I’m thinking of picking up a MKI to use as a looper for my Wavedrum. I have an AK & AR, so I’m OK/familiar with Elektronese.
What I’m wondering is, when using a “pickup machine” (which based on what I’ve read is the way to do looping), once I close the loop, or it stops recording, is it possible to automagically stop/mute/divert/etc. the incoming audio so it doesn’t play over the loop.
What I need is a way to record a loop that has FX on it that “carry over” like long delays & 'verbs. but once the loop is done recording, don’t let the incoming audio through so that it doens’t clash with the recorded loop…
Hmm…
That’s a little backwards for a pickup machine. Pickup machines either monitor when the track is selected or don’t monitor at all. I say it seems backwards because with monitoring off it will be silent while recording but then the loop will be audible once it’s playing…
A one shot recorder trig with a flex set to playback should do the trick. This way when you arm the one shot and recording begins the flex will play what’s being recorded, when the recoding is finished the flex will start playing the loop and you will no longer hear the inputs…
Yeah piggybacking on the industrious @Open_Mike (who got me and surely a bunch of others running), flex tracks would be the way to go, especially with drums, so you can fx each track separately, mute, etc.
Thanks for seeing through my incorrect words and kinda getting what I was try to get at…
While I love Elektron stuff, I’m not really into “sampling” (more into synth stuff) so I’ve always kinda ignored the OT… But I stumbled acorss a you tube video that talked about using it as a live looper… but then I read that the loop lengths were “too short” or the memory “too low” for a proper looper, so I went back to ignoring it.
But after buildign what has to be the single most complex LoopyHD rig on my iPad (using an APC, Faderfox, pedals, etc.) and dealing with a best case of 256 sample size buffer and horrible latency and STILL gettting pops… Ugh…
My other build is a series of Digitech JamMan Express’s MIDI sync’d via SyncMan box, but holy hell that’s a lot of wires…
Soooo… I’m opening up the pandora’s box of the OT once again.
At least it will go with the other Elektron stuff now!
But I dread another Elektron rabbit hole to learn the thing if I can find one cheap enough…
From what I’ve read, I don’t see a real reason to jump on a MkII for looping type stuff… right?
To me the OT is the most crazy looper I have ever imagined, it does everything I need plus way more stuff I can’t imagine any other looper doing.
Maybe it’s because I am a looper and that’s how I perform, so I have completely immersed myself in looping with the OT, while others maybe just try it here and there and it seems difficult, I don’t know…
To me it’s super easy to use but you have to get acquainted with the OT first, which you probably have heard can be easy, extremely difficult, or anywhere in between… It is a rabbit hole and you could get lost for awhile, if you just want to loop it might be overkill to have an OT, but it also can be an open door to all sorts of stuff you wouldn’t get to do with another looper…
Happily running MK1 here, don’t feel a need to upgrade…
I confirm RC505 is really good, but it wouldn’t solve the reverb tail “problem” .
Actually I think its even better to record the fx tail in a loop, otherwise the beginning of the loop seems too wet.
You can also record a dry loop and add OT’s FX, which seems better thant the Zoom Ms70.
Yes. The OT can sit in the signal chain and grab loops without “playing through” the audio that it will be recording.
Use case example:
1 person playing bongos and a drumkit.
1st pass is playing a rhythm on the bongos that gets recorded and looped.
2nd pass has the person moving to the drums and accompanying the 1st bongo pass.
On a later pass, the person switches back to bongos and plays a solo that is not recorded: the option to mute the 1st bongo pass for the duration of the solo exists, but more importantly, the bongos do not have to affect the previously looped audio, or even be heard through the OT.
As a looper, PickUp Machines and Flex machines are equally good in different situations weighing in factors like “is OT going to be MIDI Clock master or slave?” or “am I trying to time scale other tracks or loops to what I play, or the other way around?”.
For me, Flex machines if I’m going to loop what I play to something else, or PickUp Machines if I want the other tracks to follow me.
I empathize with you on trying out the available loopers to find one that works the way you want… LoopyHD is what got me started with this puzzle. I tried RC505, Ableton, EHX 45000, MainStage, Möbius, and a few others before the OT.
Thanks. I had the 505 for a while. It is pretty good, and if you expand it’s controls/playability via an external midi device, it’s even better (you can then control the FX individually instead of switching which one is controlled by knob).
But I found most of the FX were a little cheesy sounding, and the fact that the FX is on/off (i.e. no real send level controls, etc.) and the lack of the ability to route individual tracks to seperate outs, kind of limited what I could do… Or another way, what I want to do couldn’t be done with it really…
I also was not thrilled with the sound quality… 16bit in 2017 was kinda low…
I also tried the Pigtronic Infinity, and it’s AMAZING sounding, etc. but for some reason they built in an in-line compressor/limitor in the input stage you can’t defeat! Soooo… for drums… Not so good.
Whoa that guy is really good… But I want to point out the one thing I noticed awhile ago with looping percussion, which lead me on my current snipe hunt… Percussion loops get stale pretty quickly. Even Guys with amazing (poly)rhythmic chops like this guy. The solutuion I found is that even running through a filter with an EF or LFO will give them more life while you let them play and you can fiddle with other FX on top of them instead of having to add more and more to the loop to keep it interesting. Also using a lot of stacked delay lines is really cool…
But that leads to the issue that with most looper setups, especially multi-loopers like the 505, the audio in does not route through the loop track until it plays back. So if the track’s FX are an integral part of the groove/vibe while you’re playing them, you can’t hear them… so you need to have them on the inbound signal, etc.
