Live looping means recording a sample of audio and then allowing it to playback repeatedly (in a loop). Live looping is used by musicians of many genres, and might be used for performing, practicing, and/or composing. The Duo ships with a basic, but solid plugin for doing live-looping. As well, a community-contributed plugin is available that offers a few different features. A few common uses for live looping that you can start using your Duo for right away:
- Recording a live sample and having it repeat in a loop (like a rhythm or beat), while you perform other parts
- Layering live audio samples together (dubbing)
- A utility for practicing and composing; great for solo and leads practice after you've laid down a simple backing loop.
For most users, the current plugins work well enough for common needs; as usual creative solutions and the signal path flexibility of the Duo can lead to interesting results. Users of some of the more sophitisticated hardware loopers on the market may find some features missing for their normal use cases.
This article will review the two current plugins available for use today: SooperLooper and Loopor. Along the way we will cover a few basic principles of looper operation *
SooperLooper has a long open source history. The version running on the Duo was intentionally stripped down to a very basic feature set that makes sense in the context of the current software and user interface of the Duo. The desktop version of SooperLooper has a pretty sophisticated feature set and if you like learning about this stuff, you should go check it out sometime.
- Mono in/out
- Record / Overdub
- Play / Pause
- Undo
- Redo
- Maximum sample length: 400 seconds (6:40 mins)
- Maximum dub overlays: 512
- SooperLooper should be
On. PressPlay/Pause. This enables the transport. - Press
Record. SooperLooper will now start recording incoming audio. - Play something on your instrument, then press
Recordagain.
You should start to hear the audio playing back repeatedly. You have created an audio loop, which is a digital representation of a tape loop. If you press Play/Pause (for Pause), the audio loop will stop in its current position. If you press Play/Pause again (for Play) the audio loop will resume where you had stopped it.
If you've never tried looping before, there is a good chance that you'll notice your loop has a bit of silence before and after the part you played. For most of us, it will require some practice to get your timing right so that the beginning and end of the loop keep the meter consistent.
You can continue recording into your loop by pressing Record again. When you are dubbing, all incoming audio is mixed into the original loop. This means that the first loop always sets the length of the recorded loop. One way to think of "Record" at this point is "adding to the mix". You can enable "Record" for only a small portion of the loop or choose to leave it on while the loop repeats and continue mixing in new sounds.
Undo and Redo allow you to remove or re-add dubs that you have recorded. A natural use for Undo is to fix a mistake; some performers will use Undo and Redo to alternate between having one or a few to several sonic different layers going.
If only the initial loop is playing, an Undo command will stop audio and clear the loop.
You may have noticed that looping can use up a lot of controllers. To make practical use of the looper you'll probably need at least three buttons: Play/Pause, Record, and one of Undo or Reset.
TODO can controls be mapped to knobs?
If you're using an external MIDI controller, try to make the buttons function as momentary buttons if they are mapped to Reset, Undo, or Redo.
Presets can be used to control the state of the looper.
Users of the desktop SooperLooper or hardware loopers may be used to other features that are not yet present in the current version:
- Stereo in/out
- Pitch shifting
- Rate shifting
- Tempo sync / quantization
- MIDI control from other plugins
A small audio artifact at end of loop
stereo can blend dry signal threshold triggered transport: play resumes? seems a little weird with drums
*GxLiveLooper is also available but not usable due to a few technical details related to the parameter interfaces that will be resolved in the future.