a little textural noodle

simeon

simeon

Axe-Master
doing some housekeeping and found this soundscape i recorded in march

amazing what you can do with an axe fx and three very long parallel delays....


i wish i could remember what i did to make this...!

sim
 
Simeon, that was really nice. I wish you could remember too! I love your ambient stuff.

After reading some of your posts I find it funny that we both have a couple of the same influences (Holdsworth, and Hackett).

Keep up the good work.
 
i loop in my macbook pro, so for this soundcsape i used three instances of Augustus Loop hosted in Bidule.

i've been experimenting though and have finally settled on Ableton Live as my host. i use Mobius and Augustus Loop for looping and a range of plugins for loop processing.

i tried Mainstage 2, but it was too CPU heavy and i used Bidule for over a year, but got tired of how ugly it is and the unpredictable spikes in CPU i was getting.

Ableton is very stable, looks good and i've found some very creative ways of using midi clips to control the loopers and the plugins.

sim
 
Hi Simeon

I like the things you do with your axe fx and your looping tricks.

Beeing an axe fx ultra and ableton user by myself, I would be very interrested in a tutorial on "how to do the looping things with ableton" that goes more into deep than the ableton manual.

excuse my poor english

allan13
 
allan - i'm not using ableton to loop with, although you can use the built-in looper that comes with it quite effectively if you have a midi footswitch. you can load up several instances of the looper and get some really interesting things happening.

i'm using ableton as a host and looping with Augustus Loop, which is a tape-style delay with very long delay times and opportunities for manipulation and Mobius, a free 8-track looper based on the Oberheim Echoplex.

the kind of looper you choose to use will depend on the type of looping you want to do.

sim
 
Hi Simeon

thanxs for the fast answer.

one question - how do control, manipulate, start and stop your loopers ?

With a foot controoler (MFC101) ? or with your hands on the mac keyboard ?

allan13
 
i use a footcontroller for hands free operation (the yamaha mfc-10 is no good because it has latency, i use the now discontinued nobels mf-1) and a control surface (the novation remote zero for loop manipulation). the footcontroller allows me to perform basic functions, like record, overdub, select loops, reverse, half speed, undo etc etc while i'm playing

sim
 
hi simeon

i do not mean yamaha mfc but fractal audio mfc.
In fact, I want my fractal mfc to control the axe fx.
I have a rolls midibuddy footcontroller and also a roland fc 200. Are these footcontroller able to control my ableton or the mobius and augustus loopers ?

Do any Tutorials (videos ) exist (internet ?) on using the augustus or mobius loopers ?

thxs
allan13
 
yup, either of those would do fine

there are no tutorials as far as i know, but yu can download/view the manuals on their respective sites

if you're not familiar with looping, then it may be best to start simply. i could make you a live set with four loopers and all the midi assignments set up for you. you could then have a play around with it. it might be worth thinking about getting something like the korg nanocontrol, which would give you some sliders to control loop volumes and feedback levels and some buttons to control reverse and half speed for each looper.

augustus is very easy to get on with but is more useful as a tape style looper where you just set the loop length and leave it. good for textural looping, but not so great for phrased looping. mobius is better for phrased looping, but is also extremely deep and has a very steep learning curve (not recommended for beginners).

the ableton looper is simple and multiple instances can be made to sync with each other (the first loop you make defines the tempo). i would recommend starting there.

sim
 
hold on. just doing some investigation and the ableton looper will not respond to program change messages. if you can configure either of those footswitches to send cc messages, then you'll be ok....otherwise not.

sim
 
A live set would be great.

As an explanation - I'm more of a traditional rock, pop, blues, fusion guitarist that played in a lot of cover bands over the years.
But I also have my own trio (dr,b,g) playing my own instrumental music. For the last three years I use the axe fx eclusivly, which means no guitar amps.
In my own band it could be a new dimension to the music to have some textures and soundscapes going on.
Guitarist normally do this in using delay and chorus pedals, but when I hear your takes - there must be more :).
Ableton for me was more a "collecting ideas" than a "creating sounds" tool.

The biggest problem could be, how to manage all the footcontrollers with the ableton and the loopers in a rythmic band situation without loosing too much of the playing skills on the instrument in a live situation.

thxs for your patience

allan13
 
well using loopers in a rhythmic band situation is quite problematical . if the drummer can't hear exactly what's going on, he'll get out of sync and it'll be a mess. believe me, i've been there!

doing something more ambient and textural is much easier. in fact you don't even need a looper. i'm sitting here listening to a pad i just created using ableton's filter delay set to 100% feedback going into the auto filter and then into a reverb. you only need two controls then - input level for the delay (tied to a send on the input channel in ableton) and feedback level so you can fade it out when you're done. two cc pedals. instant "hold" for a chord.
 
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hm, looks interesting.

I have to try this.

By the way the roland fc 200 can send cc messages.
The Rolls Midibuddy only program change messages.

allan13
 
Simeon,
Do you know of any other footcontrollers with low latency like the Nobels? Thanks for your help.
 
Popcorn said:
Simeon,
Do you know of any other footcontrollers with low latency like the Nobels? Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

I'm not Simeon, but the Gordius foot controllers have low latency, just because of looping duties.

@ Simeon: very nice clips. The first one had a "Blade Runner" movie vibe to it, which I dig.
 
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