Multitracked Live Looping -- advice for a newbie?

["Andrew Chaikin" <andrew@biggerbread.com>]

Dear Loopers,

My name is Andrew Chaikin. I am a vocalist /
throat singer / vocal percussionist (i.e.,
beatboxer) based in San Francisco. After
performing with various artists in the past
few years who are integrating looping into
their live work (Michael Manring, Danny Heines,
Mixtape From Mars, Realistic, etc.), I'm
crafting a solo project based entirely around
live looping of voice.

So I'm overjoyed to have found this list, and
to be searching the copious archives, educating
myself about the thriving Live Looping movement.

Here's a short summary of what I'd like to do;
I'd be most appreciative of any advice you can
give.

I want to loop and multitrack my voice live on
stage: lay down a beat, then a vocal bass line,
harmony parts, sing lead over it, etc. Let's say
8 looped tracks might be going at once.

I want the ability to bring any track (or a group
of tracks) in or out, and to have fader volume
control on each individual track. I want to be
able to switch between different loops on any
given track or group of tracks (e.g., A-section
to B-section and back). Real-time quantization
presumably becomes crucial in managing this
multitracked morass. 

I'd operate the looping gear with a MIDI foot
controller and (I assume) manage the volume
of each track via faders on my audio interface.

My research has turned up a few possible
approaches, each with their own pros and cons:
Live by Ableton, the Echoplex, and Kyma + LCK.

Ableton's Live comes very close to what I'm
looking for. You get true multitracking, realtime
quantization, dedicated effects for each
track, and rudimentary but effective MIDI
accessibility. But some of the most basic
hardware-looper functions seem to be missing --
for example, rather than letting you quantize
everything off of the tempo/length of your
first live loop, it requires you to work off of
a preset BPM. (Feel free to correct me if I've
got this wrong.) This means I'd have to have
Live's metronome coming through a monitor
or headphones onstage. And all the standard
laptop-looper worries apply: latency, issues
of CPU and hard-drive speed, what-if-it-
crashes-on-stage, etc.

The Echoplex: I salivate over some of the
things that the EDP+ with LoopIV can do --
8th-quantization, Loop Dividing, Replace, etc.
It would allow me to whip up some very
sophisticated MIDI-controlled arrangements.
But as far as I can tell, the EDP wouldn't give
me true multitracking, unless I chained a
bunch of them together at $800 a pop. (Once
again, correct me if I have this wrong.) I guess
I could base my arrangements around very
canny use of Overdub, Undo, Multiply, Loop
Copy, Next Loop, etc., but it'd be a stretch,
I think.

Symbolic Sound's Kyma system -- a software
package controlling a dedicated hardware
audio processor -- looks incredibly powerful,
and with Green Tea's Looper Construction Kit
add-on, seems like a live-looper's dream.
But at $3500 for the basic system (not
including the cost of the laptop, of course),
it ain't cheap.

Right now I'm leaning towards Ableton's Live.
Are there any approaches that I've missed?
Or might I just have to wait a year or two
for the multitrack live-looping setup of my
dreams?


Thanks in advance for your advice,

Andrew Chaikin, aka Z-ROX
andrew@biggerbread.com
(415) 929-8822

http://biggerbread.com | http://z-rox.com