Live looping

Yesterday I was experimenting with live looping on the MPC with OS 2 (works with OS1 too though). I set my foot pedal to overdub/punch and made a quick drum pattern of 16 bars. Then I set up all my sounds on the XV-3080, and punched in and out on different tracks with different sounds to build up a funky jazz track. I used the changes to the Herbie Hancock tune Watermelon Man as a reference, and I had a blast improvising over my own comp.

Now I was thinking that I could take this live, and basically build my tracks out live, improvising over them. I could easily invite other musicians to blow over my improvised comp, and the element of surprise and improvisation that is so vital in jazz would be the key element! Being a jazz musician, I want to focus on the live aspect of the mpc rather then the studio use.

Has anybody here done such a thing? Basically I'd have to start with all my sounds ready, but with an empty sequence. How do I keep it interesting without playing the same thing for 20 minutes? Especially on the drum department, how do I ad subtle changes to my drum tracks in real time without disturbing the flow?

Anything else I have to watch for? Maybe there are new functions in OS 2 that would facilitate this (I haven't delved into it yet)? Not all samples/chops lend themselves to this, obviously I can't use chops with basslines in them.

All tips would be greatly appreciated.

have a couple patterns you have made ready


u could switch up the breaks on the drums

hi,

i personnally play frequently in improvised music set-up (i can't really call it "free jazz" i prefer the "improvised music" term)

i personnally prepare differents program (some with all kinds of sounds some more specialized) i play them live or record them in sequence.

the mpc is not really a tlive tweakable machine...i use outboard effects (kaoss pad, timefactor (eventide) etc...)

i m waitting for the midi cc in implementation...

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=88566

check it out

what you'd wanna do is go to youtube and search for a guy called Anchorsong, he does absolutely amazing things in exactly the way you describe, using just his MPC and a keyboard.

And while he does loop his stuff, it definitely does not sound repetitive at all. Check it out and let me know what you think.

that's a good tip from bruxism, but how does Anchorsong do his looping on the mpc in the first place?

Thanx guys, I'll try and check it out this evening if I have the time. Kinda a busy weekend (3 gigs), but keep the tips coming!

Yesterday I tried to loop myself at a gig playing a pad+rhodes groove over a drum pattern and then soloing over that with a synth sound. It worked out nicely, except for one thing that went wrong after I had solod : i couldn't change sequences anymore !!

Once I used punch/record with my footpedal, it became impossible to change sequences. The next sequence button also didn't work, so I couldn't go to the sequence that had the ending of the song I was playing. It did confuse our singer, who was expecting a repeat at the end, but I solved it nicely with a manual stop and a long cymbal hit triggered manually, but still, this is a show stopper for me. I use the latest OS 1.

I didn't test this out yet in OS 2, I have another gig this evening, and if I have enough time during soundcheck, i'll check it out.

Oh and also another annoying thing : the erase button didn't work either, so there was no way to take the track on which I had looped and empty it so I could play again myself. I could record a whole sequence of silence, but that is of course not an option. A usuable workaround would be to have two tracks ready, one for looping and one for love playing, and mute the looped one whenever needed, so it's not that much of a problem, but still... Would be nice if the Erase button could just wipe a track while the machine is playing.

Does anybody know how I could contact JJ and see if this is something he can easily change (maybe no-one thought of it)? Nym?

hi dunewar, i'm sure that nym will check in before you know it but in the meantime could you give a detailed step by step of your method? that would be really cool.

hey dunewar, yes unfortuantely you can't go to a next sequnce directly after recording, unless you press stop first.its the same in the akai os too, the only exceptions are JJOS before 4.85(i think):where if next seq was set to immediately play you could flip to the next sequence without hitting the stop button.

also the erase button will only work in overdub if you hold down the keys you want to delete-all the way through the recorded performance,not entirley useful for you! i think someone here requested "quick" erasing shortcuts.the only real option you have is muting the track, (or hitting stop and undo seq button which seems far from ideal)

just checked my earlier posts:

I just tried it with 4.91 and it will immediately play another sequence after recording, without having to stop. This currently doesn't work on 4.98.

Thnx, does it go to the next sequence immediately in 4.91, or will it also go after the current sequence is done? Ideally, I would be able to keep my current workflow.

Right now it is as follows :

Digital piano P-120 yamaha Midi out -> MPC Midi A in.
MPC Midi 1 out -> Roland XV-3080 Midi in

Track one is drums (and/or percussion), track two is bass (usually an upright bass patch on my XV-3080), track 3 and 4 are reserved for extra cymbal work, percussion and loops. These are the tracks that are usually sequenced at home. A song typically consists of intro, head and outro, in seperate sequences. The head usually loops round and round while we all improvise over it, untill we cue our singer that the outro is coming up so she needs to sing. At that point, I need to trigger the next sequence. I use song mode frequently to define the order of sequences, and the head sequence gets a HOLD as number of repeats. I use my foot pedal to switch to the next sequence.

I play the piano, using either a piano sound locally on my P-120 stage piano, or an electric piano sound from the XV-3080 (using the MPC as through box). In my XV-3080, I have a few performances that have my most used sounds on midi channels 2-16. 1 is allways reserved for bass, so the basis of all my sequences sounds the same no matter what performance I choose in my XV. Then I can change the selected track (and the corresponding midi out channel) on the mpc while playing.

What I did yesterday was play a groove on an electric piano patch with a soft string left in split mode (all responding on the same midi channel), over a pre-sequenced drum and bass pattern. I punched in record, and once the sequence looped, my groove looped too. I could then punch out of recording, change the track number (and midi channel and thus corresponding sound on the XV), and solo over what I just played. The song was summertime by Gershwin, btw.

After our vocalist does some fine scatting, I usually trigger the next sequence witch contains the drums and bass for the ending of the song, with me taking over the keyboard duties live again.

And that proved impossible.

no. immediately play will switch exactly at the time you tell it.It keeps things in time with the initial sequence though, so if you switch at bar4 beat 4.95ticks the next hit will be from the next tick along in the new sequence:in this case it would be beat 1 tick 1.
immediately start does exactly that..it starts immediately from when you tell it to go to the next seq,ignoring the current seq position.
Also im not sure if these work from the foostswitch cause i haven't tried it.

anchorsong is really good live... how does he do that start-stop sequence by pressing a pad? how do you do that function? i guess its no problem to do that while recording as anchorsong does it in the video...

What I like about the Looping feature in OS is, that you don't have to hold down the Pad you selected for looping. Hit it once and the loop will start at the selected loop points and fade out automatically. I guess you can change that, but I haven't found out yet, where exactly to do this...hmm