Newbie question about sync'd loops

Describe your looping workflow

Moderator: jesse

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sohummm
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:16 pm

Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by sohummm »

So what I'm trying to do is kind do live music with Sooper Looper. I had a couple of questions.

1. I've been able to work nicely with a single loop with overdub. However, I do want to separate my layers into different loops. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to do this and keep the two loops the same length and synced. I've been trying to record my background beat on loop 1, and then setting quantize to loop and sync and play sync to on in the other loops. This solved the problem of not getting equivalent loop lengths. But the loops are still kinda off by a few milliseconds. Am I just recording it at the wrong time (matter of practice?).

2. Secondly, I want to be able to record the output music and possibly sing over it using the same mic. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is an easy way to do this on the Mac. Currently I'm using Audio Hijack Pro which does a nice job of actually recording the output from Sooper Looper. However, I don't know how I could actually do vocals over that and have it record as well. Any suggestions for other software that would enable this?

Thanks in advance!
JeffHendricks
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue May 11, 2010 11:07 am

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by JeffHendricks »

Sounds like you figured out how to get the loops synched, and yes, it does take some practice to get it exactly right. SooperLooper automatically compensates for audio delay, so you should be getting it right by just playing at the same time. Tell us a little more about your setup, maybe it will help.

Mine is set up with "Synch to" set to "Loop 1", "quantize" set to "cycle", and on each track I have "sync" and "play sync" turned on. I can map buttons to rec/dub/mute specific tracks like Multi Mode on an RC-50, or I can use the "solo_prev" and "solo_next" commands to run it like Single Mode on an RC-50. If you run it in Single mode using solo_next, you have to have "mute quant" turned on.

How I record with it is open an instance of Audacity, and set the input to JACK... (this is in Linux) but Audacity asks what outputs to capture, so I open an empty instance of JackRack, route SooperLooper's audio (including passthrough) into it, and have Audacity record from JackRack's outputs. It's not pretty, but my machine has 8GB of RAM, so it works.
sohummm
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:16 pm

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by sohummm »

Thanks for the advice, Jeff.

The syncing part I'm definitely getting a lot better at. Part of it is that I don't have pedal or anything, so I have to click the button with a mouse, which is a little difficult when I have two hands occupied on the guitar!

As for using Audacity, I'm not sure how to achieve this. What is Jack Rack? Is it part of the standard JACK installation? I tried to use JACK as my "input" but Audacity complained about not having drivers or something. Does Jack Rack allow me to get around this?
JeffHendricks
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue May 11, 2010 11:07 am

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by JeffHendricks »

First things first, what kind of system are you running this on? Linux, or Mac?

And 2: you can make a very cheap button controller out of an old usb keyboard. Just pop off all the keys except for z, v, m, and ?/ and map a few commands to those. I built my own controller for about $50.

I was playing with my setup this past weekend, and I was experimenting with direct monitoring, etc. and if I route all of the audio through the interface, there's a tiny bit of delay (around 30ms on my setup) which is usable. If you do direct monitoring, then SooperLooper is compensating for the delay on the interface... it's going to be a few ms behind what you're actually playing. Getting the interface latency as low as possible will help with this, but it's dependent on your setup.
sohummm
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:16 pm

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by sohummm »

I am running this on a Mac.

I haven't actually had time to play around with it too much over the last few weeks so I've made no progress. One thing I did find is that I could easily create a "blank" track of the same length as my other track by syncing and simply not recording anything during the creation of the track and then just overdubbing it. This way I don't have to manually hit the record/stop buttons and hope that they sync up nicely.
kem
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:15 pm

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by kem »

Question:

I am using SL in Mainstage 2 and I can't seem to figure out how to move from loop to loop without having some function triggered like record or solo. What I need is to be able to lay down a groove in loop one and then move to loop 2 and do the same using my Softstep foot controller in Macbook Pro. I can't seem to find how to map paramater for 'Next Loop'.
Thanks

Kem
jesse
Posts: 554
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 9:46 am
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Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by jesse »

If you want to continue hearing the first loop, you want to make a binding to the global control 'select_next_loop' or 'select_prev_loop'. If you want the original loop to mute when you switch to controlling a second, but you don't want to do anything when you get there (dead air?) you are right, there is no binding that does that. It would probably be select_next_loop_solo or something, if i created it. But you could actually emulate it by binding the same midi command to both mute_on and select_next_loop, since at least with SL's internal midi binding logic doesn't prevent multiple bindings with the same midi event, they will both be activated when the event comes in.
GregWard
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2018 9:08 am

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by GregWard »

Hey guys, I know this is an old thread but I'm having similar syncing issues. I have 3 loops. 2nd and 3rd is synced to first through sync option on each. I haven't used play sync option. I have sync to loop 1. Quantize to loop. Everything seems fine and syncs nice until I do something like record over a track, then undo/ redo to bring stuff in and out. I'm using a netbook aspire one d255e with 2gb ram, atom n455 1.66ghz processor on low latency Ubuntu studio. Thanks for your help.
Ps. Great program!
Greg Ward
Freasy
Posts: 60
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:37 pm

Re: Newbie question about sync'd loops

Post by Freasy »

GregWard wrote:Hey guys, I know this is an old thread but I'm having similar syncing issues. I have 3 loops. 2nd and 3rd is synced to first through sync option on each. I haven't used play sync option. I have sync to loop 1. Quantize to loop. Everything seems fine and syncs nice until I do something like record over a track, then undo/ redo to bring stuff in and out. I'm using a netbook aspire one d255e with 2gb ram, atom n455 1.66ghz processor on low latency Ubuntu studio. Thanks for your help.
Ps. Great program!
Greg Ward
Hello Greg,
I think I see your problem - you need to use the play sync option. If you uncheck that, every loop will play instantly when you hit redo or whatever to bring the track back to life. With "play sync" it will wait until loop 1 (or whatever is in charge of sync) restarts. When first recording of course it will work, because you basically record "off-sync" and it will keep that. Until you pause or undo.
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