Hi,
I have looked for years for a very simple looping pedal that does one thing. So far I have not found one and I ended up doing a Max patch to make my own (which has some memory handling issues, since I am not a programmer, and I do not like to bring my computer to stage if it can be avoided).
Now I am wondering if this is possible to do with loopy, or if it is possible to add.
I want a pedal that is used without overdubs and only needs one press to record/re-record!
I want to use my looper in a live setting, jamming. This means I do not want to build up a song with different loops, I just want one loop that is very flexible so that I can change it immediately.
So my request is this:
I want a midi command that records when it receives a note value, when it gets the same note value again it stops recording and immediately starts playing the loop that was just recorded. When it gets the same note value again it erases the loop and starts recording (re-recording) a new loop and when it gets the same note value it stops recording and starts playback.
No count ins, just punch in recording!
So basically one footswitch would let me record one rhythm part for the verse, let me play over that part without recording, then by a press of the pedal I can record a new part for the chorus (and the verse part is now gone) and play over this. I can then play a new part for the bridge and so on.
The best way for me would be if I could assign MIDI notes to each track so that I have one note connected to each track and I could then re-record the tracks separately whenever I want.
It would also be nice with one MIDI note for mute of each track.
This would mean that I could use Loopy without ever having to look at the app! Could just play and use my 12 step midi pedal to control everything!
I think the commands for changing tracks are messy, it is much better to just press one pedal and know what track your on.
I think this is a simple functionality that would not take to much effort to implement if it is not already possible. So if this would be possible to solve I would be most grateful!
Now to some additional functionality that I would find very useful:
Have a free recording mode. Instead of setting the number of bars before recording, make the loop the number of bars it becomes from the time record is pressed until stop is pressed.
This makes a more jam orientated situation much easier, because no planning is needed, you just play what you play for as long as it feels right and then that loops!
This could of course be quantized to the main tempo, so that the loop length is synchronized to multiples of the beat.
Connected to this is my second useful function:
Punch-in recording with quantization, pre-recording and trigger threshold for pre-recording.
When doing punch-in looping it is easy to be sloppy with the pedal. Also tempo locked looping is hard to do with groove oriented music that has a lot of syncopation. If a note is deliberately played slightly before the 1 of the beat it easily gets lost or the beat length is skewed or offset.
This can be solved by continuously recording the input to a buffer and noting the last time the level was above a given trigger threshold. So if a note starts 30ms before the beast and the pedal is pressed on the beat the looper knows that there has been a signal over the threshold within a given time so it will include the first 30ms in the loop.
The loop still ends on the beat so it rotates perfectly, but the begining of the loop starts 30ms early so it overlaps the end of the loop, still keeping all relations to the metronome and beat but also keeping the syncopation.