advise to her would be to absolutely do exactly what shes doing right now... its working real good.

Who needs multiple tracks, feedback, insert, halfspeed, varispeed, multiply, divide, 16th note quantise substitute, when you got Overdub and some motherfucking soul baby!

Goosebumps here in Norway, and the snows all but gone... must be sommat else!

M

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 3:25 PM, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 3:06 PM, andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> Per Boysen wrote:
>
>> I watched the linked video and can only say "go ahead and do it". She
>> doesn't seem to be doing anything with the looping pedals that
>> wouldn't be a piece of cake for Live.
>
>
> Does Live let you tap in the first loop length nowadays?

Live doesn't do that but a looper plugin does! I have tested Mobius in
Live and it works well; you set up Mobius for your preferred allowed
tempo range ("Max/Min Tempo") and to send MIDI Clock tempo data to
Live. With this system you can just kick in a first loop of any
length, from just a second up to several minutes and have Live +
effects follow the tempo automatically calculated. No matter the
length of the first loop you crate this way, Live will always hook up
at a tempo according to Mobius set "Max/Min Tempo".

Another option is to use Live's own looper plugin Looper. If you stay
with loops of just a handful of bars length, like this artist does
according to her demo video, this is very easy. You can decide if you
want Looper to follow Live's pre set tempo or if Looper shall analyze
the recorded first loop's tempo and implement that for the host - in
that case you need to pre set the number of bars for the first loop to
be recorded. . This Looper plugin doesn't stack up several alternate
loops though. You may run several instances of Looper but need to be
careful to only set one of them (or none) to act as the temp master.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen

--
Mark Francombe
www.markfrancombe.com
www.ordoabkhao.com
http://vimeo.com/user825094
http://www.looop.no
twitter @markfrancombe
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24478662@N00/