Ableton Live Tutorial – Looping on the fly with Looper

January 9th, 2012 ⋅ Tech, Videos ⋅ by digilove staff ⋅ 737 Views

The Looper tool was the answer to demand from controllerists and Ableton Live users for a tool that allowed more organic and expressive control of looped audio. Real time Looping in a DJ situation was possible long before the Looper tool by assigning controllers to set start & end points in the clip inspector, but this method offered none of the exciting possibilities of the Looper.

The first big difference with the Looper is that it exists as an audio effect within Ableton Live. This means it can be used as an insert or return. In a live context, using Ableton as a platform for performance, the return scenario allows any channel to be sent to the looper which in turn can be controlled autonomously, separate from the original source channel.

The Looper can also be fully Midi assigned, allowing for fully fledged performance with the pads, sliders and rotaries of your Midi controller. Where before, only a basic looping function was possible, now functions such as Record, Play Stop, Overdub etc can be used instantaneously and in
conjunction with each other – this means you can really ‘perform’ your Looping.