Controlling Ableton's Looper Plug-In with a USB foot pedal.
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 сер 2024
- This week I’m really excited to bring you this video. I’m taking a deep dive on how I set up my Looptimus USB foot pedal to control Ableton Live’s Looper plug-in. This is the heart of my live looping setup and it’s integral to being able to improvise complex and evolving loop-based music.
Because controllers come in many different form factors, and how they’re laid out and what parameters they control is totally customizable, I figured it would be helpful to share some insight into how I use mine. Plus, you’ll probably pick up some looping techniques I use as well when I do a short performance at the end! Check it out!
-----
Download my "Getting Started Recording at Home" guide for FREE: dan-phelps.mykajabi.com/record...
Download the Improv Launch Pad, an analog improvisation prompt generator, for free here: dan-phelps.mykajabi.com/ilp
My website: www.danphelps.com
That song was amazing!
Thanks!
Beautiful Dan...great work.
Great vibe and tones!!
Thank you so much for this video, i've been struggling so many years with guitar looping, i finally found the perfect setup for me that will expand my creativity
Beautiful work.
It's always refreshing to see a competent person sharing their insight and knowledge: excellent video.
Great tutorial and inspirational. Nice
I really enjoyed that piece you improvised. It's inspiring to see people like yourself using loopers in very creative ways. Thanks!
Thank you!
Thank you, Dan, a la Lil Ray of Sunshine, for the clear, well-crafted delivery! Appreciate the work and musicianship that went into it. Also happy to learn of the Looptimus pedal! I'm checking one out. Photon vibes your way ~
Love from Seattle, great vid bro. Just getting into the production side of things so soaking up all this info!
This is such a wonderfully informative video, Dan. I am personally so thankful that you've shared so much knowledge. On the side note, I've been on the lookout for a USB MIDI foot controller and now I know what to look at. Fantastic stuff, thank YOU!
Thanks, Michal! I'm glad it's helpful.
Love it! Thanks!
good info in this video !! And some beautiful soundscapes!!
Thanks so much!
Excellent !
Thanks Dan, it is nice and inspiring video. For your future videos like this one I recommend you to add another camera to your foot. It would be very good to see the moment when you switch the buttons on the foot controler at the same time, whe we see the Ableton screen.
great vid
!
Ha. Sorry. Wanted to mention these are great videos BTW. I don't play guitar but heavy influenced by you explaining your live looping Ableton set up for my ambient synth/rig setup. Thanks a million.
Great video that shows the possibilities with the looper plugin, but doesn't get into the technical detail of how to set up the looper control well.
OK, some years ago I had no clue and bought a 15 quid USB-footswitch. didn't really get it to work with the Ableton looper, better: with Windows/ MIDI, and bought a BOSS FS-6 (and Ableton has some smart features for the looper). However, now I wanted to see whether I could use the USB-footswitch as a sustain pedal for piano VSTs. Searching on YT I found this video, and i wondered, being more experienced, how would I fare now? And yes, the USB-switch (15 bucks) works like a mouse,. Put the pointer on the 'record' button of the looper and you can do everything you do with yours. It's a poor man's way of working and takes some care, but you 'save' 100-250 quid on a MIDI pedal (for the time being).
Wonderful. I love these unbelievable lush kind of pad sounds you create with your guitar. I guess the swelling tones are made with the volume knob or a volume pedal, right?
I have a question on how you realize the Ableton looper to respond to the same knob (record) and then goes into different functionalities (1. record, 2. stop record and play, 3. overdub).
Is this something you realize within your footcontroller or ist this the inherent mode of operation on the Ableton Looper?
Thank you for sharing this cool video and this wonderful ideas.
Hey M! Sorry for the late response. I use a volume pedal almost all the time. It's one of the most important pedals on my pedal board. To answer your other question, the Looper functions you are talking about are controlled in the plug in and not from the foot pedal.
