Maschine+ guitar looping questions

JRGariano

I use Maschine+ exclusively in stand alone mode. One of the things I use it for is as a guitar looper, with the output of my guitar pedal board going into the line in of the Maschine+. I have a two button foot pedal connected to the Maschine+ in case I need to start/stop the recording while both hands are on the guitar.

I know how to use the loop function of the sampler along with the metronome to loop to 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 bars. But I have some additional questions about looper capabilities of the Maschine+.

1) Is there a way to specify bars other than 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 for the loop function? I know I can use the "free" option for loop recording but that requires an extra push of the foot pedal that is sometimes hard to time right given the time signature. What I'm looking for is the ability to set the loop bars to an exact number of bars (i.e. turn the knob and the bar number goes up by one).

2) Dedicated guitar loopers usually have a function where you don't care about a time signature or metronome but instead as soon as you stop recording a loop it immediately starts playing the loop back. Can the Maschine+ sampler be used as a looper that starts the loop back as soon as you stop recording regardless of time signature?

3) Dedicated guitar loopers also usually have a setting to start the loop recording when it detects input from the guitar. Can the detect function of the Maschine+ sampler be used such that when you're done recording using detect mode, what you recorded starts looping back?

D-One

It's a 'no' for all those questions afaik. Like many things the "Looper" function was released and never really tweaked to maturity again, it's miles away from a dedicated looper like idk... a Loop Station or something where you're free to start and stop whenever you want, Maschine has a full-blown sequencer and arranger to constrain too which complicates things a lot.

#1) Maybe you could use Sync mode and determine your length by the length of the Scene/Pattern prior to recording. Not sure if this meets your requirements tho.

#2) #3) No, to both things. Ultimately the Sampler was never designed to be a looper of any kind.

There might be workarounds like placing a note in the sampler Pattern before you even record, so that when it loops around after you're finished recording that note triggers the sample on the 1st downbeat but you would still be constrained by the length of the Pattern/Scene - which can be an odd number if you hold shift while setting it... But I'm unsure how time sigs complicate this.

D-One

It's a 'no' for all those questions afaik. Like many things the "Looper" function was released and never really tweaked to maturity again, it's miles away from a dedicated looper like idk... a Loop Station or something where you're free to start and stop whenever you want, Maschine has a full-blown sequencer and arranger to constrain too which complicates things a lot.

#1) Maybe you could use Sync mode and determine your length by the length of the Scene/Pattern prior to recording. Not sure if this meets your requirements tho.

#2) #3) No, to both things. Ultimately the Sampler was never designed to be a looper of any kind.

There might be workarounds like placing a note in the sampler Pattern before you even record, so that when it loops around after you're finished recording that note triggers the sample on the 1st downbeat but you would still be constrained by the length of the Pattern/Scene - which can be an odd number if you hold shift while setting it... But I'm unsure how time sigs complicate this.