Live vs. SL

[Coop4Music]

So I was trying to study up on Live a bit, watching free video tutorials and such, considering I want to sculpt my live performance tool. I realized that live can be used by itself for live looping (see Kid Beyond) which is fairly impressive... however

I noticed that everyone who is using this as a live performance looper, while many are very impressive, are starting with a click track. I think the beauty of SL is that there is no initial click needed, as well as no pre-setup needed (ie setting a BPM and bar loop parameter etc), of which Live needs one or the other to be precise.

Am I correct in my deductions?

on a side note, what's the benefit of using both together, anyone doing it?

[pointfive]

I'd love to know the answer to this myself. I'm waiting for equipment to arrive, so I can't do my own experiments yet, so I'd love to know some of the benefits of SL over Live.

[kevtrout]

Indeed, not having to start with a click maintains the illusion of the magic looping performance. If you are okay with your audience understanding that the computer is an intrinsic part of your music and performance, than why deny that at the very beginning, you need to bow down to the click track? With midi control of Live, you can turn the click off and make the computer bow to the performance after the initial loop is set up. That being said, SL is free and an amazing program. Quick to learn and very intuitive. We are all indebted to it's creator.

So if you are going to purchase Live anyway[i] why not download SL and use the two [i]together.

I prefer to use SL as a plugin and Live as my host. I use Live's effects and instruments because they are amazing. I sync SL to Live's midi clock and looping along with a drum machine from Live is seamless. This also allows recording successful loops right back into live. Another benefit of Live is that you can shut off all SL loops at once by hitting the stop button. Strictly using SL requires you to stop loop one at a time, which dictates that your song must fade out somehow at the end, or else each of your performers has a footswitch to stop their respective loops.

[fabila]

by kevtrout on Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:16 am

I prefer to use SL as a plugin and Live as my host. I use Live's effects and instruments because they are amazing. I sync SL to Live's midi clock and looping along with a drum machine from Live is seamless. This also allows recording successful loops right back into live. Another benefit of Live is that you can shut off all SL loops at once by hitting the stop button. Strictly using SL requires you to stop loop one at a time, which dictates that your song must fade out somehow at the end, or else each of your performers has a footswitch to stop their respective loops.

Hi! can you please tell me how can I play a sound file from MPD24 and SL in Live? I am trying to figure that out now and still having trouble with that.

[jesse]

Can you describe in more detail what you want to do? Surely you want to do something more than "play a sound file" triggered from your midi device? Otherwise you wouldn't need SL.....

jlc

[fabila]

This is from the other post you answered to me :

- Add the SL AU plugin to a new audio track in Live.
- Create a new midi track and have it get its input from your MPD24
- Set the output for that midi track to go to the SL plugin on the audio track (it will show up in the menus when you set the output)
- Set the monitoring to be 'In' on both the midi and the audio track.

well, I did all that but my problem is that I don´t know how to trigger a midi or wav file from audio track with SL as a plugin and loop live. I mean I want to be able to trigger with my mpd24 different samples or drummkits from ableton using SL and loop live. Do you understand what I mean? BTW, I am on iMac 10.5.6

[sam_square]

Strictly using SL requires you to stop loop one at a time, which dictates that your song must fade out somehow at the end, or else each of your performers has a footswitch to stop their respective loops.

You can map one button to mute all tracks.

[sam_square]

I don't think that live has sound on sound recording - until the next version anyway.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think not.

The new version of live will have an audio looper, but it will be one track. I assume you could add another looper track and rig up your foot control to control switching tracks.
imho, the new live is looking VERY enticing, especially it's controller. I have a monome, but it's a bit of a pain to use with all the random software.

[ZEF]

Live's new looper is great just for the fact that Live will sync and set the tempo according to the first loop that you play. That is a feature I really would love to have in SL's AU plugin. To be able to just start recording a loop without Live's click going first. In a Live situation this would mean one could just lay down a beatbox groove. Once that beat starts looping away, everything else will sync to it. There is no hidden click in any headphones or monitors. Everything is transparent and more "musical". The music itself becomes the timekeeper.

Finding a way to make this "no click" auto-start/auto-sync feature work in the SL plugin would render it absolutely flawless.
However the lack of this ability is not enough to over shadow all of the other amazingly cool, superior features of SooperLooper.

[sam_square]

I don't see why this cannot work for you.

Set SL to send a start message on the first recorded loop.

Set Live to follow external sync.

Use a midi router to send midi and control data to ableton from the SooperLooperAU_OUT