Looking for a VST to record voice samples and then play like a Drum machine

Hello guys, so i'm trying to build a live looping setup where I could quickly record my voice on slots/cells mapped to a midi controller (launchpad, maschine, akai mpk mini/261) so then I could play it back in my performance.


Exactly like this at 4min30 to 4min50 :



I'm using Reaper as my main DaW I've already got a pretty good setup using Playtime (plugin that recreates ableton session view) on reaper for my instruments (However, the global mode has to be set to Rec/Play/stop in order to fill cells and be able to stop them to create movement in the track)

For what I want to do, these pads would need to be set to Record / Play / Play

I would need another Vst on a dedicate track just to record a few vocal samples and play them rythmically by playing a pad.


Any suggestions?

Thanks !

 

If you own Reaktor there are live looper in the online user library.

Uwe

 

The built-in Audio Plugin allows for live looping. At that minute mark he's not really looping but triggering, that can be done with the internal Sampler as well...

 

Yess I do have Komplete 9 so reaktor's in it. Haven't tried it much yet, curious whats the general purpose of this plugin
Thanks for the suggestions, D-one, your talking about the internal sampler or audio plugin within Reaktor ?

I'm trying it at the moment/searching for tutorials but just to make sure, can it record on the spot (into the sampler) and allow me to trigger back immedietaly without a midi mapped controller ?

 

https://www.native-instruments.com/... looper/latest/1/all/?q=live looper&t=userlib

I think here you can find something really useful you only have to try and find the right device for your needs.

 

Oooh boy! Indeed 240 result in the church Well i've spent the last hour trying to wrap my head around this, trying out different "plugin"/ "instrument" and I feel like a huge whale is dragging me down into the abyss. Man this thing's a complicated beast. Debating wether i'm really down for that kind of stuff or not.

Thanks for pointing me in that direction though, didnt even know it existed. Got one final question for you guys:

After testing out (mostly unsuccessfully cause most of these things ship withouth documentation ehh^.^ and it's not very intuisive), I coulnd really do what I was aiming for, at least right off the bat. I would need to fiddle around and change an existent or create my "own looper", do you think it could be fairly easy to do this since I don't need fancy fx :

-Create 4 buttons (slots) that can recieve audio and record onto
-being able to map these record button to a midi controller
-Set the loops into one shot (thus it stops after being triggered once)

that's it ... loll

 

All that is possible without any external complicated plugin... A 3rd party plugin means you will have to do some MIDI/Audio routing, which most of the userbase have a lot of trouble understanding. I would stick with the Audio Module and Sampler. If you need detailed steps on how to make it work just let me know. (Might not be as fast as an Loop-Station like the one in the video since thats a stand alone hardware dedicated to that but is very doable)

 

Sounds like a job for Reaktor indeed! Doesn't one of the Tim Exile ensembles do this? I've seen him do perfomances exactly like that, absolute riot!

 

Exile's instruments are: The Mouth, The Finger, and The Flesh. The first two are FX and ladder doesn't have a record mode, you can only drag-and-drop waves AFAIK. http://timexile.com/technology/

Heres a small tutorial of live looping external sources with just Maschine:

 

I thought Maschine did this already?

Otherwise Geist 2 comes to mind

https://www.fxpansion.com/products/geist2/

 

Thanks guys for getting back to me! Indeed drag and drop isnt what i'm looking for at the moment. D-one, yes I would some help to set this up or at least if you can point me in direction of wich feature i need to be familar with in reaktor. Though the "easy/fast/straightforward" work flow is kinda of a big deal since there will be a lot going on in the project already!

 

Everyone else keeps mentioning Reaktor and 3rd party plugins, you have to ask them as I have no experience with Reaktor nor did I ever seen anyone use Reaktor Ensembles that allow both audio looping and triggering. (Pretty sure there many out there, but how to use or how to setup idk cause i never tried any, i avoid external plugins for things the built-in modules can already do)
I already shared a video on how to live record/play audio loops, if you need help with Sample slicing let me know, it's pretty straightforward.

It does, it's a sampler after all... The only thing it didn't have was Audio Looping and even that was added a long time ago.

