Beginning Looper Seeking Advice

[John Singletary <singletaryj472@gmail.com>]

Hello All, I am very new to this forum and page and I find it
absolutely fascinating.  It seems like there are some great musicians
and very creative people here and I am very happy to have found it.
My last studio project was called La Brea and used a very loop based
approach, although it was done in the studio. It was a lush, richly
textural, building and rather cinematic type musical project. Songs
are on myspace at www.myspace.com/labreaband and if you like it I will
send you the album free, just shoot me an email.  After that, I took a
brake from music and worked on my other passion which is photography.
I have become very interested in working on music again and in the
live looping approach but until I found this site I did not know that
many people were doing this besides a few people.  I know next to
nothing about how a looping set up works and have been reading about
different types of gear such as the echoplex, ableton live, etc. I
have the large boss loop station (RC-50) but that will hardly be the
solution to what I would like to do.  All of this is overwhelming and
exciting and I was hoping that based on a brief description of my
goals, some of you more experienced loopers could  at least point me
in the right direction to get me started making live loop based music.
 First, I would like to use a range of instruments (guitar, synth,
iphone, chaos pad, drum machines, glockenspiel, whatever) and have the
ability to pick up an instrument, record a loop, put it down, pick up
another instrument and so on.2nd, I need to be able to synch all of
these loops to a set BPM while maintaining the ability for a loop to
have its own type of rotation (meaning one loop going for 4 measures
of 4, one going for 7, one for 3, etc. all simultaneously). 3Rd, I
would like to be able to adjust the volumes of each loop separately
after I play it. 4Th, I would like to be able to have each loop sent
to a different output device (one to a bass cab, another to a guitar
amp and so on). This requires that the loops be isolated and that the
system has enough outputs. I would also like to be able to use foot
pedals to trigger loops. If anyone has even just rudimentary ideas of
how this could be accomplished I would be so extremely grateful.  I
don't just want to mooch off of your hard earned knowledge but I want
to get started making music and experimenting with this stuff and be
able to share my music and things that I learn with this amazing
community. If anyone could help me that would be really wonderful.
Thanks very much.
Best,

John