Hi Everyone…it’s 1/3/2012 and I just joined this forum….and I think I at least found the right location to post my questions. I think we have similar needs but not quite exactly the same. So if I may…I’d like to post my question in hopes that one of you could answer my question…as I am interested in picking up a unit, but have not yet…because I don’t want to spend more money on trying to sync loopers to drum machines…I already went through the Boss 20XL and the 50 they are junk!

Anyway I have an Akai XR20 drum machine and I like it a lot…but was maybe thinking of getting the 2880 for it’s external clock syncing capability.

This is what I would like to do…I am a solo performer (looper would be used mainly for that….live performance), and I want my drum machine to be the ‘master’…as I need to have it play almost continuously once the song has started…hence the 2880 would become the slave to the time clock laid down by the Akai XR20.

Now…I am hoping that other than that…the 2880 will operate as normal…in other words I can start it at any time…and stop it after the use of the loop (in this case where I would solo over the loop), but I expect that the drum machine would continue un affected. Gosh I hope i”m making sense…

Does anyone have the knowledge or experience of doing something like that? I have no need to use the 2880 as a master, or have no need for external start stop….other than what’s on the machine per se.

Also I notice that other loopers have the foot button etc…alll on the same unit? Can the 2880 be used with a standard foot switch or do I need the EH foot controlller?

I appreciate any help I can get from you guys! Thank you! Vern.

So I cannot just stop the play of the looper….and punch it on again?

Basically all I wanted was the drum machine to operate as the ‘master’…and the 2880 looper to slave to it…but I needed the looper to operate as a looper like the drum machine wasn’t even hooked up to it….just accepting the midi time clock info so they would sync and not lose time as time went on.

Basically I want to play ‘live’…using basically my drum machine / voice / and guitar…then punch a loop in the middle of the song….where I lay down chords for whatever…(say chorus or verse), and then solo over it…then punch loop off and play live again, with just the drum, voice and guitar…and looper off?

Not something really difficult…

If anyone can help I sure would appreciate it….I want to keep it as simple as possible…No recording or audio quirks…just simple straight forward..playability type question.

Vern

No, you can start and stop it. But it won’t quantize to the next beat for starting.

basically picture that you have two squares that rotate, and they’re stacked ontop of one another. both have a red side, a blue side, a green side and a yellow side. following so far?
They rotate at the same rate and direction and their sides match up. Now say you stop one square’s rotation until its red side isn’t quite lined up with the other square’s green side and then start it rotating again. now they aren’t lined up, but they’re still rotating in the same direction/speed.

Same idea.

It’ll be quirky if you’re doing it that way, I can almost guarantee that. Loopers work best when you think in loops rather than changes over a linear time.

I am doing a similar thing with on the fly looping to a drum machine (ableton actually) and I can tell you how I do it.

First, one thing that was a PIMA at first is that the 2880 (when slaved) won’t start recording a new loop when you tell it to. It waits for that external signal to tell it to start. Presumably this is so it can match the first beat of the measure?

Normally you hit the New Loop switch once, it goes into a wait mode (flashing lights), then starts recording when you hit Rec (or at the beginning of the next measure, when quantize is enabled).

But if it’s slaved to something that is sending MIDI clock but is not in a PLAY mode (such as my Eventide stompboxes) it goes into a second WAIT phase, with rapidly flashing TEMPO light indicating that it’s waiting for a play command from the Master. You have to press the Rec switch a second time to override it, and then it just reverts to its onboard settings. It works but it’s wonky, and it won’t receive tempo updates after that, nor can you restart playback after it’s been stopped.

Seems like it was designed to work with external transport cues anytime its MIDI synced. But what I wanted was to just give it clock, and control everything else normally, with the footswitch. This is what I was talking about in my above post. / / /

I figured out a trick to make it work but I’m still not entirely sure WHY it works. My theory is if you can fool the 2880 into thinking its MASTER is in a PLAY state all the time, it will cooperate.

HOWEVER, you may not need to do this at all, as long as your drum machine actually IS in a play state. I never tested it with Ableton (my 2880 is slaved to a pedal) but I think if the timeline was playing, I would get the same thing.

In this state, I CAN stop and start the playback freely on the 2880 using the footswitch. But it’s basically the same as muting the playback because it keeps playing in the background and resumes at its current position when you press PLAY again.