 

Allright, i've updated to maschine 2.7 and i'v started fooling around with the loop function as shown in the video, (im also reading the manual to get my head around it). One thing i'm having trouble with is I have the playback enabled in my DAW, (so that the loop starts to record along the metronome), after I press stop, in the sample editor (or top button on maschine), the loop starts to playback and keep cycling through (because playback in DAW is still active and needs to stay that way for the whole performance).

I haven't found yet how to make the "loop" or the "recorded sample" play once after i've recorded it. If there was a way to set that up before hand, that would be really nice :

Can something like this be achieved using the controller (either live on the fly or by setting up the proper parameters upfront?
1)on an empty group, select a free pad
2)press Sampling
3)Press start record + stop - Pad gets filled with the audio but doesnt play/loop unless I repress the pad again. That way, my pad is ready to act like a Oneshot trigger.


Thanks again guys!

 

You want the newly recorded loop to play only once then stop automatically and only play again when re-triggered/enabled? I don't think that's possible, at least not automatically. Or you want to hear/monitor what your recording than have the loop off until triggered?
What Maschine Controller do you have and what's your DAW?

Yeah your steps are correct, maybe choosing the exact bar length you need beforehand could be useful, depends on the situation.

If it's just a triggerable (as in On/Off) loop you want you could also consider the following:

• Enable the Audio Module on the Pad and make sure it's Muted.
• Set Recording Mode to Loop, set your desired Lenght and Target as Take.
• Record your Loop. It will not playback because its Muted, you can then 'trigger' it with unmute.

 

I'm in Reaper and i've got other controllers (launchpad, Akai mpk 261) that handles pretty much everything else so Maschine could be dedicated just that.
Maschine Mk2 btw.

"You want the newly recorded loop to play only once then stop automatically and only play again when re-triggered/enabled? I don't think that's possible, at least not automatically. Or you want to hear/monitor what your recording than have the loop off until triggered? "

Both could work but preferably the 1st option (though to me, what your describing here is pretty similar). The muting option is a good idea also but gives me less flexibility : Say I want the beginnning of my loop to play on Beat 1 - 2 -3 or 4. Seems I can only achieve that by triggering the sound whenever I want

 

The mute technique could work many different ways, you will have to find out what works best for you.
- After you record all your loops you can stay in the mute menu to trigger things on/off. (so some things only play for X amount of bars instead of looping continually)
- You can create scenes/sections where some things are muted and another arent and then switch between the sections. (sections can be changed with external MIDI gear)
- You can enable Gate mode in the Audio Plugin so loops are only audible when you hold the Pad (you can also record that MIDI data) and combine this technique with the previous.
- Or just use the Sampler and trigger them One-Shot style like you mentioned.
- Or even mix and match every technique depending on the context and need.
There are many ways to go about it.

 

OoooOh Yeahhh after fiddling around in the sampling mode in maschine, i finally got the perfect workflow i had in mind with maschine as a vst on a Reaper track :

I prepare like 4-5 pads (thats all I need really..) with blank recordings, this allows me to pre-set the pitch envelope from Adsr to oneshot, the #bar to FREE for those pads.
Then with 2 button press i get the job done : sampling + start/stop on hardware.
Finally i record the maschine output in Reaper.

2 things could be improved :
- can't find where to set the pad velocitys to something fixed (at the bottom of maschine software, "velocity is grayed out and it shows 127 - 63"

-when playing back the recorded audio on the Reaper track, I have to disable the maschine vst in the fx chain to hear the recorded audio. Its no big deal and I may ask in reaper forums unless you guys tell me its the same in every DAW : maschine + audio on same track = no bueno ?!?

 

See... no need to complicate and get external plugins

1 - Press "Pad Mode" then press "Fixed Velocity." (If you press the right arrow > you can select the fixed velocity value)
2 - Oui monsieur, it's no bueno (lol) You mean the track where the VST is loaded right? Create more tracks in your DAW and route Pad Audio Output to those tracks. Maschine has 16 Audio outputs. DAW's can deal with multi-output VST's a little differently and since I don't use Repear I can't really give you a step by step but should be easy...