Live Looping Using Maschine Software & Boss Looper Pedal

CRITICAL WOOD

hi guy's ☀️

I'd like to discuss with people using Boss Looper Pedals with their Maschine Software and talk about Workflow .

`What is working for you , what's not , Why ? etc ......

I realized more and more people are using Looper Pedal with DAW ( probably because not everyone can afford to buy physical instrument or don't know how to play them , and having any of your Instrument in VST ready in your computer is a gain of money , space and flexibility ) .

For some reason I couldn't find any good tutorial on internet coming from users or NI neither .

I will explain you my workflow with my boss looper and why I used it on this way .

I am really interesting to hear about how you guy's use yours .

So :

• I don't use my Boss Looper for guitar like most of you but for vinyl live looping ( If you don't know what is this , you can have a idea by looking on Youtube the performance of a guy call CUT CHEMIST )
• So to start , I find in my analog vinyl some good 2 or 4 bars melody that I loop on my pedal on my first pedal slot ( could be keys , string , sax , pads , guitar or whatever but never drums , only pleasant melody )
• After , I usually find some nice percussion from Latin , African or jazz vinyl that I loop in the 2nd slot of the pedal too ( 2 to 8 bars it depend on what I found in the vinyl but always a multiple of 2 to stay in sync with the first loop )
• PS : I'm a DJ so I make Sure both of my loop are sync by hear only
• Then my Maschine is coming : I couldn't find a way to synchronize my Maschine software with the pedals properly so I don't and i use tap tempo on my Maschine to find the BPM of my loops and put the click click in my headphone to be more precise when I will play .
• I load a bass line in the A group of Maschine and I play what I want on my Komplete Kontrol Keys , then loop it on the 3 slot of my pedal
• On the Group B I use a Drums kit , I play them live doing finger drumming with my Maschine mk2 ( kick , snare , hat close , hat open ) on 4 bars , then loop it on the 4th slot of the pedal
• My 5th slot on pedal is used on a mic input to record a acoustic instrument directly plug on the pedal ( so nothing come from Maschine but straight in the looper )
• The 6 pedal slot is again a mic input for some vocal
• I never use over dubbing so if I need to add some extra drums like some Toms or a extra note on bass , I just doing it live on the keyboard or the pads but I don't record them .

So it's mean I don't really run Maschine software but I only use it as a VST bank folder

The Pro of doing this is to have super low latency because anything is running on Maschine so I can use a 64 buffer size on my old MacBook and if need some effect I will use the one integrated inside the pedals ( so no CPU use , no latency , no crackling , no headache )

The Con ..... I actually don't really use my Maschine possibility of pattern , scene , clip , effect etc and doing arrangement directly on pedals feel limited comparate to all the possibility Maschine software can offer in only few click

So here is my workflow , it's definitely not the best but it work for me and it give me this live performance feeling

If you read this post and found a other way to combine your looper pedal with Maschine software , feel free to exchange 🙏

I know some people synchronize the soft with pedal ( or the pedal with the soft ) with master clock and can access to all the function that offer .

Maybe one day Native Instrument will jump the step and make us some nice tutorial but for the moment our best option is to help us mutually

PS : i intentionally didn't mention the model of looper I use because only the workflow is important , doesn't matter if you have 2 Or 6 loop available .

The point is to make everyone participate and not make team RC1 or RC5 or RC 505 etc

Peace ✌️

And have a nice day fellas

darkwaves

Any reason you don't do this just using the looper in maschine? I'm assuming you're not doing this as a live performance or anything.

CRITICAL WOOD

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/29207#Comment_29207

I'm actually doing this as a live performance

No particular reason , it's just that I started looping with pedals so for me it's more natural to use the feet to activate loop recorder when I'm doing Old Vinyl Dijing , finger drumming or playing instrument because it keep my hand free for what I am doing

I actually never tried to loop everything directly in Maschine without pedal

I may start to look about the Maschine + cause I don't like to work with computer , that is why I keep Djing Old analog vinyl and not timecode as far as I can

If you know a good full Live Looping Tutorial all in Maschine , send me the link please ;) gonna watch it

CRITICAL WOOD

This is the main reason why I have a feet looper , look this video you will understand

https://youtu.be/Of240mzCHBQ

When you playing analog vinyl you just have 2 turntable and a mixer , no computer ( so it's mean no Maschine mk2 )