Hello Dan. Thank you for this one, this is clear and beautiful music. I found there all the basics for looping w/ Ableton in a creative way. BUT, it isn't correct to say that 'all the foot pedal' with provide a controller for the Ableton loop. It is my experience, as well as many other musicians, that specifically the Ableton LOOPER (and only the looper) has a lot of bugs with foot controllers. For instance the ICON G-Board and the MeloAudio midi controller won't work with the looper. Any tips on which pedal board to choose ? thank you !
The guitar tones are amazing! What gear are you using for the guitar modulation and fuzz?
Your page has been a great help for me in getting set up, and wonderful music! I have a question about your routing in Live. You have a guitar in and a Looper set up as audio tracks. When you have the Looper active and doing things with Return effects, how is it that your guitar remains unprocessed by those sends? My Looper track continues to operate as its own audio track and anything new I play is drenched in those effects from the Returns.
Hey Kwert...there is a function on the Ableton Looper to not pass any dry signal through. So it's always seeing the guitar at the input, but you only hear audio from the looper when it's actively looping. Does that make sense?
Great video! What audio interface do you use??
so you have the fx in ableton set to pre-fader so you can get rid of the dry signal, right.
love this setup so much! thanks for sharing
Correct...all the FX sends from the Looper track are pre fader. That was I can really transform what's happening by changing which FX chains are being fed the looper signal.
Amazing!, which model is the lush long reverb that you're using there?, also, have you tried the vst version of the Gibson Echoplex or the Mobius looper?, would be great to see some videos with those too if possible, Thanks!
The verb is the EXCELLENT and affordable Valhalla DSP Shimmer plugin. And - I haven't tried those VST loopers but I'll look into it!
You could also use a Loop4Live footswitch which is dedicated to this kind of use with Ableton Live
I'll check that out!
Website is down
@@jos7006 seems not, perhaps a temporary maintenance
@@loop4live303 it’s back now
Can you assign a button to different tracks? Or to create new tracks? Clt + t and + record ?
Great demonstration. That reverb patch sounds great? Is it a Strymon. It also shows you don't need an expensive chasebliss pedal to get glitchy delay effects
I love Valhalla DSP's Shimmer Verb. All their plug-ins are great!
Dan! Such beautiful music. thank you! I particularly love your whammy bar at 8:40, but your creativity and looping is indeed a ray of sunshine. I use a Boss 505 tabletop looper with a footswitch, and a Ditto X4 for speed change, reverse, stutter, and most importantly decay. BUT this is a great set up. So versatile! Is there a decay function?
Yes. There's a decay function that I control with one of the knobs on my tabletop Novation controller.
@@oceanographic beautiful sounds at the end of the video , the high pitched bird-like tones.
I want to ask you about the same part somebody mentioned at 8:40, the guitar sound. Are you altering the sound with a foot pedal at the same time? Are to killing the attack? I'm hearing more than just whammy bar (I think). How do you get that slow wailing sound?
@@sat1241 I think you are referring to my use of a volume pedal to fade in the note...so I'm cutting off the attack at the beginning. Does that make sense?
@@oceanographic yes
Dan - what Novation controller?
WTF?! This is awesome!
Ha! Thank you.
Are you stuck with one effect on guitar? Curious of how to switch mid performance
Is the looper function available in ableton lite?
Great video. Thanks for sharing. Do you send the Ableton looper output back out through your guitar amp (I have done this with a Radial re-amping box) or do send the guitar sound out to monitors or a PA or something like that?
When I'm playing live I send the output of the laptop out to a set of powered monitors, which sit on either side of my amp, giving me a kind of Left-Center-Right soundstage.
Dan Phelps sounds cool. Do you have an amp with a simultaneous line out that goes into your computer interface? Or do you have a microphone in front of the amp?
this is great man i been wanting to try this looping thing since forever now, i do have one question tho, if you could easily replace a looper with a usb pedal and ableton whats the point of buying multieffects and all the expensive guitar pedals?
