This week we experimented with music technology equipment. I brought in my laptop with Ableton Live on it and a microphone. Taking advantage of my experience using this software, I was able to set up some looping scenes.
The first thing we tried was looping Xabi’s voice using Ableton's built in looper. With me controlling the loop to start and stop of the loop, Xabi was able to beatbox a drumbeat while it was looping, allowing him to add a layer each time. Once the loop was finished, I ensured it no longer recoded additional layers so that Matthew could play guitar over the top of it. The looping idea worked well in concept but in practice I came across a few problems. On stage we had foldbacks to help us to monitor what we were playing. When this audio leaked into the looper it was recorded and repeated in the loop. When this process continued, a feedback loop was created and the original loop would become muffled as noise slowly built on top of it.
To combat this, I experimented with two potential fixes. The first was to place the mic strategically so that it wouldn’t be picking up additional audio from the fallbacks. This worked ok but it was impossible to eliminate all the feedback using this method as any sound bouncing off the walls would still leak into the mic. The second fix involved putting a gate before the looper so that only sound above a certain threshold would be picked up. I placed the threshold just above the level of background noise which eliminated it. However, since Xabi was so quiet, it was also intermittently eliminating the sound of his vocals in addition to the background noise. The only solution to this was to have Xabi perform very loudly into the mic but this seemed like something he wasn’t used to so he would sometimes be cut out.
Due to these problems, this technique is still a potential option but would have to be used right at the start of a track where the level of background noise is very low.
Here’s a video of us playing over a loop of Xabi’s beatboxing.
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