Korg Forums

[mojofunk]

Live loopers, doubt not that the microSampler can be quite formidable!

It took me a while to get my head around it, but with the help of some amazing folks around here, I've been having a blast doing live looping on the MS. I'm nearly ready to ditch my soundcard and netbook running ableton for live shows.

Here's the set up: guitar and bass into sansamps, a/b switch, into the line in of a Kaossillator pro, with acoustic guitar into the mic in (the KPro is a good little mixer, with a few knobs for volume!). KPro outputs into a Boss Slicer, into the microSampler.

On the microSampler the first 16 keys have drum loops, the next 12 get silly vocal snippets (like "Adventures in stereo!" from an Admiral stereo demonstration LP), and the remaining 8 keys are for looping.

I have the sequencer loaded with midi files (created in ableton) which trigger the 8 loopers and one of the drum loops for 8 measures (including key 16, which is loaded with a silent sample). So once I have a few loops going, I can change the drum loop with the sequence selector. (For details on how the sequencer can initiate auto looping look around this forum)

Of course, the 8 looping tracks are all 8 measures long, but for the stuff I am doing it's fine - and pretty terrific as compared to the anemic looping available on the KPro. And since its all midi'd up, I can always throw short KPro loops on top (as well as the looping ability of the Slicer!). Changing the drum beats on the fly, and muting/unmuting gives a great deal of arrangement ability. Setting the microSampler fx to audio in gives me a good bit of fx madness to play with as well.

Ok - it is amazing fun, and the audio (even at 24 & mono) sounds great. But the one persistent difficulty I have encountered has to do with the little gap in the midi file notes necessary to trigger auto loop. I first tried no gap, and it would not trigger the sample the first time around, but it would the second time. This is doable - just keep playing for an additional 8 measures, and then the loop created previously kicks in (which feels a bit odd, but can sound cool). So I began widening the gap of the midi notes, and eventually got it to reliably trigger automatically at loop completion. Great! But no, at different tempos, it again failed to trigger until the second pass, boo hiss.

So the question I have been building up to is this: has anyone been able to set up a template midi file that will auto loop reliably at any tempo? What have others determined regarding the gaps between midi notes? Anyone else working similarly, and what have y'all figured out? Thanks for all the help so far!
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[tonidude]

Sorry, no help from here. From what I understand, your solution is the best possible. If you make the patterns/loops within Microkorg, you not only have to trigger them a bit after one, you also have to make them shorter than 1 bar so as to not spill on to the second bar (creating a one bar play, one bar silence pattern).

Just venting with you to share my frustration. I also have the Kaossilator Pro which is a mediocre looper (lots of noise, only 4 bars!) I really bought the Microsampler more for loops than one-shots but on that account it's proven a real let-down.

Fortunately I have the right to return it for a full refund, an option I am about to exercise.

[mojofunk]