Old 09-02-2006, 07:21 AM   #1
spherop
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Default in track looping

basically in addition to the single master loop of a song - every track also has its own loop region. each track's loopmode (on/off) then can be toggled via small button. ghosted repetitions (across whole timeline) of the track's loop region are displayed when in loop mode.

this allows *any part of any track to played simultaneously with any part of any other track*. the time saved from not having to move actual regions around is immense.


note: reaper's loop region dragging of the loop out is partially effective - but a much much slower process. when composing and experimenting with parts in an arrangement speed means everything for keeping up with the brain's creative impulse.
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Old 09-02-2006, 08:17 AM   #2
Dstruct
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great! nice feature request!
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Old 09-04-2006, 04:01 PM   #3
spherop
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anyone else?

seems like there's an opportunity to expand the creative possibilities of music arrangement with this feature. simple concept - why not a basic feature of all daws is my thought.
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Old 09-04-2006, 05:53 PM   #4
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yeah, this really would speed up things here.
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Old 09-04-2006, 06:10 PM   #5
Art Evans
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How do you create the track's loop region - to show where the looping should start and end? Would you not have to click and drag to do that? Does that not boil down to exactly the same movement of mouse and number of clicks that looping a region takes? I'd be interested to hear more detail of what steps required now in Reaper this method would reduce.
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Old 09-04-2006, 06:12 PM   #6
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with a shortcut and/or a button:

select the item(s) -> press the shortcut/button => now in-track-loop is enabled (this would then override the master-loop-selection/playback for this track too)

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Old 09-04-2006, 07:15 PM   #7
Art Evans
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But how do you define the point at which the items stop looping, or do they just keep looping till the end of the project?
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Old 09-04-2006, 07:39 PM   #8
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and what happens if the tempo changes later in the song - do the loops all follow the current tempo? What does this do to looped audio? if you start playback in the middle of a measure, do all the separate loops have to figure out where in their cycles to start? What if the loops themselves are not on measure boundaries?

This could get interesting.
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Old 09-04-2006, 07:41 PM   #9
Dstruct
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Art Evans
But how do you define the point at which the items stop looping, or do they just keep looping till the end of the project?
they only loop when you're project is playing in loop ..
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Old 09-04-2006, 07:50 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Spon
and what happens if the tempo changes later in the song - do the loops all follow the current tempo?
later in the song? if a tempo change is inside the 'master-loop', then the track-loop should follow it to stay in sync.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Spon
What does this do to looped audio? if you start playback in the middle of a measure, do all the separate loops have to figure out where in their cycles to start?
yes, of course. otherwise this funtion would be useless.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Spon
What if the loops themselves are not on measure boundaries?
when setting the track-loop region, it should be set to the same lenght as the master-loop region.

say the master-loop region is 4 beats -> now we select 2 items (first one is 1 beat long, second one is 5 beats long) -> now the track-loop region goes from item 1 to the third beat of item 2 ...
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Old 09-04-2006, 09:27 PM   #11
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How do we turn all of this looping into a usable consolidated arrangement region once the looping is doing what we want? Render of some sort?

The reason I ask is sequenced region playback is one FR I would like to see for Ableton like song arrangement. I Don't remember if I posted that request yet.
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Old 09-04-2006, 10:30 PM   #12
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thanks to all participating and trying to think this through. there are some tricky aspects to solve but i know some sort of implementation would be worth it.

