Using the looper live

My singer has asked me to figure out how to use the MPC (Live) for looping her vocals in real time.

It looks like this is possible if not necessarily easy. The problem I see right away with that we run her vocals all to outs 5 and 6 (instruments go to 1 and 2) and I cannot see a way to route the looper to a different set of outs. Possible?

Any other thoughts/advice are welcome.

Is it like the one in the Force, i.e. touchscreen operated, and you have to pre-set the number of bars to record? Given those "features", how could it be used even in theory.

The only way I've found to live-loop with the Force is, with an external Boss RC-5 looper pedal synced to the Force with MIDI clock. Foot-operated and you can decide the loop length by pressing the pedal. Akai's looper, forget about it.

But props to your singer for having so much faith in your ability to make it work by "figuring it out"! That's a very optimistic world view. "Fellows with compassion and vision" can make even Akai stuff work.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Is it like the one in the Force, i.e. touchscreen operated, and you have to pre-set the number of bars to record? Given those "features", how could it be used even in theory.

What's the point of a the looper? I can record audio without it.

I do not know what the point of Akai's looper is, because it can be operated only via the touchscreen, and you have to pre-decide how many bars you want. You can record audio with other means as well, so what is the point.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:I do not know what the point of Akai's looper is, because it can be operated only via the touchscreen, and you have to pre-decide how many bars you want. You can record audio with other means as well, so what is the point.

The point would be that she sings a part - live, in front of the audience - and then she sings another part on top. Live looping. It's a thing.

jamos wrote:The point would be that she sings a part - live, in front of the audience - and then she sings another part on top. Live looping. It's a thing.

Yes, we know.

Our question is what the looper of the MPC is meant for. Because it doesn't work as a live looper.

Try using an actual live looper in your outputs 5-6? I suppose this is not some kind of a circus act where the choice of device provides an extra difficulty factor to make the feat seem more impressive. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to live-loop while standing on our heads, hands tied behind our backs, and believe it or not, we're going to use the MPC LOOPER WHICH IS NOT SUITABLE FOR LIVE LOOPING AT ALL!!!" And then everybody would be completely in awe.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Try using an actual live looper in your outputs 5-6? I suppose this is not some kind of a circus act where the choice of device provides an extra difficulty factor to make the feat seem more impressive. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to live-loop while standing on our heads, hands tied behind our backs, and believe it or not, we're going to use the MPC LOOPER WHICH IS NOT SUITABLE FOR LIVE LOOPING AT ALL!!!" And then everybody would be completely in awe.

Exactly! When all we want from the looper is to do stuff like this chick at 5:23:

In my opinion, with a few additions, the MPC and particularly the Force loopers would be hugely more useful.

- Start/stop/overdub controllable with MIDI, so it could be foot-switched.
- Selectable length quantization instead of fixed number of bars, and free length. For example, 1/4 quantization.
- Insertable anywhere as a plugin, and/or selectable OUTPUT routing
- "Decay", i.e. overdub with gradual fade-out
- For the Force (I know it's discontinued but saying anyway): looping directly INTO A CLIP, taking an ALREADY RECORDED CLIP as the loop to work on.

With some more work an MPC could be a mind-blowingly powerful live-looping device that would sweep away all competition. But as it is currently, it's useless.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:- For the Force (I know it's discontinued but saying anyway): looping directly INTO A CLIP, taking an ALREADY RECORDED CLIP as the loop to work on.

I hope that the clips that have been removed from MPC 3.x will reappear later on in a Force fashion.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Try using an actual live looper in your outputs 5-6? I suppose this is not some kind of a circus act where the choice of device provides an extra difficulty factor to make the feat seem more impressive. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to live-loop while standing on our heads, hands tied behind our backs, and believe it or not, we're going to use the MPC LOOPER WHICH IS NOT SUITABLE FOR LIVE LOOPING AT ALL!!!" And then everybody would be completely in awe.

Well, no. it's more a matter of not wanting to buy, and set up, even more gear at our live shows.

But, hey, thanks for your opinion.

IMHO, the looper is too limited for live use. You are attached to a predefined number of measures and must use the metronome or a drum track, so you cannot just start singing and adjusting the loop to a button press in real time.

Unless I'm missing a better way to use it, looper pedals are way more flexible.

Boss RC-5 is about 200 moneys. Connect audio left, audio right, TRS MIDI. Problem solved and now you can live-loop.

I know the preference is to avoid buying and setting up more kit, but I'd echo what other people are saying. The looper is far from ideal and running an external dedicated device (you can pick up a second hand RC500 for less than £200, RC5 for less again) is likely to be far more productive.

However - if someone finds a way to make it work well, share it!