Sequencing Samples & multiple outputs

[Hooded Menace]

As my experience reaches no further from battery powered SP family members, I come at you guys with a question I think I can't answer by myself on the interwebs.

I am looking for a piece of gear that basically can let me sync loops on tempo live. Kinda like Ableton Live in session mode, when you trigger a sample and it triggers on tempo with the others playing. My goal is to have different layers of a song and trigger them on and off as I like. Some other thing that would be good to have would be multiple outputs so i can have different hardware effects on separate auxiliaries.

I know the Elektron Octatrack does all that but it's like 1200$ and I have little love for it's trillion effects.

I heard the SP-808 can somehow sequence loops like that, is that true? What about the new Volca Sample, it's supposed to be a sequencer but I can't find much info on it's sequencing abilities.

Everyone keeps pointing me towards the laptop solution but I really wanted it to be instrumentally played, as in punching pads, as opposed to just hit play on a sequenced timeline and ride along until it's over...

Any good setups you guys can think of where I might pull it off?

[l i f]

Disclaimer: I ain't no expert on anything

If you load sequences into the 808's recorder/mixer/multitrack you have a lot more control of the various layers of your track and can rout the effects to whichever of the four tracks you like but cannot run multiple or separate effects on different tracks simultaneously without pre-recording your effect-performances, so I don't think that's what you want. As a longterm-user of the 808 I basically never use the mixer at all, ever. That's not to say it's not useful, just that I don't find it reliable for my usual style & workflow.

I've been looking around for an upgrade or complement to my setup and I may be gravitating towards something like the Novation Launch Control to give the button-punching, knob wrentching control over Ableton. They retail new for about $330 in US dollars for the Launchpad S and Controller together...

Hope others chime in with more ideas

[ellaguru]

check roland MVs, roland mc909, yamaha rs7000 and akai mpcs for those aims

[chaz dolo]

check out the Yamaha su700. It can be found pretty cheaply nowadays, and can do most of what you are asking for. It basically has 3 options for the way it handles samples - loops, composed loops, and one shots. The loop samples keep looping to the master tempo, even if they all are different tempos - the su700 will timestretch (on the fly) the loops to all play in time. This sometimes makes some awesome glitchy effects! The composed loops can be set to repeat say, kicks and snares or whatever to a set amount of bars and then will repeat the same pattern - every kick can have a different loop length if you want. Then the one shot samples can be played whenever, great for vocal stabs or efx.

The downsides is that the optional multiple out board and scsi board can be hard to find if you get a machine that doesn't have them installed already. Sometimes the rotary encoders can go haywire (same ones as found on the yamaha a3000 and a4000 rack samplers), and you will be stuck saving to 1.44mb floppies or 100mb zip discs (iff you have the optional scsi board and an external zip drive).

However, take a look, I believe that the su700 is highly underrated, is great for lo-fi beats (can sample at 44.1, 22, or 11MhZ, and/or 16 or 8 bits), has a nice number of on board efx , and is pretttty good at lo-fi loop matching. Plus it did this about 10 years before ableton was invented.

All of my beats on here were done on a su700, among other things
https://chazdolo.bandcamp.com

Good luck!

[Larry Gordon (g)]

Everyone keeps pointing me towards the laptop solution but I really wanted it to be instrumentally played, as in punching pads, as opposed to just hit play on a sequenced timeline and ride along until it's over...

i had the same predicament for about a year and a half. after looping on 4 tracks, fucking with reel to reels, etc. i finally opened up the ableton on my computer and tried messing with it's multitrack looping options.

it fucking rules!

i know there's a bad image of laptop artists (mainly because of musicians giving laptops a bad name with some shitty performances) but it has a lot of capabilities that are even furthered when matched with a member of the SP family.

you could try something like this in ableton's session view:
- pre-record whatever you want to be looping to (master tempo sounds)
- set up a device in ableton called LOOPER on however many channels you want. the LOOPER device allows you to sync the looper to a master BPM, which will have already been set by you in the pre-recorded passages stage
- hook up your SP into your computer's audio in
- rock it

this would also allow you to have multiple outputs (thru ableton).

i know this is kind of a lame answer but it's probably the most powerful and cost efficient option available.

very interested to see the other answers, however!

[medearis]

EDIT: Misread the question. My suggestion: revoked! lulz

[LesPasta]

mpc 1000

[medearis]

I was going to suggest the MPC 1000 also but it cannot auto-sync different loops to varying tempos (you would have to manually make everything fit to predetermined tempos).

[hseiken]

The RS7K has an abelton-like mode called 'sample+seq'.

