recording loops of varied lengths and keeping them in sync

christiancurtis's icon

Hi Guys,

I'm struggling with one the patches I'm working on at the moment. It is a live performance looping patch. I know there are lots of posts about looping patches, but I can't seem to find one that references the particular problems I'm having.

HOW IT WORKS:

KEYSTROKES
- spacebar starts/stops audio
- q-w-e-r-t-y-u-i-a-s-d-f-g-h-j-k: jump to 16 positions within the loop
- z reverses playback
- 1-2 select whether or not the respective loops are affected by the key presses.
- ctrl + 1-2 records into that sampler starting at the begining of the next loop for 1 cycle, then loops that audio. (Thank you to someone on the forum for creating this part. I took it from a patch I found on my hard drive, which I must have downloaded from here at some point. Sorry I don't know who it was, but thanks.)

OTHER INFO
- Add a number to the file name to specify loop length in bars, so introguitar4.wav is 4 bars long, introbeat1.wav is 1 bar long, etc. etc. From this the patch works out the correct bpm for the file. The first sampler sets the master tempo, and the second sets rate~ to the correct ratio for synced playback. (thanks to modsquad for the bars and sample length to tempo & ad. for helping me to extract the number from the file name.)

ISSUES I'M HAVNG
- I want the buffer to work more like a guitar loop pedal, or ableton. At the moment it records for 1 cycle of the phasor then loops playback, but what I want is for recording to start at the begining of the next bar, and continue recording until the end of the bar after the button is pressed again. Then set the rate object to see the length of that recording as 1 cycle. However long this may be 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16 etc. I have been trying to use poke to record into the buffer, but i'm not having much luck.

- When reversing it doesn't start from the point from which it is actually playing unless it is reversed exactly halfway through the sample. I understand why this is. I just have no idea of how to go about fixing it.

690.wave_looper_15.06.10_12.maxpat
Max Patch
brendan mccloskey's icon

"but if you still have probs after awhile, maybe whittle the patch down to just that and it'll be easier/less-time-consuming for people to give you patch-specific help here"

This is good advice from raja, particularly if, as you say, elements of a much larger patch are confounding the issue; even more so if it's a downloaded patch. Start a fresh patch, and use it to solve one problem at a time.