I’ve had a message from Keith Wilson, who is struggling to make his FCB talk to ableton looper. So here’s a rundown of a “looper bank”, I have 3 such banks, 2 for a guitar loop, a third for keyboards. Loopers 2 & 3 are set to follow the song tempo whereas the first one sets & follows it. Quantisation is set to 1 bar. For recording the first loop, the transport should not be running.

I decided to limit myself to just 8 controls per looper, switching banks for the same looper isn’t really practical. So, you have to decide what features you want to use. The only one I wrestled with was undo, but I felt the pan feature was more positive musical choice!

#1 Controls rec / play with double click for stop. This HAS to be a midi note, not a CC message
#2 Reverse – used a LOT 😉
#3 Half Speed (ie down an octave)
#4 Double speed (ie up an octave)
#5 Sets track focus to the track with this looper instance
#6 Toggles full left/right on the track pan setting, so I can have overdubs on either side of the stereo
#7 sets pan back to central (I couldn’t work out a way to do this using only 1 switch)
#8 clears current loop
#9 double loop length (multiply)
#10 half loop length

Each patch has the same assignment for the expression pedals, which hand feedback and speed (usually set within ableton to drop 2 octaves – I wanted it to go up as well, but it’s then really tricky to quickly set it back to “normal” speed.)

Here are the actual settings, although you can use almost and note or CC number. I use the PCB editor though choice but this screenshot is from the Ripwerx FCB1010 Editor.

Questions welcomed 😉