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Best way to work with several sample loops in AUM?
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I'm trying to set up a live jamming workflow in AUM using audio loops of my instruments. Let's say I have 4 guitar loops that are different parts of the song, what's the best way to switch loops while jamming. I can load a file player in different mix channels but when I have 4-5 instruments and 2-4 loops per instrument than I quickly run out of screen real estate and it will probably be clumsy to switch when jamming live. Are there good AUv3 sample players that can load several loops and easily switch when playing live? I don't need full sampler capabilities because I only plan on playing back loops and not recording
Comments
Not AUv3 but easily integrated into AUM via Audiobus 3 is Loopy HD. It has deep MIDI support which you could use to setup groups of loops that play together. Group the Loop has built-in Loop groups and is built for structured looping.
If you're really just playing back existing files (no recording) and you don't need any fancy manipulations, you could keep using AUM's file player. The Play Enable for each File Player can be MIDI mapped. This way you could use a keyboard (even AUM's on-screen keyboard) to toggle the playing of files. Play chords to start or stop groups of samples.
Play Enable starts the sample from the beginning; you could also assign some notes to the Mutes for each channel, this way you could cut the sound but have the sample keep playing in the background.
To make this easier to handle, you could use something like Tonality's Chord Pad AU extension to create single triggers for groups of samples or specific mute groups.
It would be killer, and I’ve asked Kymatica, if there could just be a way to have a set of files in a directory in AudioShare that can be controlled, launched via midi. He makes both programs so integration should be doable. It would allow AUM to be a wide open DJ mixer.
The file load/play works, but there’s too many steps and app switches in my view.
Some possibilities
L7 Audiokit Looper
Enso
Group the Loop
Loopy Hd
For my purposes I think just being able to load multiple instances of the file player on a single mixer channel would be a solution. Or even a way to group mixer channels in a way that they could be collapsed in the way that NS2 does so that I could at least save screen real estate and expand a group when I'm switching between loops.
My solutions for this kind of workflow:
Always uses AUM as AUv3 host.
Blocs Wave / Launchpad
To have everything in sync it’s best to host Blocs Wave in an AB3 audio input and AUM in the output that BW routes to. If you want to record your AUv3 synths as loops into BW you need to add the same pair the other way round (AUM Audio out in an AB3 Input and BW in the respective output and utilizing AUM mix busses to route the synths to BW). Usually I also have Ableton Link turned on in all apps. Now you can load your synths in AUM and use the AUM transport control to start/stop your setup.
BW has got six scenes with eight loops each where you can start stop loops in the BW UI. Apart from that you can cycle through your BW scenes controlled by AB3 and can MIDI learn that in AB3. If you own Xequence 2 it blends in in perfect sync if you load it into an AB3 MIDI in.
You can also swap out BW with the Launchpad app and if you own a Novation Launchpad MIDI controller control the loops with this 8x8 pad hardware controller. BW and launchpad are free but you need cheap IAPs to use your own loops and the AB3 MIDI learn IAP.
Beat Hawk
A much more simple approach is to use the inexpensive Beat Hawk app. According to the devs the app streams the loops from the file system so that it should not use a lot of precious memory. In Beat Hawk you can import your loops and assign them to the 4x4 pad matrix and the pads can be triggered by MIDI. You can perfectly run multiple instances of BH if 16 loops is not enough. It also offers some basic FX. BH also saves state, so saving in AUM is enough to save everything.
You could also use the very cool Koala sampler but it’s limited to single instance and I don’t know if it streams the samples or rather loads them into memory.
Good tip on Beat Hawk streaming from disk and saving state in AUM, thanks. I can't remember, but if it also supports importing loops using simple drag and drop in the Files app, then this sounds like something worth exploring.
AFAIK You can not drag and drop from files app, but I never tried this. There is a file selector dialog to import from the file system, iCloud and you can use AudioCopy. Then you can assign to pads in a sample browser window. Previewing samples in that browser is quite neat then but it‘s still after import. Means you can only preview during import but then not in sync with your track. I really wished there would be something like loopcloud for iOS.
BTW, the Blocs Wave sample browser loop preview is synced to the running track, even matching them to the track’s tempo and key on the fly - that is really neat when looking for a matching loop. But also only samples that had been imported previously with their key and tempo correctly set.
This workflow is somewhat okay but I really dream of a workflow similar to Ableton Live‘s session view as an AUv3 plugin that loops MIDI and audio clips the same way, is fully MIDI controllable and supports controllers like Launchpad. Maybe I should develop that myself...
I ended up buying 4pockets Digistix to sort of solve my problem. It's not a direct solution for my issue but it looked like an app I need in my toolbox and I have that dreaded app acquisition syndrome! But beyond a drum machine it is an AUv3 sample player. I am getting into doing dub reggae mixes and this allows me to chop drums and make my own patterns and chain patterns and put each drum on it's own channel so I can send them to different effect busses. It can also hypothetically play back other samples and change then in song/pattern mode but I haven't dug that deep yet. Ultimately I want to be able to have more control over drum parts and change the drum pattern over time which this definitely does. I'm programing my own bass lines with synths so my main samples now are guitar/piano/organ "skanks" so I'll play with this for now to see if it works for what I need in that sense. I don't really need to change those as much but I would like to have 2 parts for each instrument to change between for variety.
Do you mean AUM effect busses?
Yeah. Technically not busses I guess but put effects on different mixer channels and use sends so I can send hi hats to certain effects, snare to others etc