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Nick Robinson Loops

and loops and loops and

Nick Robinson Loops
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Temps perdu…

Broadfield Pub circa ’75

 

HX effects external looper control

I use ableton live for my solo ambient projects, but my new combo Mithril are 2 vocals and myself on acoustic, so I wanted a simple, practical looper option. I had previously used a line 6 M13 (too big/limited) and an M9 (which I broke while trying to replace the micro-switches!). Finally, I persuaded myself (and my wife) that a Line 6 HX effects would fit the bill. After shopping around, I found one at £358, well below the typical street price, so I bought one.

The pedal is quite amazing and really well thought through in terms of usability. Plus, it has midi control, which I’ve used to overcome the main limitation of a one-pedal looper, that of stopping by double click. It may be my age, but when I’m recording a live loop, I find double tapping throws my timing out. Or at least, I feel it does! Since I’m getting handy at building midi projects using the arduino chip, I built myself a small pedal to plug into the HX midi in socket.

Whilst I could assign any looper controls to a pedal (except, infuriatingly, a “clear loop” command), I kept it basic, with a pedal for “stop” and another for “play”. I added LEDs (colour matched to the pedal light!) and it works faultlessly. It’s powered via USB, so needs suitable power socket handy.

I then extended the code to that switching “play” on also switched FS3 on, set to add a little dirt for solos. Pressing stop switches off both the loop and the boost.

Here’s a fritzing of the layout

and here’s the arduino code, for those in the know 😉


// midi controller for line 6 M9 to control looper - solo OD
// apr 19

#include <MIDI.h>
#include <midi_Defs.h>
#include <midi_Message.h>
#include <midi_Namespace.h>
#include <midi_Settings.h>

MIDI_CREATE_DEFAULT_INSTANCE();
// Constants
#define SWITCH1 3 // play
#define SWITCH2 2 // stop
#define SWITCHES 2    // how many switches?
# define LED1 5 // channel 1
# define LED2 4 // channel 2
int thisLed = 0;

int switches[SWITCHES] = { SWITCH1, SWITCH2 };
int switchState[SWITCHES] = { LOW, LOW };   // Initial state of switch
int leds[SWITCHES] = { LED1, LED2 };
int currentSwitch = 0;
int play = 0; // state or recording
unsigned long SwitchMillis = 0; // when button was released
unsigned long DebounceMillis = 20; //
unsigned long CurrentMillis = 0;

void setup()
{
  MIDI.begin(1);
  // Setup Switches and activation LEDs
  for ( currentSwitch = 0; currentSwitch < SWITCHES; currentSwitch++ )
  {
    pinMode( switches[currentSwitch], INPUT );          // Set pin for switch
    digitalWrite( switches[currentSwitch], HIGH );      // Turn on internal pullup
    pinMode( leds[currentSwitch], OUTPUT );
    digitalWrite( leds[currentSwitch], HIGH );
  }
  intro();
}

void loop()
{
  CurrentMillis = millis();  // get the time at the start of this loop()
  if (CurrentMillis - SwitchMillis >= DebounceMillis)  //is it time to check the switches?
  {
    SwitchMillis = millis(); //re-initilize Timer
    for ( currentSwitch = 0; currentSwitch < SWITCHES; currentSwitch++ )
    {
      if ( (digitalRead(switches[currentSwitch]) != switchState[currentSwitch] ) && (switchState[currentSwitch] == HIGH) )
      {
        switch ( currentSwitch )
        {
          case 0: //  play
            {
              MIDI.sendControlChange(61, 127, 1); // play
              delay(200); // slow down commands so the HX doesn't crash!
              MIDI.sendControlChange(51, 127, 1); // FS3
              digitalWrite( leds[0], HIGH );
              digitalWrite( leds[1], LOW );
              play = 1;
            }
            break;
          case 1:  // stop
            {
              MIDI.sendControlChange(61, 0, 1); // stop
              if (play)
              {
              delay(200); // slow down commands so the HX doesn't crash!
              MIDI.sendControlChange(51, 127, 1); // FS3
              play = 0;
              }
              digitalWrite( leds[1], HIGH );
              digitalWrite( leds[0], LOW );
            }
            break;
        }
      } // end if changed
      switchState[currentSwitch] = digitalRead( switches[currentSwitch] );
    } // go thru switches
  } // end check switches
} // end loop

void intro () // startup flashes
{
  for ( int i = 0; i < 6; i++ ) // startup flashes
  {
    for ( thisLed = 0; thisLed < SWITCHES; thisLed++ )
    {
      digitalWrite( leds[thisLed], LOW );
      delay(160);
      digitalWrite( leds[thisLed], HIGH );
    }
  }
}

HX effects 1 sw looper “clear loop” workaround

A looper’s issue

When you clear the loop in 1 sw block, you get a short (but very annoying) burst of loop before it’s erased. There is no midi command to erase the loop (boo hiss).  You can have a volume pedal after the loop block, but it’s a lot of real estate for a simple feature.

