Skip to main content

The vision:

I will play to a click track emanating from a DAW. The DAW will be aware of a linear movement forwards through time (basically, a playhead moving through the session).

I play guitar through an amp. I want to record the sound coming out of the amp and send it to the DAW. With that input signal, I want the DAW to execute a bunch of predetermined things. For example, "Take the signal input from measures 4-8, copy, and paste at measure 16 in track 3, 52 in track 6, etc." Another example: "At mm.18, send midi signal X to the the pedalboard".

This is all in the hope of making an automated looping station where I don't have to touch anything, and the only thing needed it to cue the beginning of the predetermined track.

Who knows how I can make this happen?

Comments

Thomas W. Bethel Mon, 07/23/2012 - 03:52

Fast forward to the year 2020 by then someone will probably have figured a way to do what you want to do.

There is really no correlation between an audio "play head" on a DAW and live music. A play head is playing back a linear track from the DAW in real time. The music you are performing is not locked to time and no computer program, that I know of. currently can "recognize" music by measure and then act on that recognition. Nice idea but IMHO not currently feasible.

Kapt.Krunch Mon, 07/23/2012 - 04:48

You are asking that it do a bunch of separate batch routines. The software would have to be able to be set up to record your predetermined measures, then save that section, then paste it in at another predetermined measure, and to do it several times. I don't know if Ableton Live can do that, but it would probably be the most likely suspect for that ability.

It's also going to be crunching a lot of bits during all that, especially during the "Save" stages, and most especially, if you have anything else being recorded during a "Save" stage.

As far as sending MIDI messages at certain points, any decent MIDI-capable DAW can easily do that. Just input the data in your MIDI editor.

i can see your interest for something like that, but don't know if it's possible at this point. My nearest guess would be Ableton Live, though, if anything was going to be able. It may, however, be restricted to manual input to do most of anything like that. I don't know. I have an early version that came with an interface, and I just never took to it.

Kapt.Krunch

Will Moritz Mon, 07/23/2012 - 06:07

Possible!

Kapt.Krunch, post: 391770 wrote: You are asking that it do a bunch of separate batch routines. The software would have to be able to be set up to record your predetermined measures, then save that section, then paste it in at another predetermined measure, and to do it several times. I don't know if Ableton Live can do that, but it would probably be the most likely suspect for that ability.

It's also going to be crunching a lot of bits during all that, especially during the "Save" stages, and most especially, if you have anything else being recorded during a "Save" stage.

As far as sending MIDI messages at certain points, any decent MIDI-capable DAW can easily do that. Just input the data in your MIDI editor.

i can see your interest for something like that, but don't know if it's possible at this point. My nearest guess would be Ableton Live, though, if anything was going to be able. It may, however, be restricted to manual input to do most of anything like that. I don't know. I have an early version that came with an interface, and I just never took to it.

Kapt.Krunch

Though I'm not sure about the programming load necessary, I've spent the weekend diving into Max for live, and i think it has what I need.

BenLoftis Mon, 09/03/2012 - 18:17

Hi Will,

I think what you're really asking for is a very complicated delay plugin. For example, the signal might be delayed for 4 measures then play 4 measures of the recorded material, then wait for 8 measures, then play again ... etc. I've had thoughts like this myself.

To get the original "sync" you'd have to play along to some pre-recorded bits in the DAW, so you know where you are in the sequence.

Max is a good tool for this. Good luck!

If you get stuck, I'm a multimedia/plugin/DAW developer and I'd love to collaborate on a tool for this.

Best,
Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles

Will Moritz Mon, 09/03/2012 - 20:11

BenLoftis, post: 393153 wrote: Hi Will,

I think what you're really asking for is a very complicated delay plugin. For example, the signal might be delayed for 4 measures then play 4 measures of the recorded material, then wait for 8 measures, then play again ... etc. I've had thoughts like this myself.

To get the original "sync" you'd have to play along to some pre-recorded bits in the DAW, so you know where you are in the sequence.

Max is a good tool for this. Good luck!

If you get stuck, I'm a multimedia/plugin/DAW developer and I'd love to collaborate on a tool for this.

Best,
Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles

Hey Ben,

I've already done a considerable amount on work on this, send me a private message at willthefirst@gmail.com, and we can discuss collaboration. The more I work on this, the more I realize this might very well be a pretty cool piece of software for a lot of people.