Electronic Live Set Style

[Blacknoise]

Hey Jesse!

First: Amazing piece of software! I was surprised to realized there is no real good looper plugin out there (maybe except Mobius, but there is no 64bits version right now).

I just discovered SooperLooper so maybe I missed something but here is my question:
Is there a way to automatically mute the input signal when the loop is running?

It seems SL is designed to work with musicians who can stop making sounds at the end of the looping process but with electronic music, it's common to have some loops already running (in Ableton Live for exemple) and try to loop again on the fly to makes things more interesting.
For now the issue is that, after the looping process, both loops (the original and the new one created with SL) are playing together in a pretty cacophonous way (despite that it can be cool sometimes).
I use SL as an insert in a Bidule chain host in Ableton Live.

Is there an option somewhere?
It would be amazing!

Thanks and again, congrats for the wonderful looper that you share with us!

[jesse]

Hmm, SL has no control of what you are doing outside of it if you are feeding the input from some kind of running loop. Unless you are only using the input monitoring within SL ("in mon"), in which case you could potentially make a MIDI binding that sets that control to 0 after you finish the record. You can make multiple bindings that are triggered from the same MIDI event, so one could be your finish "record", and the other sets input_gain to 0, so they happen at the same time. Maybe that helps?

[Blacknoise]

Thanks for your fast reply!
Ok, it was the second option I had in mind.
The tricky thing is when you use the sync option, after stopping the looping process, SL could wait for the next sync point, so with this solution I could have silence between the stop record action qnd the actual start of the loop.
I saw in your (very efficient) documentation that you speak about some OSC state messages (waiting, playing, etc)
Do you think I could use the playing state message to set the mon in to 0 instead?
Cheers!

[jesse]

That is tricky, and means you may not want to rely on this technique right now. This really needs a new feature to be integrated to handle the sync/rounding cases. It would be a 'mute input monitoring after record' option, and it would only work if you were using the loop-specific side chain inputs. That said, no guarantee when this would be implemented!

Having you try to get into parsing OSC state is probably a deeper rabbit hole than you may want to attempt.

I would look into ways to actually stop the loop playing back in Live after you're finished with it instead....

[Blacknoise]

OK!
Thanks a lot for your advice, it avoids me to spends hours on it without success!
It looks like a cool new features (maybe the sidechain input limitation can be a problem if we use the ableton live send system instead of the insert).

For now I just rely on my reflexes to put the fader down on the next beat when I hit the button to stop record a loop.
It emphasis on the performance side of my show!


Anyway, thanks Jesse!
Cheers!

[jesse]

Well, it could also mute the main input too, there would just have to be some sort of convention in place for what it does if there are more than 1 loop instance (would it mute the in-mon if *any* of the loopers was playing, etc).

Could the "button" you hit to stop recording the loop also tell Live to stop playing back the loop (quantized to the end of the loop)... I'm not a Live-master and I'm not sure what kind of MIDI controller you are using (or if using a mouse, etc) to know what's possible with your setup.

[Blacknoise]

Hey Jesse!
Hope you’re fine!

Since our last talk I move my live set from Ableton Live to Bidule only.
So much effecient. I now have access to the sidechain input via some sends.

BUT I still thing it will be better (if you plan to add this feature in the future) to allow us to mute the input of the main inputs instead (or maybe have the choice).
In my case, I have 4 looper playing field recording loops and a multichannel Reaktor patch with some rhythmic elements.
I’m going to use SL set with 2 stereo loops available.
With my routing, I can send anytime, any of the channel to SL to create a new loop on the fly, either on the first loop or on the second one (depending of what’s playing or not).
So if we need to send the signal to the proper sidechain inputs, it implicates to duplicate all the send and have more controls (in my case 12 knobs more).

For your idea of stopping the loop recording with the clip in sync, I can’t because in my setup, the field recording loops are not in sync (it's the concept, they are freely running but I can start build rhythmic loop slowly, in sync with my Reaktor patch.

I hope my explanation is clear enough.


Cheers.