That’s what led me to in terms of hardware just having totally seperate lines
Drum->switch(ABCD)->{for each line} FX->Looper->FX -> 4 CH DJ Mixer
This got unweildy, so I build a mockup prototype on iPad with LoopyHD+AUM. But again latency SUCKS.
I’m pretty sure the OT is going to be the way to go… Just when I thought my latest bout of GAS was cured with th eNord Lead 2 Rack purchase…
might be worthwhile browsing this performance, not sure if Stronen is using the OT for looping, but when I’ve seen him he always used the Boss sampler for looping/sequencing of live capture hits - he’s insanely gifted with timing/touch/vision but not sure if the OT is using pickup machines anywhere through this rather long set - he works under his own name Thomas Strønen and also as Humcrush and others (more or less jazz/electronic) for googling - the way he used the Boss was seamless, I’ve seen him use at least two variants of that sampler - it’d be easy to get outboard midi pads/pedals to trigger events in the OT but I wouldn’t advocate getting a device like this just for looping - it’d need to be something you could use more of to make it cost effective (if that’s important) … it’s certainly unique though
here’s a clip of OT doing something for a drummer (fairly sure the inputs are wired up) - and another taste below
Ha! The problem is that one minute I want the FX in front of looper (i.e. when you’re playing into fx with dynamic EF’s, delays with filters, etc. you can come up with cool stuff) so I want that looped, but then I also want to F with it even more so I need X after the looper. I mean I could do it with 2-300 FX pedals and a pedal board that takes up an entire stage.
So no, the opening post was not the limit of my requirments, just one aspect. But I know that like most things Elektron, there’s an almost infinate number of ways to get where you want to go…
I don’t want to convince you to get an OT, but here’s some more info to help make up your mind…
The pickups can monitor with fx but they record the audio dry, so it’s no problem using an OT delay on a pickup loop and having it sound fine without the tail cutting at the loop point.
Another thing I do is route audio through the OT and a pickup machine and just that track is sent out the cue outputs to my analog delay. This way my live playing is monitored through the pickup track and through the delay, but similar to above the loop is recorded dry but still sent to the delay so there’s no loop point issues…
For fx where the tails don’t matter I have them before the OT in the chain so that those ones do get baked into the loop…
OT all the way. You have 8 tracks, 7 if you use a master track.
You could use 5 looper tracks, be they Flex or PickUp, two Thru machines ( or 1 and a Neighbor ) to get all of the FX vibe you want, and then when you like what you’re getting, sample it without affecting your play through (unless you tell it to)
The OT is flexible enough to allow you to record either what you hear or not)
I decided to try the OT before the pigtronix, and realized I needed to go no further. I almost settled on the 45000 because of its MIDI implementation, but decided that it was not as music friendly as I would like.
@Ray-Ray_Velouria is kinda correct here, the OT is complex because it does a lot of stuff.
However, since you’re familiar with Elektron stuff, I bet you could conceptually and physically configure OT as the looper you want in an afternoon, and then have the rest of your life to explore the rabbit hole.
Regarding boring static loops, I think you’re right on with your proposed usage of LFO’s etc to make them more interesting as a piece or jam evolves over time… and don’t forget patterns and scenes! They allow things like changing routing, effect chains, most things OT just by going to the next pattern… What I’m saying is that what you loop is only as static as you want it to be.
Granted, several times the price of other available loopers, but name one that will allow you to find your snipe, show you several others you didn’t know were there, *and sequence your Nord in one box.
I think you kinda gotta decide if you just want something easy that you can learn in a few days or a week and it’ll do what your thinking of, or do you want an extension of your Elektron ecosystem that can do what you want and more, but comes with another big layer of having to grasp the “Elektron way”, while also enabling a whole other world of stuff you can do, giving many possibilities for the future, but again comes the learning curve…
No kidding! Korg REALLY dropped the ball on that thing… I’d love to see a new one with editing that doesn’t cause embolisms, midi/usb for backup editing… And that’s really about it… Running through FX pedals… It’s so expressive. no other electronic percussion comes close I don’t think.
Really want the APC aFrame… Played it at NAMM… So damn cool. But too spendy right now.
Just downloaded the MkI manual… .holy crap. 144 pages! considering how much Elektron likes to “truncate” their manuals (see: AR “pamphlet”)… The rabbit hole appears to have no bottom.
remember - if you will rely on pickup machines then the OT has to be master clock device (search dub aborted) if there are others hooked up - and the OT’s tempo detection can result in surprising Tempo shifts/choices if slaved devices are primed to go at specific tempos
Also note that it always uses its timestretch algorithm for pickup machines - so some material may not fare as nicely through that process - nor indeed does some material fare well through the loop point handling wrt clicks (some devices seem to do this better)
It’s also a lot of setting up (if you need control device etc and it’s not left set up in one spot) - having said that the pros outweigh the cons and in general it’s a mighty device with a lot of strengths - but it ain’t no instant mojo simple looper experience and you have to factor in the cost of external control
I also have a Global Wavedrum. I’d like a second one. It’s possible to sequence it if you record the dry signal from piezos, and play the samples.
A bit of soldering. I’d like to solder female mini jacks, in order to plug 2 clips sensors. I have one with the Wavedrum mini.
I made a quick test with a regular drum loop. It works really well, but I have tons of experiments to do before ! Can’t wait to use it seriously with OT !
Algorithms are great but very boring to edit indeed. Manual almost always necessary for each algorithm deep editing.
