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live looping?


fiatcoupe432
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Hi Guys , 

i have (almost ) finished my solo album and thinking on planning some live shows...

now were i live there aren t many musicians and also trying to save on expensise like hotels etc .

so planning on to do some solo live show however i do play bass guitar synth and drums and i saw lots of videos of people live looping all instruments  .

Do you know how this can be achived ? i see most of the people use ableton live but i havnt really use it before so dont know from where to start .

Could this can also be achivied in logic x?

any advice welcome

thanks in advance 

Tony 

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39 minutes ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

Perfect ! Any recommendation on how to do it ? 

Anyone can do it, but remember that it's the first forty years that are the hardest, after which things sometimes tend to get (slightly...) better. :|

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48 minutes ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

Perfect ! Any recommendation on how to do it ? 

It's a big subject and unfortunately I don't have time to write a tutorial on it.

... but YouTube is full of very useful 'how to' guides, specific to a wide range of DAWs, and I personally find video to be a much better medium for tuition that written text. So that would be my recommendation to get you started :)

Let us know how you get on and good luck with the gig.

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Round these here parts, unsigned bands and solo artists tend to do a lot of promotion at open mic nights (most nights tend to have guest spots for a featured artist about 30 mins) - if you don't have a big existing following who will turn up to a gig you are putting on, this might be an option worth considering. If you do go this route, you need to travel light and be able to set up quickly, so rather than live looping it might be a better approach to pick one instrument, then make yourself some backing tracks by muting that instrument from your recordings.

You might not be keen on the idea of playing with a backing track, but it would give access to the broadest range of opportunities to get your music out there.

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3 hours ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

Perfect ! Any recommendation on how to do it ? 

The last time I played around with Touch Tracks, Logic was on V4, so this might not be completely accurate anymore...

It's best for creating new arrangements from pre- programmed or recorded parts rather than creating something completely from scratch live.

IIRC you simply assign a MIDI note or key on your QWERTY keyboard to a region (MIDI or audio data) and pressing that key will cause the region to play. If you need multiple regions to play simultaneously from a single command then you need to put them all into a folder and assign the command to the folder. 

If you are intending to build up your performance from scratch live then you will probably be better off using a looper.

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Oi oi!

Just thought I'd actually post something! Especially as this is my thing...

In a nutshell Live is the best solution for me - not least because it's rock solid on a gig - I've used it countless times now and it's never let me down.

OK so hers's my basic formual. You'll need - 1 + decent Soundcard to plug your bass into (I use the Clarett 4Pre now, I was using a different one in the video below); midi foot controller - I use the KMI Softstep 2 (this allows you to do hands-free Record/overdub/stop/start looping with the built in Loop in Live) - and finally a midi-controller such as a Launchpad or Akai-type grid controller. You can run the sound directly into your amp, or split the output to your amp and the PA - that way you can have just the bass coming out of your amp in the usual way - but then have a lovely big stereo sound for all the other loops and effects.

In terms of creating the actual loops there are several ways of doing this - do it complerely from scratch with each instrument on their own channel in Live, use the Launchpad to start recording on a single slot on a single channel and loop it when you want; or you can send the audio from each channel just to the Looper, or set up multiple loopers - either on the same channel or separate channels... the only limit to this is your technical knowledge and your imagination - Live is so flexible you can set it up in loads of different ways.

Just a bit of info on this clip - which is from a gig I did with Loop Lord Steve Lawson (whose set up is completely different and uses a Looperlative) - I was just using one Looper channel, some pre-recorded clips or varying lengths - but also using some effects on the Looper channel which meant both the Loop and the signal from the bass where being mashed-up together - while also keeping a separate channel for the bass (I am sending the bass channel to the Looper as well, so it can be recorded and looped). Live also has some fantastic delays and reverbs, and I use it for my FX rack on a lot of gigs - all the effects on the video are generated in Live.

If you wait for the looped chords (at 2.52) to come in they are actually being played backwards - which is one of the cool features of the Looper in Live: you can reverse, speed up and slow down your loops - which is brilliant for creating really unique lines and parts that you can't physically play - so it's a fun tool for composing too...

If you're based near South London I'd be happy to give you (or anyone else) a lesson or two on this - so just PM me on that - otherwise I hope this helps Mx

 

 

Edited by urb
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On 18/07/2018 at 09:41, urb said:

Oi oi!

Just thought I'd actually post something! Especially as this is my thing...

It's like the return of the Prodigal Son! Nice to see you around these parts again mate. Hope you and the family are all good.

And cheers for the input on this thread; very useful. Cool to know you've been gigging with Steve Lawson. I remember that gig where we saw him in Manchester along with, was it Jon Thorne?

Anyway. Let me know if you're in town for the Manc Jazz Fest next week, be good to catch up.

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  • 2 months later...