Bottom line, it works. Now that I’ve gotten this little trick figured out I am able to do all kinds of on-the-fly looping synced with Ableton and my delays. Tempo updates cascade through the devices fairly quickly, so even if I speed things up it maintains sync fairly well. (Keep in mind this will alter the pitch of the loop playback). Note that my master clock source never sends a stop command to the 2880, once I’ve gotten them lined up, I leave them that way (in a constant PLAY state) until I am done playing.

What you’re talking about is possible I think, but perhaps not exactly in the way you’re hoping. I will do some testing when I get home and see if I can replicate a setup like you’re describing. I don’t know what would happen if you pressed STOP on the master and started it up again, if things would still be in sync, but I will try to test it for you.

If you are willing to control the PLAY/STOP/REC functions from your MIDI master, you may actually be able to start/stop in a more normal fashion, but it may also introduce new problems by sending conflicting messages (like if you wanted to start a drum loop but NOT start the 2880).

My feeling right now is you’re going to have to keep both devices playing and send track mute commands etc. to “start and stop” the looper. If you want to stop the drums, you could program a silent drum loop and trigger it.

Basically as long as the 2880 is receiving MIDI clock, while EXT CLOCK is turned on, it will playback or record its loops to the tempo set by the MIDI Clock. But if it is not receiving MIDI Clock while EXT CLOCK is turned on, it just waits, or as Feralchild pointed out switches to its own internal clock. Many drum machines and computer sequencers only send out MIDI Clock when they are playing back audio.

So as long as the 2880 is receiving MIDI Clock from a drum machine that is continually playing, you can pretty much use the 2880 normally to record new loops, overdub and playback. You should turn QUANTIZE mode ON so that the 2880’s bar lengths match up with the bar lengths of the drum machine (assuming the drum machine is in 4/4 time).

Normal operation on the 2880 when recording a NEW LOOP while syncing to MIDI Clock goes like this:

1. Connect your MIDI cable to the 2880’s MIDI IN port. Set up your master device to produce MIDI CLK, preferably all the time. I’ll assume that the device is producing MIDI clock all the time in the following steps.

2. Enable EXT CLOCK and optionally, though I highly recommend, also QUANTIZE mode. Both LEDs should be lit above their respective buttons.

3. At this point you can check if 2880 is receiving the MIDI Clock correctly by changing the tempo on the master device while looking at the blinking CLIX LEDs. A tempo of 300 will cause the LEDs to blink rapidly. A tempo of say 130 will give you a medium speed blink and a tempo of 50 will be a pretty slow blink. If you see the changes in the blinking LED speeds then the 2880 is correctly receiving MIDI clock.

4. Now to record a Loop: Press the NEW LOOP button, the RECORD LED will blink. Press the RECORD button, now both the RECORD and EXT CLOCK LEDs should be blinking. At this point the 2880 is in record ready mode and is waiting for the user to either press the RECORD button or to receive the PLAY command from the MIDI master; either will cause the 2880 to begin recording the new loop. If you have QUANTIZE on as well, it will go through some portion of the 4 beat count-in. The 4 beat count-in picks up where ever the master happens to be within a bar at the time you press RECORD.

5. When you want to finish recording the loop press PLAY, the 2880 will begin playing back whatever you recorded on Track 1 and also begin recording on Track 2. If Quantize is on it will either finish out the bar or truncate to the end of the previous bar.

6. In step 4, if there is no MIDI Clock present when you hit RECORD the second time to begin recording, the 2880 will default to the last known good MIDI clock tempo or if no MIDI clock tempo had ever been present, it will default to the last setting of the TEMPO slider before enabling EXT CLOCK.

One question – in step 4, if it doesn’t receive a Play command, and I hit Rec a second time, what exactly happens? Is it really the same as giving an external Play command? Or is it disengaging from the master and reverting to its previous tempo?

I don’t think the TimeFactor is capable of sending a PLAY command (at least, there’s no way to do it deliberately). Nor can it transmit the appropriate PLAY CC# (it can only transmit up to CC99).

So here’s my procedure:

1. I Turn on 2880, set Ext. Clock and Quantize to ON

6. I Press REC ONCE. Ext Clock light does NOT flash. The 2880 immediately begins recording at the beginning of the next measure. (This is how I want it to work).

As long as I do this every time I turn it on, I have no problems and everything works great. I only have to press New Loop > Rec (once) and it starts recording, in sync and quantized.

So my GUESS is that it’s getting a play command somehow from the Looper mode, and as long as it never receives a “stop”, it believes the MIDI master is in a playback mode so it works. Am I right?

I will be doing some tests tonight with different equipment, and I will update this thread with what I learn.