When you record a sample while the sequencer is playing back, the sampler sends a note-on for the key you're recording a sample to the moment you hit record, so that the end result is sort of like when you record a track in a DAW; it records the audio, not the MIDI, of your performance and plays back that audio exactly where you recorded it in the song. It's also got a ridiculously easy 'MIDI time shift' so you can fix recordings that don't line up by sliding them forward and backward in time, like sliding around an audio recording in a DAW on computer.

The output request is possible on the RS as well, but it requires an optional expansion board to be installed to give metric ass-ton of output channels you want. It officially only comes with 1 stereo pair of 1/4" jacks.

Overall, it's way cheaper than the octotrack. The octotrack is possibly better suited for live sampling, whereas rs7k CAN do live stuff but it's more or less for previously-prepared samples and recordings, not ones you do on the fly, which is where octotrack's uniqueness comes in.

[Unfolding]

Surprised nobody's mentioned the Korg Electribe SX yet. The more I use it the more I love it. Hood, I've done exactly what you're asking about on it.

Pros-
- 4 audio outs (1x stereo out with FX, 2x mono outs also assignable as stereo. 1 or 2 outs can be used as for an FX loop)
- ESX stretch is designed to match the tempo of the pattern that plays the sample
- 2x stretch parts (2 in mono, 1 in stereo). ESX stretch is much more accurate sounding than the SP stretch.
- Assignable automations for all drum, keyboard, stretch, slice & audio-in pads (even the accent & FX can be automated!). Try loading a 2 or 4 bar loop in then start automating the start point & EG time, works as well as chopping the loop into individual samples.
- FX loop, perfect for bouncing samples
- Fast to both program and jam on live
- Can play wav/aiff samples at less than 44khz (theoritically you can go as low as 11mhz)
- REAL PITCH
- 3x FX, individual or stacked
- Nice LFO section
- Should be cheap 2nd hand these days
- Can resample patterns made in the ESX (never tried but I'm sure you can also resample with external audio in, like the 303)
- Creative use of the slice function allows saving multiple samples per slot
- Keyboard parts can be used as 2x mono wavetable synths
- Multiple midi out channels make it great for sequencing other gear (I've chucked a Minibrute in the FX loop with midi from the key parts so the Minibrute acted like an extension of the ESX, that ruled)
- Audio-in pad can be used like a drum pad (on/off, filters, FX etc!)
- Flexible midi
- Valve amplification

Cons-
- Some crap effects, some OK ones
- C-grade filter
- Jog wheel used to set a sample's saved start-end points (can be slow to chop)
- Not much memory compared to laptops (natch)
- Midi's 128 value range can be too imprecise to edit/automate long samples (>4 bars)
- Not a practical live looper
- Memory cards may be hard to find
- Might be hard to find 2nd hand
- Step sequencing isn't for everyone
- Valves (the stock ones aren't great, because they run as a stereo pair replacing & balancing them can get fussy)

Not sure how it prices up against the RS7k, SU700 or MC909, but you'll spend less on it than an MPC, MV. It's also much faster to learn than an MPC.

[Hooded Menace]

Sirs, thank you all for your feedback. I'm going to read through a lost of the gear mentioned as I'm not familiar with most of it but kudos on the Electribe and the rs7000, both sound useful in more ways than one.

Lots of reading material here, thank you everyone <3

[Hooded Menace]

Someone just reminded me of the Volca Sample.

Anyone tried one already? Would I be able to sequence loops on that or is it just another cute toy?

[medearis]

Huge buzz kill but (as far as I know) you can only load samples onto the Volca via an iOS app. I don't know if that is the permanent plan or not... I bailed out the second I heard about that.

Also... check this out:
http://www.redsound.com

[janglesoul]

I am looking for a piece of gear that basically can let me sync loops on tempo live. Kinda like Ableton Live in session mode, when you trigger a sample and it triggers on tempo with the others playing. My goal is to have different layers of a song and trigger them on and off as I like. Some other thing that would be good to have would be multiple outputs so i can have different hardware effects on separate auxiliaries.

What if you had multiple SPs all Midisynced to the same clock (external sequencer)? Run them all in pattern-mode and keep a pad on each with a bar of silence so that each machine is always playing, no matter if it produces sound.

[Hooded Menace]

Cheers for the soundbite link, i'm gonna read into it!

I'm also considering the Electribe SX Unfolding mentioned and trying to get around it!

I think I'm also getting an old Fostex X-18 or any other 4 track k7 recorder to playback 4 tracks and be able to live mix them, let's see how that works out