Tips and Tricks for Studio and Live Use
Setup 1 Mercury uses a footswitch, a sustain pedal, and an expression pedal. These are all plugged into a CME UF8 master keyboard. He also has a small 2 octave Edirol PCRM-1 keyboard that sits on the CME, providing additional buttons for less used functions. The sustain and expression pedals control the soft-synths, and the footswitch is set to record a loop into the SW slot. He records his loops first with the SW switch. The FW config is set so that once he records on the footswitch, the new loop gets assigned to the next piano key on his small PCRM-1 keyboard.
Setup 2 "I think it's a great idea to show Freewheeling at a Youth Expo. I've done something similar at a local alternative high school-- inviting kids to grab loops and build on their spontaneous creations. One challenge is working with people who have a broad range of musical skill. Especially when first working with FW, I found a lot of people have a hard time timing those first loops. My solution is to set up a pulse or a little rhythm and have people work around that. Or, to record a short loop, set it to overdub and have people play in time- like a delay pedal. You can build other layers from there. Watch for feedback. I use hypercardioid mics- Audix & AKG."
Hitmuri, a French drummer, uses an extensive customized setup with the motorized faderbox BCF2000 and a footswitch.
"I use a midi-triggered drumkit, an electronic pad, a midi-usb controller and a laptop with the Fedora Core GNU/linux distribution and the Planet ccrma packages. All the programs are linked together with the JACK sound server. Midi notes from the drumkit and the pad go into the Tapeutape sampler, the sounds then go through an effects box called Jack-Rack, and I can change the effects' values with the controller. Then everything comes into the live-looper called Freewheeling which allows me to record loops one by one, all synchronized with the first one. I can then change the volumes, start/stop with the controller (and with an electronic pad to play fills and variations, watch the last part of the video) and delete those loops."
"Just posting about my recent efforts with your rather excellent program. I have been involved with a puppet show that is performed by children and is designed to promote acceptance of cultural diversity. I chose Freewheeling to do the sound effects because I figured I could have the kids trigger each sound effect by pushing a labeled trigger on the dance mat. It turns out that the children while they love playing with the setup - already are quite tied up in the show so I have ended up triggering the sound effects myself. I hope to post pictures in the near future."
I use freewheeling to improvise, sketch out new songs, jam with other musicians, create soundscapes and rhythmic backing tracks to practice double bass to. I use the fcb1010 behringer midi footpedal to control the looper. It has 10 pedals. I use
- 5 pedals for loop on/off
- one pedal for overdub mode (then pressing a loop pedal will start overdubbing into that loop)
- one pedal for sync. Toggles between setting sync to last recorded loop and stopping the sync
- one pedal for erasing non-playing loops. This is useful for progressive sets
- one pedal for muting all playing loops (but keeps sync playing)
- one pedal that stops all playing loops, and then starts them all on the downbeat on the next press
Mercury has written a small script that converts the USX timing data that Freewheeling writes into location markers in an .ardour session. This means you can stream your jams out and arrange them in Ardour later, without loosing the downbeat and tempo information. He wrote this script because he wanted more flexibility in the editing process and it has come in handy for making mixes based on live material. It's included in the FW release. First, you run FW and stream to disk. Next, you run 'oggdec live??.ogg' on the live stream to convert it to a WAV which Ardour can read. Then, you run Ardour and create a session. You add 'live??.wav' as an audio track. Save and close your session. Now run: ./go-import-markers session.ardour live??.wav.usx And the script will add timing markers to the Ardour session based on the downbeats of any pulses you have in your stream. When you reload the Ardour session. you will see the markers. Using Ardour's 'Snap-To' feature, you can easily cut up regions into bars-- and create tight edits and remixes. With all the timing markers, Ardour works one step closer to the way Acid does. For me that's a welcome step.
Check out the Looper's Delight portal for:
- Manuals of other live loopers like the classic Echoplex
- Tips and tricks for loopers
- Performing live with loopers
For teachings on the power of music and the art of improvisation, check out these great books:
- 'The Music of Life' - Hazrat Inayat Khan
- 'Free Play' - Stephen Nachmanovich
- 'Effortless Mastery' - Kenny Werner
