You could do this with traditional instruments like drums, guitars and keyboards. Make sure the second Looper is set to “Follow Song Tempo”. On another track, record your next loop to a second instance of Looper.Record and play to set the global tempo to match your loop. Start with your rhythm loop, or whatever has you inspired.Here is how you might start a live looping set:
Learn how Sampler works plus 3 free plugins that are equally as awesome samplers. You can use Sampler as your source sound for loops. This technique can work with DJ sets, ambient soundscapes and even more types of music. Live LoopingĮver heard of live looping? Well Looper is the plugin you want if you plan on using Ableton in a live looping environment.Įssentially, live looping is when you layer multiple loops over top of each other. There are plenty of applications for the Looper plugin, live looping, drum arrangements and adding texture to your tracks are some of the most common. The options are Always, Never, Rec/OVR, Rec/OVR/Stop. This setting controls how the source material is heard over the recorded material. 0% means that the previously recorded material is not recorded in the overdub at all. 50% means the previously recorded audio is recorded at half the volume it was the first time. 100% Feedback means the previously recorded material records at the same volume as before. This is useful if you want to fade out an earlier recording. The Feedback knob determines how much of recorded signal is sent back to Looper while overdubbing. If you overdub onto a reversed sample and click the reverse button again, the first recording will play forwards, but the overdub will play backwards. The Reverse button will reverse the audio sample. By increasing the speed to exactly an octave, the sample keeps time but will either be double time or half time. The arrow buttons a shortcuts to increase the speed by an octave up or down. Because you are increasing or decreasing the speed of the sample, the pitch of the sample also changes. The Speed knob on Looper can yield some interesting sounds and rhythms. If the “then” setting is set to play, then the Multi-Purpose Transport Button turns into the play button when recording is started. If your “then” setting is set to overdub, then the Multi-Purpose Transport Button will turn into an overdub button when you start recording.
To start recording, just click the record button. Recording your audio material is really easy too, the Multi-Purpose Transport Button is where you will do your punching in and out of recording. The loop will play in the same time you recorded it. None selected means that the tempo of Looper is independent from the global tempo.The rest of the track will either slow down or speed up to match your loops tempo.
Set & Follow Song Tempo means that the global tempo will be adjusted to match the tempo of the loop that was just recorded.Follow Song Tempo tells looper to match it’s tempo to the track tempo, this may either speed up or slow down your loop.
The Tempo Control settings tell Ableton how to match the tempo of the arrangement to the tempo of the loop.
Looking for free drum samples to use with Looper? Head over to our free downloads page for some free samples! Underneath the display are the Record, Control, Speed, and Feedback settings for Looper. There is also transport buttons and BPM / Length information in the display area. The display area of Looper shows you where you are at in the loop while it is playing. Looper also syncs to the global tempo of your arrangement, you can also set the global tempo of your track with Looper. This means you won’t be able to edit the midi notes of the melody you may have played into Looper. Looper can receive audio from both Audio and MIDI tracks in ableton, but the sound you hear coming out of Looper will always be audio. There are settings to specify how long you want the loop to be and there are settings that tell the plugin how you want Ableton to control the song. As you can see, there are controls to record, overdub, play and stop the loop.