Alternatively, you can plug a mono cable footswitch (easy enough to knock up, but it must be latching) into EXP2 and set that to toggle the output volume either full or zero. So you then mute the sound while you clear the loop, then unmute it.

It’s a shame to lose a block for this simple purpose, but there’s no “mute” option otherwise, unless you know better?

However, before you try this, I’ve found a much simpler solution – have an adjacent preset with either no looper or the 6 sw looper – switching to that preset clears the loop. So to clear, you exit stomp mode, change presets, change back, then re-enter stomp mode – relatively quick, painless & silent 😉

 

HX effects looper features

This is an amazing multiFX device, based on the Helix devices, but without the amp modelling. Many players like to use their amp for “tone”, so this is an ideal and highly compact solution. featuring an unbelievable selection of classic and modern effects, with many parameters than can very easily be assigned to one of two expression pedals. It has up to 9 FX “blocks” with 6 of them switchable by footswitch. It uses a highly intuitive system with loads of “preset” pages, each of which can have 4 “snapshots, where the chosen effects for that preset are stored on or off and parameter changes are remembered. I picked mine up for £358, so shop around, some places have it at £420!

One of these blocks is a looper (you can only have 1 instance, sadly!) Whilst the loop stops dead, you can place the looper block before a reverb or delay (both with “tails”) to provide a degree of “fade out”. You have two looper options

1 Switch looper
Pretty much equivalent to the Ditto and countless other simple loopers. This takes up one footswitch on the unit.

Press the Looper switch. The LED lights red, indicating the loop is recording.
Press the Looper switch again. The LED lights green, indicating the loop is playing back.
Press the Looper switch again. The LED lights amber, indicating the loop is in overdub mode. Subsequent presses of the switch toggle between play and overdub mode.
While the Looper is in play or overdub mode, press and hold the switch for 1 second. The most recent recording is undone. Holding the switch again will redo the recording -“UNDO” or “REDO” briefly appears on the scribble strip.
Quickly double-press the Looper switch. Playback/recording stops and the LED lights white, indicating a loop is in memory.
While Looper playback/recording is stopped, press and hold the switch. The recording is deleted and the LED lights dim white. You hear a small section of the loop as it erases (needs a solution), but if you exit to (latched) preset mode, change presets then change back, the loop is cleared silently.

6 Switch looper
The same as the looper on the M9/13 series.Max. Loop Length (Full Speed) Mono 60 seconds Stereo 30 seconds. Press the Looper switch to open up 6 options

Switch 4 (bottom left) – Press to start recording a loop. Press again to overdub additional parts. Step on again to start playback in overdub mode. You can end & play the loop by pressing “play” or “play once” (which does what it says on the tin). You don’t erase loops, you just press “record” again.
Switch 5 – alternates between play & stop
Switch 6 – plays the loop once
Switch 1 (top left) – undo and redo the last overdub
Switch 2 – switching to 1/2 speed will drop the loop down one octave. Recording at 1/2 speed will double your looping memory and switching to full speed will cause the loop to play at double speed (up an octave).
Switch 3 – Step on REV/FWD to hear your loop backwards.

I find the double click to stop unhelpful in live performance, so I’ve built a simple midi pedal to provide an instant “stop” via midi. It also includes a “play” button and can be expanded to control all aspects of the looper.

Midi control (via USB or a midi in socket) is almost complete, lacking only a “clear loop” option, though I’ve suggested to them it could easily be included in a future firmware update. The CC messages required are:

CC60 0-63: Overdub; 64-127: Record
CC61 0-63: Stop; 64-127: Play
CC62 64-127 Looper Play Once switch
CC63 64-127 Looper Undo switch
CC65 0-63: Forward; 64-127: Reverse
CC66 0-63: Full; 64-127: Half
CC67 0-63: Off; 64-127: On – Looper block on/off (if available); also enters/exits Looper footswitch mode

Line 6 HX Effects

Check out my summary of the looping functions of this amazing pedal.

