How do you live loop like this?

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iaresee

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Is this magic that Abelton let's you do? Is someone else pressing record stop/start off screen? Or is there a start/stop triggered on threshold crossing that's letting her walk between instruments and play seemingly random number of bars on each instrument but have it all line up? How does she get the loops to stop entirely? MIDI controller at her feet?

I am intrigued by being able to play live with loops like this and want to know more about how one does it. Anyone out there know how?

 
Her Bobby Caldwell/Foo Fighters mashup is mesmerizing. Yeah unless there’s timers going off like a a MIDI track in a DAW there’s gotta be some offstage help going on because in the one I mentioned there’s no tapping or triggering. There’s at least camera and dolly operators there.

There’s absolutely no difference between the vocals between any of this mics...
 
My thought was it's done with thresholds -- play and instrument, cross the threshold, and recording for that track automatically starts. But, I don't know Abelton so maybe that's not possible?
 
Is this magic that Abelton let's you do? Is someone else pressing record stop/start off screen? Or is there a start/stop triggered on threshold crossing that's letting her walk between instruments and play seemingly random number of bars on each instrument but have it all line up? How does she get the loops to stop entirely? MIDI controller at her feet?

I am intrigued by being able to play live with loops like this and want to know more about how one does it. Anyone out there know how?


WOW!!!
Thanks for sharing that Elise Trouw :)
What an awesome video and Talent very cool...
 
Ableton is the most impressive DAW I have come across. Definitely offers a lot of unique features other mainstream products from just as big if not bigger and longer mainstay industry names. I actually think it’s worth the license for once. Pro Tools you need to have, but ableton is more of the daw you want imo
 
@Kamil Kisiel that video was A+. Abelton was at the heart of it, as I suspected. That's software I've largely ignored. It's free for 90 days. Going to check it out. Not quite the deal that Logic is, pricewise, though.
 
@Kamil Kisiel that video was A+. Abelton was at the heart of it, as I suspected. That's software I've largely ignored. It's free for 90 days. Going to check it out. Not quite the deal that Logic is, pricewise, though.
I use Ableton for some of my electronic music stuff. I don't really like it for the kind of instrumental recording I do though, it's lacking a lot of audio editing features and "studio" stuff that Logic has. Doesn't even have a takes/comping system which makes it pretty painful for recording live instruments.

But for looping, playing with snippets, and electronic music composition, it's definitely very powerful.
 
So for people who didn't watch the video that @Kamil Kisiel posted, some of the magic is in pre-arranging the loop recording and playback. That's pretty neat.

You pre-layout which tracks will record when and for how long and then you pre-set how and when the looped recordings on each track play back. That's a pretty cool trick. It's how you get the recordings looping, but still have breaks in the playback. So it's all recorded live, and looped live, but the order and duration the looper tracks are recorded and played back in is pre-determined.

lt explains why noises like putting down sticks on the snare, or fingers against strings while picking up a guitar, aren't captured in the loops. The automation has already stopped the recording and started the playback so she doesn't have to worry about stuff like that getting picked up. And no other mic in the room capturing until she approaches it.

Very, very cool.
 
Part of this feature set is used by many bands and now solo performers in town. It is amazing. When performing with tracks you can play your song in any order, (vs cho vs cho bridge...) and extend any section at will. An artist, band or solo performer that uses backing tracks isn't forced to stick to a static performance. It can be changed to suit the audience experience-not to mention that some random technical problems that would normally be show stopping can be resolved without having to stop the song or show.
 
Yeah, if you use a controlled like a Launchpad or Ableton Push you can do this in a more semi-automated way and instead launch scenes that start recording of loops or play back existing loops. Then you can create a more improvised live looping arrangement. People have been doing this with electronic music pretty much since Ableton Live was created, and with other sequencers before that, but it seems the techniques are starting to become more prominent with players of other instruments.
 
This is cool, and I don't doubt she can do this live on the fly in some way, but this is a music video, not a filming of a live event. @USMC_Trev is right - the vocal consistency on the recording is a dead giveaway.
 
Yeah, if you use a controlled like a Launchpad or Ableton Push you can do this in a more semi-automated way and instead launch scenes that start recording of loops or play back existing loops. Then you can create a more improvised live looping arrangement. People have been doing this with electronic music pretty much since Ableton Live was created, and with other sequencers before that, but it seems the techniques are starting to become more prominent with players of other instruments.
I’m interested in how you make this less rigid in terms of the arrangement. So you can stay in a section an arbitrary amount of time.
 
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