Looping, Etc

After just a little bit of time and a point in the right direction from Zoe, I’m feeling pretty comfortable with the new Ableton setup.

What I’ve ended up with (at least, so far) is a MacBook Pro using NI’s KORE controller connected up to a Behringer FCB1010 Midi Foot Controller.

Typically, I have found Behringer gear to be low-quality, bordering on ‘toy’ use only. The FCB1010 seems to be quite a different thing and is treated as the standard foot controller for Live. Already, I have found that I was able to get up and running rather quickly given the FCB’s ability to fire off multiple MIDI control/program changes at the same time - both on a global and track level.

Apart from my plaudits above, the FCB is typically shit when it comes to programming as the only interface consists of the actual pedals and buttons and a small 2 digit display. Thanks to the internets for iFCB - an elegant Mac OSX onscreen interface for programming the pedalboard - and this handy shortcut to setting up Live-specific pedal mappings. Brilliant!

I will note here that I am typically late to the game on all of this and my thanks go to those who have obviously been around long enough to develop the knowledge and software to make it so easy that I could pick all this up in one afternoon!

So, now that all my loops are firing when my feet tell them too, we still need to sort out what instruments will be mic’d up and played along and, when the Trigger I/O arrives, what sounds will be fired with MIDI triggers. Additionally, I will still need to rely on ProTools for some playback, DVD for visuals, and my damn fingers/brain for other sounds (this being the ’single point of failure’ haha).

From today, we’ve just about two months until we play Albuquerque where we’ll see if all of this works in front of some people.