Dandruff answered most everything I believe.

but i'll see if I can add anything...and please forgive me if i misrepresent/underestimate any current Reaper feature.

re:art,
1) Defining the in track region could be done by simple region/track selection then menu/key command toggle on/off. There could be a small bar, and similar functionality as the main loop region (ie., moving expanding etc)
2) The current Reaper function of defining loop regions is quite a bit slower when you need to drag the repetitions out in BOTH directions, plus to turn off the loop mode is to re-drag them back. To change to a new track-loop region is labor intensive as well when compared to say moving a visual loop region by drag and drop.
3) The loop region would override all other content on the track from beginning to end.
re:spon,
1)i would assume, but this might need to be further thought out, that the track loop would maintain its timing and not change if tempo changed later.
2) starting in "odd" places in time - yes track loops should figure out where they are.
3) loops not being on measure boundaries in my thinking is fine - and can be a very creative tool in itself enabling cool rhythmic cyclings. if the artist wants them to loop exactly then they define the region along meaures.

re: Enzyme,
1) as far as consolidating arrangement - i suppose there could be an option to create a new track or replace track with looped content. but let me say that this is not the primary goal of this feature.

More on why this feature is valuable. The real crux of the value is to be able to rapidly hear any part a linear musical sequence looped against any other part of the entire arranagment. If you make loop-ish music at all this is so indispensable.

An example:
Start with a few potential midi kick drum patterns on track 1. 1 on each bar, 1,2 3.
Loop bar 1 on kick track, and start improvising some midi snare hi hat combos on tracks 2 and 3. After about 20 bars of improvised playing, listen back. Isolate a few snare and hi hat riffs by looping them against Kick drum loop. Snare drum could be a 2 bar sequence, hi hat 4 bars... who knows but in each case rapidly one would be able to play them in time over kick on bar 1 without having to do labor intensive copy-pastes. In only a click or 2, Kick pattern 1 could be replaced with 2 or 3.
Now let's say a smoking drum sequnce has been created.
Plug in electric bass - improvise groove ideas over say 100 bars. Find 1,2, 4 ?? bar sequence that's tight and just right, loop that.
Perhaps as mentioned by Enzyme, perform a consolidation operation - we've created our core groove.

I don't know about you guys, but I am constantly working in this way - playing new parts over previous ones, and finding ideas out of longer sequences. But it is so hard to audition parts againast each other without committing to arranging elements linearly which is time consuming.

Perhaps the current Reaper functionality only needs a few tiny optimizations? Also I was having trouble at least in early versions where the dragged out loops did not "cover" other material on the track.

Let me add that as Enzyme says - Live' session window functionality is extremely useful as well - in a different way.

I think this feature should be thought of more as a utility in the process of groove and arangement writing, than something that is used at actual mix/render time. But the concept I believe is fundamental: why not be able to rapidly hear any timeline track region looped over any other?

Thanks again for all the brainstorming and questions
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Old 09-05-2006, 12:03 AM   #13
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Spherop,

This is a great thread - thanks!

In your example below, you have essentially described how I use Ableton's session view (which, as you know is a bunch of recorded audio/midi loops of different lengths all triggered in sync).

However, Ableton session view lets you define 20+ loops per track, all triggerable against 20+ loops from any combination of other tracks, which allows rendering of an entire song all at once. The scheme we are envisioning limits this Ableton like loop functionality to one temp loop per track in the timeline.

That's fine for building a single groove. At the end of the day, though, we may need to build grooves for constructs like verse, chorus, bridge, etc., etc.

So, to implement what you propose we absolutely need a way of consolidating our multitrack loop creations to a region, so we can move on to creating the next "region" by resetting the track looping.

One way to consolidate would be to create a new region equal in length to the longest selected midi/audio track loop.

Quote:
Originally Posted by spherop
More on why this feature is valuable. The real crux of the value is to be able to rapidly hear any part a linear musical sequence looped against any other part of the entire arranagment. If you make loop-ish music at all this is so indispensable.

