Re: AW: Foot timing, syncing loops with Ableton

[Mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 9:31 PM +0200 5/5/07, Per Boysen wrote:
>
>Yes - MIDI looping is inspiring! I'f done it in Logic with the Cycle 
>Record (a basic function since two decades something...) but when 
>playing MIDI instruments (in my case restricted to the EWI only) I 
>still prefer to use Mobius to loop the auido output of the MIDI 
>modul/plugin.

Yeah, I knew that both Logic and Cubase had capabilities to do 
similar functions, but I gave up on Cubase back around Y2k when it 
finally became too bloated for me (this after over ten years as a 
diehard Cubase fanatic).  Other than those two, there's darn little 
out there for a 3rd party MIDI Looping plug.

Right now I'm having fun inside Bidule with splitting the outputs of 
the loop repeats to different channels/instruments/effects.  I've got 
one Layout where (in conjunction with Ableton) the initial line is 
played on one instrument, the first repeat is on a different 
instrument and transposed, and all  subsequent repeats are on a third 
instrument but turned into arpeggiated lines that are then 
pitch-shifted.

Yeah, you can make a huge mess by hitting only one or two keys!!!  ;)

>Nice that you mentioned Bidule - IMHO it rocks at the same level as 
>Mobius.

Yep, couldn't agree more!  I've actually had it sitting around on my 
desktop for a long, long time without really delving into it.  I 
originally got it when I was having major problems with Sooperlooper 
and Jack (mostly Jack; Jesse's code for Sooperlooper is actually 
pretty good, IMNSHO).  I was getting ridiculous amounts of latency 
trying to interface between Jack and Live 4.  So I thought Bidule 
might be a better host, but in the end it didn't give any better 
results unfortunately.  I still kept it around knowing that it would 
be a nice Swiss army knife if the need arose.  It works nicely here, 
and didn't take more than about an hour to set up a complete working 
widget.  :)

>I guess you were talking MIDI looping only (?) but for audio looping 
>with Mobius as VST inside Bidule, as the host, you benefit from the 
>built-in Bidule-unique syncing system. I don't know how that works 
>in a technical sense, but fact is I always run Mobius VST plug-in as 
>the sync master and every damn VST effect plug-in does sync 
>perfectly to the tempo set by the FIRST LOOP I catch in Mobius. I 
>think that's nothing but fantastic! Total musical freedom :-)  Today 
>I playd an outdoor gig with Laptop and it worked just fine. 
>Excellent guitar sound from just one laptop, directly lined 
>left/right into the house PA. Will do a second gig tomorrow, also 
>outdoors.

I'm imminently jealous, Per, but I still haven't got the stomach to 
set up another Windows laptop (from some of your other comments, I 
think you might relate a little bit at least).  After burning my last 
Windows setup over two years ago, I've found OSX so easy to work with 
that I'm really loathe to go back, even though Mobius rocks out 
really, really hard.

And I'm also not too crazy about the idea of taking two laptops (one 
for Mobius and one for everything else) out for a performance, since 
that doubles the chance of a catastrophic laptop crash.

I'm still having fun using Os' software (Augustus Loop & Crossfade 
Loopsynth) as well as giving Musolomo, Kaiserlooper, and Outi another 
try.  And I've toyed with the idea of coding together a basic audio 
Looper inside Bidule.  Haven't quite gotten to the point of ditching 
Ableton entirely yet, but *only* because Live's routing system is 
just to darn easy to use.  I only wish that Mobius were ported over 
to OSX, though.  (Like we haven't heard that before.... )

        --m.