Saving loop settings

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jkorchok
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Saving loop settings

Post by jkorchok »

I do live performance of experimental music and use a lot of unusual loop settings. One piece needs a tempo of 104 bpm with 2 bar length repeated 9 times, as one example. But I can't find any way to save this combination. Every time I return to ThumbJam, the looper is set to the same default settings. It's a hassle to try and do all the settings between pieces. Am I missing something? If not, the ability to save settings would be a great addition.
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John Korchok

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Jesse
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Re: Saving loop settings

Post by Jesse »

Your best bet is to save a loop set with a (presumably) silent first loop that satisfies your condition for the song. Then load that loop set when you want to get going again with that setup.

jkorchok
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Re: Saving loop settings

Post by jkorchok »

Thanks, I'll give that a try.
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John Korchok

jkorchok
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Re: Saving loop settings

Post by jkorchok »

I tried your suggestion, but I'm having a problem. The silent loop won't start recording unless you make a sound on the touchpad (making it not silent), or unless you choose to record through the microphone. But when I choose the microphone option, even though the metronome is set to 104, after the silent loop gets recorded, the metronome speed is 92.44 b.p.m instead of 104.
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John Korchok

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Jesse
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Re: Saving loop settings

Post by Jesse »

If you want to get a quantized first loop at a certain tempo you may need to actually have the metronome turned on before starting the recording. Or you can create loops at the tempos you want on your computer and import them to load.

jkorchok
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Re: Saving loop settings

Post by jkorchok »

If you check my first message, you'll note that this is a workaround for ThumbJam's inability to save loop settings. I'm trying to use this to create loops live, so there's not much point in pre-recording a loop on my computer.

I've already mentioned that I can only create a silent loop by recording from the microphone. So if the metronome is running, the microphone will pick that up and the loop will be anything but silent.

Unless you fix the software to record the loop at the rate I set on the metronome, it seems there is no way that ThumbJam can save loop settings ahead of time for live looping. There must be a reason why the software is changing 104 b.p.m. to 92.44 b.p.m. You could find it and fix it. Or you could add a save button and avoid all this hassle. It shouldn't really be this complicated.
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Jesse
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Re: Saving loop settings

Post by Jesse »

With regard to my comment about creating loops ahead of time, I was presuming they would be empty/silent files constructed at exactly the tempos you needed for your performances. I only mentioned that as an option because you implied that you did know ahead of time specific bpms that you wanted to restore as presets. Loading empty loops of a given tempo as the "first" loop is a decent way to provide that functionality if you know in advance what tempos you need (as an alternative to messing with the tempo controls).

The reason I originally chose to use the metronome as a differentiator here was because I wanted to easily allow for the ability to freely define the initial loop length (and thus the tempo) by the manual start and end of a recording... in that case the value set in the metronome tempo controls would necessarily be ignored because the act of recording the first loop is the action that would set the tempo. This explains what is happening in the case where you ended up with a different tempo than you expected. I decided that if the metronome was enabled, then it would use that tempo as the loop-length quantizer instead. Clearly, this distinction should probably be a separate option, disentangled with the metronome enable-state, and I will add such an option in the update I am currently wrapping up. As a workaround here, I would suggest to reduce the metronome volume, but I see that it doesn't let you make it totally silent... oops, I'll fix that too!

There are a few other workarounds for now, one is to set the Fixed Loop Length option on in the Loop Options - if your looping style allows it - because it will begin recording at the set tempo immediately and automatically stop recording at the set number of bars (without having to manually end record). The other is to use external MIDI or IAA sync, which will also always use the tempo from the master clock source.

In the next update, Ableton Link is also supported which when used with another app will enforce syncing to the Link tempo, and will also support time stretching the loops to adjust for changes in the tempo.

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