Lost Lost Garden

I’ve just been listening through the Lost Garden follow-up album which was scratched when Andy Peake had to leave due to various life pressures. Call me biased but I think it’s just brilliant and too good to leave on my hard drive, I may consider a bandcamp release, since I’m not at all sure a CD version would (sadly) recover costs…

Here’s a sample track

Twice the tuning, twice the fun ;)

After far too many years, I’ve bought a cheap electro acoustic 12 string from Gear4Music. It was on ebay, flagged as damaged, but the actual damage (a tiny crack) was almost to small to see and has no effect on the guitars performance. £65 delivered, it has a 4 band graphic EQ, the action is fantastic, what’s not to like? Well, it doesn’t have a strap button fitted by the neck. I can’t be doing with a strap to the headstock (it must put pressure on the neck?) so will get the drill out and add one myself. Then I need a case, but they should be cheap enough. I may also need to find a suitable capo – mine doesn’t realise that each pair of lower strings are a different thickness, so there’s a tuning issue.

Then I need to harden my finger-tips – there is an old wives tale that pi**ing on them does the trick, but I’ll leave that as a last resort!

Ableton and windows power settings

I recently upgraded to ableton 10 and a new laptop, the latency and CPU are down, but I was getting odd spikes when I sent midi messages from a pedal. On further googling, I found that the default windows power setting is “balanced”. I changed it to “high performance” and the CPU dropped yet further, from 30% to 10%. Result! It probably means I will have reduced battery life, but I try to plug in the power whenever possible, so it’s not a serious issue. I used this article to tweak the settings.

Midi-Ox with Loopmidi

Still in search of the perfect yet compact midi foot controller, I recently revived the idea of using a standard non-programmable midi pedal (a Rolls midibuddy in this case) with midi-ox to put out data that Ableton will listen to. MO will translate anything to anything, but only midi notes actually work with Ableton, which ignores PC (they are sent as pitch bend!) and CC (since you cant send two alternate values at once). What you can do is send a note on followed by a note off, “cloned” in MO so they are sent together.

In order to route MO to Ableton, you need Loopmidi which installs seamlessly. You set it up with a single port (I called it “LoopMIDI out”). In MO’s midi devices, set this as the output port, then Ableton will offer that as a midi input (select both IN and OUT). You can then map it to buttons!

I hope this saves someone the time it’s taken me to figure out! I’m considering building an arduino-based unit to convert incoming messages and re-transmit them – this would mean I didn’t need to use MO & Loopmidi, which simply add an extra layer of complexity and hence causing problems.


RTFM – always, before buying…

I spotted a neat new midi foot-pedal from Meloaudio recently and was all set for purchase, then I decided to download and RTFM. It didn’t say how many banks of presets were offered and the the manual was decidedly thin, so I checked the forum. Thank Clapton i did – The unit offers lots of profiles for various rigs, but the two custom profiles were what interested me, since I could tailor them.

HOWEVER, for the custom profiles, the same midi messages are sent for all the banks – you can’t edit them per bank!  Utterly crazy. Why limit the use of this good-looking machine in this way? Some people will find the preset profiles adaptable for their needs, but most would surely want to use the custom option. It seems to has been rushed out (they admit this on the forum) and I hope they work on it soon. I’d hoped this would be a FCB1010 killer, but as it stands, it’s just not there yet. Extraordinary that the FCB remains the most flexible and user-friendly device, although it’s too big and Behringer show no signs of wanting to bring out a mark 2.

In case anyone from Meloaudio is reading, here are some suggestions for what I’d expect from a modern midi controller.

Custom edit for ALL banks
Ability to send midi notes
Editing software (utterly essential for copy/paste banks, autoflll incremental midi values and saving different setups)
Stereo jack socket for bank up/down footswitches, to free all 10 switches for midi messages

The new-ish Nektar Pacer is also a potential winner, but it won’t be one until they also create editing software for it, plus the pedal is presented as an ableton controller, not everyone will use it for this and will probably not want the play, stop icons printed on the pedal itself. I’m utterly amazed that the perfect, flexible, easy to use, compact controller hasn’t been created yet. All the required soft & hardware is available, they just need to consult potential users during development and realise that what people want is a flexible device, rather than put their efforts into pre-configuring it for specific uses at the expense of flexible custom settings.

Until that happy day comes, I’m still obliged to try and build my own solution or lug the massive FCB around with me…

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