Looking for Linux midi looper

[piano42]

I've been watching a lot of live looping on youtube (Dovydas and DubFX), and was thinking looping would be fun for my own practice (I'm a beginning piano player -- grade 3'ish piano). I've got a Kawai ES7 and have tried playing along with the built in rhythms, which is fun but you're limited to the canned rhythms, and of course just to drum sounds.

 

I could get a simple hardware looper like a Boss RC-1 or Ditto, which would give more flexibility, but then I'd need some decent speakers to plug it into. I'm cheap , plus my ES7 already has good speakers (and right now I'd just like to play around a bit rather than dive in with more gear).

 

I've looked at SooperLooper (http://essej.net/sooperlooper/), which looks pretty nice and straight forward, however it's audio-based, thus I'd need to feed my ES7 into my computer, but my laptop only has a Mic jack, not line in. Of course there's also the speaker issue, although I could use regular computer speakers (at least initially while I'm still deciding if looping is something I'd like to use regularly).

 

I _think_ looping midi would fit my needs given that my keyboard has a decent set of sounds to try this out with. I've looked at a number of midi-capable Linux apps, none of which seem to fit the bill of something easy where you click to start, click to repeat, and can overdub (so to speak) to add to your loop like you would do with a dedicated looper pedal. An added bonus would be triggering those actions via midi events.

 

These are the ones I've looked at:

- Rosegarden (https://rosegardenmusic.com/)

- LMMS (https://lmms.io)

- Ardour (https://ardour.org/)

- QTractor (http://qtractor.org/)

 

So my question -- am I missing how to use one of the above apps for easy midi looping, or is there a Linux app I'm not aware of?

 

Thanks!

[Sven Golly]

Edited/redacted to remove incorrect and misleading suggestion. Currently conducting self-flagellation as punishment, please do not disturb.

[piano42]

Hi Sven,

Thanks for the reply.

 

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the audio flow using a looper. I'm assuming that a looper must pass both the looped and non-looped audio to the speaker like this:

 

Instrument --> Looper --> Speaker

 

If this is the setup, then I'd be worried about a feedback loop since this would essentially be the ES7's audio out going back to it's input (with the looper in the middle)--which the ES7's manual points out as being problematic (without mention of any looper of course).

 

Or is the audio flow this:

 

|-------> Looper --> Speaker (only the looped audio)

Instrument -------------> Speaker (non-looped audio)

 

If this is the flow, then that would be awesome :-).

[Markay]

Take care, those over there are not giants but windmills.

[Sven Golly]

Hi Sven,

Thanks for the reply.

 

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the audio flow using a looper. I'm assuming that a looper must pass both the looped and non-looped audio to the speaker like this:

 

Instrument --> Looper --> Speaker

 

If this is the setup, then I'd be worried about a feedback loop since this would essentially be the ES7's audio out going back to it's input (with the looper in the middle)--which the ES7's manual points out as being problematic (without mention of any looper of course).

 

Or is the audio flow this:

 

|-------> Looper --> Speaker (only the looped audio)

Instrument -------------> Speaker (non-looped audio)

 

If this is the flow, then that would be awesome :-).

 

Nope, you're correct, my apologies. Your looper will pass through the direct output from the ES7 back to its inputs, and you will end up with feedback (or at least an unusable situation).

 

Problem is, I ended up conflating the audio capabilities of the ES7 with its MIDI capabilities, because I originally started a reply about a MIDI looper, and my mind went from "MIDI Local Off" over to Audio).

 

Disregard. I need to stop posting after being overly caffeinated.

 

 

So

[piano42]

Lol. Thanks for the clarification!