I recently started to do live looping and wanted to avoid a computer so I bought an Akai xr-20 used for dirt cheap to act as the master clock for my Pigtronix  Infinity looper.  Sure, if you want to record it, you need a computer, but for playing live, this setup would not require a computer. In some ways it feels very liberating. Here´s how my setup sounds:

 

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5 hours ago, basslass said:

I recently started to do live looping and wanted to avoid a computer so I bought an Akai xr-20 used for dirt cheap to act as the master clock for my Pigtronix  Infinity looper.  Sure, if you want to record it, you need a computer, but for playing live, this setup would not require a computer. In some ways it feels very liberating. Here´s how my setup sounds:

 

Sounds great man but A bit expensive ....

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7 minutes ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

How do you do it with logic ? 

I use a plugin that I designed. It's like a looper effect but more organic, the sound that's 'looped' gradually fades out. I dislike loopers, they're either on or off, playing or not. I used it with bass for quite a few solo gigs, including with Steve Lawson last year. At the moment I'm using it more with piano, synth and electroacoustic sounds. This was done last night with it, I have a gig in Amsterdam at the weekend, this is an excerpt of a practice for that. 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

A couple of thoughts on looping multiple instruments, in case that's useful - software is one way to do it, but you can also do it with hardware loopers and a mixer. I started out using a little Behringer Desk almost 20 years ago, upgraded to a Mackie one in 2002, then switched to a MOTU Ultralite Soundcard (that works either hooked up to a laptop or standalone) in 2008. This year, I swapped that for a Keith McMillen K-Mix. What each of these allow me to do is have the looper on a 'send' of some sort. Either the effect send on the desk, or just one of the pairs of outputs from the soundcard. That way, I can have instruments plugged into any channel and route them to the looper, but with the soundcard version I can also route virtual instruments to it as well. I currently use a Quneo as a controller and play sounds that are generated in FL Studio - nothing's pre-recorded, and none of the sounds are loops, so I play the controller as percussion or 'keyboard' instrument... 

Then the big issue is thinking about the arrangement - layering things can either sound like the gradual evolution of the piece, or like you're constructing a loop to play over later on. I much prefer the former. :)  The big advantage of looping inside a DAW is that you can do things that are partially pre-recorded, or that use pre-recorded loops that you're manipulating the way @urb does. But again, you'll need to think about how much of a 'construction' phrase you want to have as part of the performance... The trade off with this is very much audience-dependent. Some audiences will be wowed enough by the tech wizardry to give you  pass if it takes you a while to build the track before it feels like the beginning, whereas an audience that are more familiar with the tech may be less forgiving in terms of what they expect from the music aside from the tech constraints, if that makes sense :) 

One thing that's definitely worth considering is how important it is to you that the live versions are anything like the recorded ones... making great music is way more important than faithfully recreating a studio experience on stage. A lot of bands/artists have come unstuck trying too hard to replicate the sound of their records like when with a little imagination they could've maximised what was great about their live lineup by allowing a more fluid approach to the arrangement/structure/instrumentation... 

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  • 3 weeks later...
Quote

A couple of thoughts on looping multiple instruments, in case that's useful - software is one way to do it, but you can also do it with hardware loopers and a mixer. I started out using a little Behringer Desk almost 20 years ago, upgraded to a Mackie one in 2002, then switched to a MOTU Ultralite Soundcard (that works either hooked up to a laptop or standalone) in 2008. This year, I swapped that for a Keith McMillen K-Mix. What each of these allow me to do is have the looper on a 'send' of some sort. Either the effect send on the desk, or just one of the pairs of outputs from the soundcard. That way, I can have instruments plugged into any channel and route them to the looper, but with the soundcard version I can also route virtual instruments to it as well. I currently use a Quneo as a controller and play sounds that are generated in FL Studio - nothing's pre-recorded, and none of the sounds are loops, so I play the controller as percussion or 'keyboard' instrument... 

hey Steve - that's exactly what I do in Live - I send the main bass channel into the looper (which I can have multiple loops running in the single channel if I like) and then have effects on both the main bass channel and the looper - with both audio channels runnig simultaneously - Live is of course its own mixing desk and has silly mounts of routing options - which is why I send my main bass channel direct to my amp and not the master channel of Live - so I get a nice fat bass sound from my amp and then all the extra stuff from the Master output from Live.

I 100% agree with your comments on the whole looping something fresh vs having some preprepared stuff as well - I love improv and agree it depends on what you want to achieve and who your audience is...

Mxx

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  • 1 month later...

I've just started dipping my toe into looping, here's my first effort with Ableton Live 10, Intro version. I thought I'd give the trial a go after recently selling my Boomerang looper. I had always been reluctant to use laptops in any kind of live setting (which I intend to with this further down the line) but I'm a convert.
I'm using four audio tracks, each with five loop instruments which are all controlled with track automation. There's a drum track too, which I'd hopefully replace with a real drummer ultimately. Hope you like it.

 

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