Well, it's not inexpensive to buy a laptop powerful enough to run Ableton and a bunch of plug-ins without choking and glitching out, then you have the cost of a decent audio interface, and you have to think of some way of amplifying the laptop in a hi fidelity way...I don't think it's any less expensive. You could easily be out $5k for that setup. I think it's more of a question of your end goals and preferred workflow...envisioning how you want to work and choosing the tools that get you there as quick as possible.
@@oceanographic thank you for answering man good stuff well explained
Dan, your AMT pedal, how does Ableton recognize this to control the volume? Since this is a is running through the Looptimus pedal, does it treat the AMT volume pedal as part of the Looptimus pedal allowing for Midi mapping?
The Looptimus pedal has an expression input, which maps seamlessly in Ableton. Thanks for he kind words!
Is your foot controller in toggle or momentary mode? Is there any difference?
Thanks for sharing this setup. I've had more hardware loopers over the years than I care to admit. Finding one that loops in "free" (non-sync) mode isn't easy. Perhaps I should have hung on to the Boomerang. Is this possible to do in Ableton?
If by free, you mean not sync'd to Ableton's global tempo, then yes...that's how I use it.
@@oceanographic Yes, but to clarify, loops not-sync'd to each other. Each one not only having a different length, but each loop independent and having its own unique start point. The Boomerang III does this in what was referred to as "free" mode.
@@erichausmann I suppose you could do this with multiple instances of the Looper plug in on separate tracks.
You can do this in multiple tracks or even the same track by simply adding another instance of looper. Map a controller button to its record switch just like the first one.
Dear Dan, I am looking everywhere to find how to assign to the same button different function on the first click, on the second clock and so on... Could you help me out here, please? Thank you a lot!
Hey Johnny - I've only done this w/ the Ableton Looper plug-in, and the behavior is set in the Looper Plug in. You can control how the record/overdub button behaves in the plug-in itself. Beyond that, I don't know...
@@oceanographic Wow, thank you! That is very helpful to me. And how did you assign the up and down buttons inside Ableton? I get how I assign a track focus for every track, but it would nice to have only two buttons, which work like arrowkeys :)
I don’t think I’ve ever done what you are describing. I mostly use Ableton for the Looper plug in and as a mixer/plug-in host when I am doing the ambient guitar thing.
where can I download this Plugin?
The Looper? It's included with Ableton Live.
Are you going DI with your guitar? I would imagine using ableton as a looper for a micd cab would be an issue?
Hey Cris! I'm getting signal into Ableton via the line out of my Fryette Power Station, which I'm also using as a master volume control for my guitar amp. This means that all the amp's compression and interaction with my pedals is making it into the laptop. I'm using a little EQ to tame the high end on the guitar input channel in Ableton to compensate for the lack of a speaker and microphone.
Dan Phelps thanks for the info. That’s a pretty good setup. I had a purple load box but mine added a bit of hiss so I ditched it. Interesting that you use eq as your can sim, I think ableton has some cab sims built in that you could use? I think I’m going to use a foot pedal to mute my mixer output quickly when laying down layers and just use headphones. It won’t be as easy as the pedalboard looper I wanted to buy, but it’ll work for piano, drums, or any other mic’d instruments.
@@oceanographic do you have your pedals up front or in an effects loop? My understanding from another video is that pedals in the PS loop do not operate with a daw.
@@GetOutOfMyDojo My pedals are in front of my amp. Guitar > Pedals > Amp > Powerstation. You are correct that the effects loop of the PS does NOT feed the line output to the computer.
Cexpensive controller pedal
Hi Dan, great demo! Q: how did you setup the looper to multiply and divide the loop? Thanks!
I've been working with a EH 16-Second Delay (Reissue) and want to use the looper in Live. Thanks so much for the video. Beautiful music options and motivating. PS If you haven't already, try Output by Portal (VST). Seriously.