An example:
Start with a few potential midi kick drum patterns on track 1. 1 on each bar, 1,2 3.
Loop bar 1 on kick track, and start improvising some midi snare hi hat combos on tracks 2 and 3. After about 20 bars of improvised playing, listen back. Isolate a few snare and hi hat riffs by looping them against Kick drum loop. Snare drum could be a 2 bar sequence, hi hat 4 bars... who knows but in each case rapidly one would be able to play them in time over kick on bar 1 without having to do labor intensive copy-pastes. In only a click or 2, Kick pattern 1 could be replaced with 2 or 3.
Now let's say a smoking drum sequnce has been created.
Plug in electric bass - improvise groove ideas over say 100 bars. Find 1,2, 4 ?? bar sequence that's tight and just right, loop that.
Perhaps as mentioned by Enzyme, perform a consolidation operation - we've created our core groove.

I don't know about you guys, but I am constantly working in this way - playing new parts over previous ones, and finding ideas out of longer sequences. But it is so hard to audition parts againast each other without committing to arranging elements linearly which is time consuming.
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Old 09-05-2006, 07:09 AM   #14
spherop
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enzyme - i think that you might be pointing to ultimately the conclusion that something akin to live's implementation might be the way to go.

my in track looping approach is definitely more focused on the construction of grooves/ideas than the ultimate arrangement.

it's i guess a feature which opens the pandora's box to more features one would want on top of it.

to me as well - live's session view stands alone among daws i have used as "next level" arrangement functionality. and if reaper can implement something in this vein or in track looping i believe it will be stunning.

i think what we're trying to do is to add a 3rd dimension to the arangement toolset. while *linear timeline* has always been the core of a daw - if it's augmented with a Y-AXIS of some sort... then the flexibility increases dramatically.

i just know that when we're spending lots of time copy-pasting, moving parts and committing to x number of repeats all along one X-Axis, we're doing just that kind of repetive task that computers should be enabling us not to have to do.

as a short term solution tho - i wonder if reaper's current loop event could be updated just a bit to get us part way there. if one could have a key command which would automatically stretch the loop to the beginning and end of the arrangement that would save a lot of time/dragging back and forth. also it needs to cover all other content on the track. and then have a similarly easy way to shrink it away. this would be pretty fast for at least the "auditioning" part of this picture. then perhaps as a next bigger step, a look at a similar approach to Live's Session view would be excellent.

How about Acid 6? I have never used it... but wonder if it has an approach at all like Live's or Cubase's Play Order tracks which also are useful.
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Old 09-05-2006, 11:13 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by spherop
enzyme - i think that you might be pointing to ultimately the conclusion that something akin to live's implementation might be the way to go.

my in track looping approach is definitely more focused on the construction of grooves/ideas than the ultimate arrangement.

it's i guess a feature which opens the pandora's box to more features one would want on top of it.

to me as well - live's session view stands alone among daws i have used as "next level" arrangement functionality. and if reaper can implement something in this vein or in track looping i believe it will be stunning.

i think what we're trying to do is to add a 3rd dimension to the arangement toolset. while *linear timeline* has always been the core of a daw - if it's augmented with a Y-AXIS of some sort... then the flexibility increases dramatically.

i just know that when we're spending lots of time copy-pasting, moving parts and committing to x number of repeats all along one X-Axis, we're doing just that kind of repetive task that computers should be enabling us not to have to do.

as a short term solution tho - i wonder if reaper's current loop event could be updated just a bit to get us part way there. if one could have a key command which would automatically stretch the loop to the beginning and end of the arrangement that would save a lot of time/dragging back and forth. also it needs to cover all other content on the track. and then have a similarly easy way to shrink it away. this would be pretty fast for at least the "auditioning" part of this picture. then perhaps as a next bigger step, a look at a similar approach to Live's Session view would be excellent.

How about Acid 6? I have never used it... but wonder if it has an approach at all like Live's or Cubase's Play Order tracks which also are useful.
spherop,

Very well summarized! You nailed the short term enhancements we would all benefit from and a great long term vision.

Press Release: Reaper v2 - now with ReaAxis multi dimension loop recording for Midiots! Note: All this power is still presented in a single intuitive arrangement view out of respect for all the Vegans who got us where we are today!

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