loop "multiply"
I'm creating a realtime looping patch for a specific performance need, and I'd like incorporate a feature similar to one the Echoplex digital pro has called "loop multiply".
Basically, it allows you to change the length of the loop by bar multiples. For example, if your loop is one bar long, you can turn it into a four bar loop (repeating the one bar loop four times), allowing you to overdub a four bar loop on top... it also allows you to shorten the loops in the same manner.
Using the groove object, the only way I can think to do this is to internally "bounce" the original loop into a new buffer set to the new desired length. I've done a fair amount of Max/MSP programming, but I'm far from an expert so I'm hoping someone might have a simpler way to accomplish this idea.
I'm currently using 4.6, but will be upgrading to 5 in the very near future...so if there are specific features in 5 to facilitate this, that advice is welcome as well.
Thanks!
The timeline feature of max 5 might help you out with this.
From a programming perspective, there's no compelling reason to actually take the one bar loop and copy it four times to make one big four bar loop. You can continue to loop the 1-bar loop over and over, while mixing 4-bar or 8-bar loops in over top of it.
Since the timeline object isn't in Max 5
at all, I'm thinking that perhaps you meant
something else if you're thinking that the
original poster intends to do something other
than to use Max 4 forever. I could be wrong,
of course.
From a performance perspective, though, it's sort of how I'm used to creating compositions using the Echoplex. The patch is designed to have multiple musicians controlling their own loops at the same time...so there are going to be limitations on how complex it can be given that they'll each only have a few footswitches for control and no one will be helming the laptop.
It may be that each person is working with several sync'd loops of various lengths with "group" controls...but I'm also concerned with performance as I need to also be recording the performance at the same time to multiple tracks for mixdown later...
well, concerning the multitrack mixdown you simply output to a multichannel audio interface, preferrably stayinh in the digital domain, when recording digital.
depending on the speed of cpu and hard disk of your host computer you coudld aswell output the performance as individual audio files to harddisk simultaneously