From the course: Live Looping with Ableton Live

Looping with a single instrument - Ableton Live Tutorial

From the course: Live Looping with Ableton Live

Start my 1-month free trial

Looping with a single instrument

“

- [Instructor] Let's start with a minimalist scenario. Just a single session of use lot in the mini track. The most basic looping function is built directly into Ableton's session view clips. Let's drag an instrument into the track. Enabled recording is already enabled. And turn on the metronome. Once click is rolling, hitting return anywhere in the bar before the downbeat will get Live ready to create a new clip in the selected slot. On the downbeat the clip will be created and will start recording into it. Hitting return again in the last measure of the phrase will stop recording and start looping the clip on the next downbeat. Let's roll click. (gentle music) Ableton clips actually loop by default. This is great but we're not ready to perform just yet. For one thing, we don't want to be messing around with the mouse or the computer keyboard. We'll definitely need hands-free operation. For another, we should be able to record more layers into the clip but triggering the same slot again will just stop it. We need to be able to toggle back and forth between recording and playback. And finally, I would love to have the option of doing this without the click. There will be situations where click is necessary but personally, I prefer to do without it if possible. So let's go through some settings that will get us closer to the goal. I'll delete this clip. For hands-free operation we'll need a foot pedal that will control recording and overdubbing. I like this classic Boss FS5U unlatched foot pedal but of course it can be any pedal that can be media assigned. Mine is plugged into a controller input which is assigned to a media note. Our key function here will be the session record button. As long as you have an armed mini track with a selected slot, this button will toggle recording and playback for any clip that's in the slot. Now if the slot is empty it can create a clip and then start recording into it. To do that we need to make sure that the preferences enabled for the session record button to start playback when we hit it. Command or control comma to open preferences, record warp launch, start playback with record is on. Good. Hit escape to exit preferences. By the way this preference can also be set right here. So now I'll map my foot pedal to the session record button. Command or control m to open media mappings. Select the session record button and press the pedal to map it. Notice that my pedal is assigned on the controller to channel six. Escape to close mini map mode. Okay, now let's turn the metronome off and set quantization to none. This will make us completely independent of Ableton's tempo and transport. With this setup I can just hit the pedal and start recording at the same time right on the downbeat. When I get to the end of the phrase I'll hit the pedal again to stop recording and start looping, then again to record into the looping clip, and again to stop recording and so on. (gentle music) This is essentially true to the classic live looping technique. No click, tempo set on the fly at the end of the phrase. All done with a single pedal, totally intuitive.

Contents