Experimental Sample / Audio Phased Looping - Software & Workflow Help

The Lounge General Discussion
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Been producing house and techno for 30 years.

I’m bored of it.

I want to experiement with the kind of sound/style in the videos below. But I’m not sure where to start.

I want to stick to Software, MacOS or iOS if possible.

I have a MacBook, iPad, MPD218 and Arturia MiniLab 3.

Logic is my primary tool. I don’t use Ableton because UI does not work for my brain.

I might consider getting the Nektar Panorama CS12 if it will help for this new project.

I could probably do a lot of it in Logic using the sampler, modulators and audio tracks, but please suggest anything else I could/should look at.

Thanks

Norns Concrete

Norns MLRE

Norns Concrete

Norns DELAR

DT Unsynced Loops

DT Unsynced Loops

Norns Otis

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iOS / iPad apps have lots of experiential stuff, koala is great and easy to get your head around and will do phased loops.

Many other apps, I suggest you check out the iOS apps thread.

There is some great granular stuff out theses days too, Fluss, spacecraft FRMS that you could sample/feed into Koala….

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Thanks.

Sorry, I should have been clearer.

I want concrete, long phasing and modulated starting points. Ability to randomly affect pitch/speed would be nice. But nice big chunks of audio. I don’t like granular in the true sense. (Although FRMS does sound lovely for what it does).

Koala and Drambo aren’t really for me. I’d prefer to just use logic.

Something like Fugue Machine but for audio would be good.

I remember a desktop program like that with different play heads. But I can’t remember what it was called.

Desktop apps also welcome.

Might have to buy a cheap Norns… I tried one before but didn’t have the patience and found it quite arcane.

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4

Perhaps GRM Atelier would fit the bill: GRM Tools | Standalone apps & DAW Plug-ins for Sound Creation

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If you remember that desktop app please post it

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Sadly I misremembered it. It was 4Track on max4live. Think I just ran it standalone in Max exported as a standalone somehow. But it doesn’t do what I thought it did.

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There’s a 23 year old plugin that I use, called Crossfade Loop Synth.

Beardyman uses it. It’s a bit dated but I haven’t found anything that does what it can do.

You can sample live, modulate the start points. I sequence the record trigs, Octatrack style.

You can pitch up and down, modulate loop points etc. You can record to the buffer and play back simultaneously. Record over the buffer as it’s playing in real-time.

If you run a few instances, you can send them into each other, it can get pretty crazy!

It has limitations though… it’s quite old, the built in filters don’t sound that great. It takes a bit of work to make it do what you want.

There’s nothing else that does what it does though! Maybe when Loopy Pro finally comes to desktop it may be able to replace it.

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I don’t see any reason you can’t do this in logic by modulating the pitch/loop point of looping samples/audio clips on different tracks, or even setting that up manually. The musical textures you’re interested in are built from the repetition and evolution of simple tape loops, so you don’t need any advanced technology.

Check out this BBC documentary on minimalism in composition and dig into the work of the composers involved. There’s a part 2 as well with a lot of Steve Reich/Philip Glass stuff.

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