Introduction and question about live looping

[Etnor86]

Hi!
So glad to be a part of this community and look forward to making lots of friends and sharing my passion for music. I'm a weekend warrior with a little basement studio whose best days in college age were spent jamming with my friends. My parents encouraged (often forced) me to play music growing up and I found a group of friends in my early twenties who loved to unwind by jamming out. I taught myself many instruments so that I could be the guy who could always fill in when someone was missing. I've spent the last 4 or 5 years trying to advance my skills on the drums and learn to record us when I manage to get the guys together and jam. I have 6 guitars, 2 basses, a micro korg & keyboard, an array of amps, a license for Abelton and a focusrite scarlett 18i20 as well as various microphones.


Anyway my question, and if someone can point me to a better area to post this separately please do:
Its rare I get my friends to come jam. I love playing drums and am trying hard to improve but I get so bored just practicing rudiments etc so I have been trying to loop myself on bass (my primary instrument) and play drums to it. I have been having a hell of a time getting the timing right on a loop. I got a metronome but even with that, it's so hard to get a loop of bass that doesn't eventually go off time and then screw up my drumming.

Any advice?

 

[Slouching Raymond]

Welcome Etnor86. My solution is to first record a drum machine track, then play bass to it, then mute the drum track while playing drums to just the bass.

 

[mjbphotos]

The trick to successful looping is to stomp on that button at JUST the right time. Some loopers have a function that will correct the loop time if its off.

 

[Folkcafe]

Coming from more traditional DAW's like ProTools, it took me quite a while to wrap my head around Ableton in general but also wanted a practice tool. Looping in Ableton is really powerful and can be programmed to play multiple loops in a programmed progression from intro to out. For instance you can program a loop to play a specific number of times and then go to the next loop. Tap in a tempo, program a basic drum track and add your bass loops. Program playback for a 4 count intro and play back bass without the drum track. As Ableton is grid based, if you play back short loops, there shouldn't be any issue with time. Just takes a bit of practice and with guitar or bass, a foot pedal control is very helpful. I started looping with guitar using a Digitech pedal and playing guitar. For me, trying to control looping with keyboard or Launchpad mini is no bueno.

My question is, what are you using for loop control?

Some good YouTube channels that cover live looping in Ableton. One I followed while figuring it all out and was very helpful is a user called Taetro. Perhaps more complex than what you are looking for but something to give you a few ideas.

 

[Etnor86]

Coming from more traditional DAW's like ProTools, it took me quite a while to wrap my head around Ableton in general but also wanted a practice tool. Looping in Ableton is really powerful and can be programmed to play multiple loops in a programmed progression from intro to out. For instance you can program a loop to play a specific number of times and then go to the next loop. Tap in a tempo, program a basic drum track and add your bass loops. Program playback for a 4 count intro and play back bass without the drum track. As Ableton is grid based, if you play back short loops, there shouldn't be any issue with time. Just takes a bit of practice and with guitar or bass, a foot pedal control is very helpful. I started looping with guitar using a Digitech pedal and playing guitar. For me, trying to control looping with keyboard or Launchpad mini is no bueno.

My question is, what are you using for loop control?

Some good YouTube channels that cover live looping in Ableton. One I followed while figuring it all out and was very helpful is a user called Taetro. Perhaps more complex than what you are looking for but something to give you a few ideas.

Sadly I have a minimal skill level so far in abelton. Currently just using a simple pedal that has a looper as well as 80 or so different drum tracks as well as speed control. I really need to take the time to sit and go through the course I bought on abelton.

 

[Folkcafe]

Sadly I have a minimal skill level so far in abelton. Currently just using a simple pedal that has a looper as well as 80 or so different drum tracks as well as speed control. I really need to take the time to sit and go through the course I bought on abelton.

I signed up for a couple courses for Ableton on Udemy for cheap when I got my new Mac. One a drum programming "master class" that was based off of Ableton and another course Ableton Live 11 Music Production. They seem to have 3 sales a week, so courses are pretty cheap. The first 3 sections of Music Production are pretty easy to get through and gives you enough to get going. Ableton is going to end up being a lot tighter for time than most can get on a pedal. It's a slog but worth it in the end.

 

[Etnor86]

The trick to successful looping is to stomp on that button at JUST the right time. Some loopers have a function that will correct the loop time if its off.

I have a pretty cheap looper pedal. Do you happen to know which looper has that auto edit?

 

[Ujn Hunter]

If you're using a looper pedal (I'm not very good at it myself) then I'd suggest putting your drumming practice on hold while you learn to practice using your looper pedal. Or the best way to skip the looper pedal and just record some bass tracks into your DAW which you can then "crop" and "clip" together as loops to play back for your drumming practice (or better yet, just turn on some YouTube "bass only" backing tracks or something to skip your bass loops all together).

 

[ecc83]

I too would suggest you record the bass track (against a cans click). I have tried Ableton as has my son but we both found it rather hard (main DAW is Samplitude) he has however had more luck with the free Cakewalk.

Just this week he was here trying to setup an advance practice track for classical guitar. The exercise is "Thumb, one finger, second finger playing 3 notes per bar. Then speed up. Next, thumb, plus fingers, 4 notes PB...speedup. Last 5 notes per bar. It was the latter that floored him trying to get a loop to play to with 5, equally spaced 'bleeps' in the 1 second practice pulse (I shall see if I can find it)

He ended up recording soft synth notes and then spacing them equally in 1000mSec in Sam Prox3 but any DAW would do.

Oh yes! WELCOME to the madhouse!

What monitors do you use?

Dave.

 

[TalismanRich]

Using a looper is something that I've never mastered. I have a Digitech RP350, which has looping capability. Try as I might, the start/stop points always fail to match up. What works for me it to just get a drum track, either from my SR18 or by putting patterns into MTPDK. The SR18 has a bass accompaniment in their canned patterns. They are ok, if you just want to jam along at that key.

Slouching Raymond's approach works best for me, except for the "playing the drums" part. The whole reason I use MTPDK is that my drum abilities are nonexistent.