J.Kirchartz Web Yinzer

Ableton Live 8 Looper & Korg nanoPAD

The music of Yoav is heavily loop based, due to the fact that every sound is either produced by his guitar or his voice. To accomplish this he has several looping delay pedals; In some of his videos on youtube you can clearly see the Boss RC-20XL. These pedals are fun to play with because you can loop and overdub anything placed into the input, then improvise over the loop creating nearly any sound possible. Recently Keyboard Magazine ran a 2-part article on using multiple loopers with live, but their instructions are a little unclear unless you’re familiar with Live.

Over the weekend I’ve experimented and played around a lot and produced this Live 8 set, and nanoPAD preset. I don’t suggest using the nanoPAD with your feet, but for beatboxing in the style of BeardyMan this will get you there. To get instructions, tips, and download the Live set w/ nanoPAD preset, please continue reading.

The software needed is:

  • Ableton Live 8
  • Korg Control Editor

Alright, here’s the setup:

  • Create 1 audio track (ctrl + t) & arm it for recording.

  • Create up to 6 return tracks (ctrl + alt + t)
    • sometimes the returns don’t show up, so switch to arrange view & click the arrow next to one and they should all show up in the session view
  • In each return track place a looper

  • For each looper the setup is:
    • Quantization: none
    • Song Control: none
    • Tempo Control: none
    • Input -> Output: none
    • Optionally you could set the first looper’s tempo control to “Set & Follow Song Tempo” and every other track to “Follow Song Tempo”, then record your beat into the first looper.
  • Setup the Midi map: open the MIDI map mode
    • set one button to turn up the send on the audio rack
    • set one button to control the “Multi-Purpose Transport Button” (MPTB from now on) (it should show record at first, but will switch to play & overdub)

Ableton Live Screenshot

Now you’re good to go. Hit the button you assigned to send & then tap the MPTB button to start recording, do something awesome, then tap the MPTB button again to switch from recording to playing. To overdub tap the MPTB button and lay something down but I suggest tapping off the send and switching to your next send to lay down something funky for the next section. Rinse, Wash, Repeat.

Double tapping on the MPTB will stop the looper, and holding down the MPTB for 2 seconds will clear the recording, freeing up a loop for future use.

If you want to grab my looper setup & live set it’s right here:

download: 6loops.rar