FlyLoops Looping Studio

As a real time instrument, it is important to be able to customize FlyLoops control to allow you to set up midi control and keyboard shortcuts quickly and easily. Just completed for the new FlyLoops release is a versatile system for mapping virtually every command at the click of a button.

Just right click (or CTRL-click) on any FlyLoops button, knob or slider and you get a dropdown menu with a list of the currently mapped commands and the ability to change them.

All the parameters of the Beat Splicer are now midi learnable, so you can easily tweak your beats as you play.

The same is true of the visualization suite. All the parameters can be mapped quickly and easily to midi control surfaces so you can control the waveforms in real time. Or map the FlyLoops drums and turn any midi surface into a drumset.

In midi learn mode, you can see what items have been mapped, and what other items can be mapped.

Just a sneak peak at one of the newest features being developed for FlyLoops. The screenshot below shows the prototype for a type of equalizer that lets you draw your own filter envelope.


The filter variables are mappable to Midi commands, or controllable with the mouse, allowing users to change the way loops are EQ’ed in real time, using just one or multiple nodes so that you can choose to drop the middle tones but ramp up the high pitches and maybe just the lowest of the low notes – or grab a thin band of frequencies in the middle of the spectrum and let just those few notes bleed through each time the loop comes around. Special thanks to Gopal E for his help on this project.

I worked the last few days at improving the visualizer features and getting a VST/AU standalone plugin version completed. Mapping is coming along nicely, which allows the user to map the variables of the visualization environment (color, rotation, movement) to what is happening musically (tempo, pitch, volume, turntable scratching).

The plugin will be open source (so anyone can modify it). Like all of FlyLoops, it’s written in C++, using the JUCE libraries.

FlyLoops can now load VST and AudioUnit plugin effects and instruments. What does that mean? Three things:

1) Guitar Amps/Effects. Live signals can be processed through audio plugins that act as guitar amps, or effects.  Thousands of guitar amps have already been modeled as plugin.  You can now add these to FlyLoops input channels just as if connecting a guitar amp at home.  Best of all, there are plenty of free amps and effects out there, see links below.

2) Turntable effects. You can now apply plugin effects, of which there are millions … free ….. to the FlyLoops turntables. This makes FlyLoops one of two programs to allow effects on turntables (Torq is the other), and the ONLY one that lets you record loops to turntables, freq shift to 64x normal speed, and quantize bpm and freq shifting.

3) FlyLoops now acts as a synth/sampler that loads plugin virtual instruments and will record them as loops along with the other inputs. There are a wide variety of free instruments available on the web (special thanks to 4Front technologies, for allowing me to repackage their piano and bass plugins to include with FlyLoops).

Some links to free VSTs:

www.kvraudio.com – Audio plugin news and links, a massive site with all sorts of new VST releases (free and commercial).

www.vstplanet.com – another great VST list, also very large and searchable for many types of VST effects and instruments.

Within FlyLoops is a real time audio data visualizer that displays a waveform based on the live input audio, plus any looping or turntable output. The goal of this display is to be a professional level visualizer for the audio as it is being performed.

Recent improvements to the visualizer include the ability to alter a number of parameters (like the color, amplitude, view angle, motion, rotation) of the waveform, and to map those variables to audio properties of the current project (so that angle of view varies with bpm shift, meter timing, or input level). This way, when you change what you are doing (get louder, play higher, or scratch a turntable) the visualizer can respond by changing the color, position, velocity or overall display of the waveform in tandem.

More coming: look for video integration and live control data outputs (OSC – OpenSound Control) that can sync with VJ applications.

The Visualizer

When a DJ runs his hands across a turntable, he doesn’t think about the pitch he is aiming for, he just feels it.  Move your hand quicker and you get a higher pitch, pull the vinyl back at high speed and get that high pitched vinyl scream that has defined so many grooves.

In this way a  turntable is an instrument more like a violin that a guitar.  No notes of off limits, you can spin the vinyl to produce frequency shifts of any magnitude.  With FlyLoops you can turn the turntable sensitivity up to well beyond that of a realistic turntable, and even hit freq shifts that are unrealistic or impossible on real turntables.

But lets go a step further.  What if, like the instrument woodworker putting the first frets on a mandolin you could produce a new instrument, one that was prone to certain note intervals, one that allowed certain notes but not others? The answer is pitch quantization.  Just as guitar has frets for every semitone, you can quantize the virtual turntables in FlyLoops to produce pitch shifts the correspond only to semitonic intervals.  Or, like some other instruments, you can quantize to only the major or minor intervals, or the blues or jazz scales.  There are even options for modal, flamenco and middle eastern scales in FlyLoops.

Not satisfied with sticking to a scale?  You can also set how strictly the turntable adheres to the scale.  You can push and pull the notes … sliding like a guitarist bending a note from one pitch to another to strain to hit that perfect blue note between the intervals.  It’s all there, FlyLoops has the most advanced pitch quantization of any tool in the dj’s arsenal.

FlyLoops 3.0 also includes a waveform visualization studio which allows you to build live visualization that correspond with the music as it is being made (the visualizer uses the currently playing loops and turntables as well as any live input).

The novel thing is that you can control the visualization. Decide which parameters vary, and how they sync up. For example, we could set the brightness of visuals to scale with musical volume, or the color to scale with frequency shifting. This way the visualizer can change with the song, morphing with musical instrumentation and textures.

FlyLoops is a product that takes digital djing to a new level. Just one twist … you’ll need instruments. This is a looping device, and although it can open files as well as any other vdj turntable software, its best features come out when you record and spin live loops. You can even loop the output of the turntables as you scratch them, taking the music in a whole new direction.

Group looping:
If in a group of musicians, you can easily map any midi controller can be used to record any audio input, thereby grabbing a quick loop from any musician in the room, without getting audio from the rest of the group.

What can you do with FlyLoops that you others can’t?

• vst effects
• record and manage multiple loops live , Controlling what loop(s) sit on what turntables
• Resync intuitively to a chord progression
• Frequency shift to 64x, bpm shift to 64x
• Quantize how the turntables can shift the Freq, allow only certain scales
• Quantize the bpm shifts, allowing or emphasizing certain types of beats

Turntable Parameters:

Of course, not every turntable has the same feel.  Some are high and airy, some are lumbering and dark.  What makes the difference?  And what tool should the digital DJ have to get the full range of these sounds and feels easily at his/her disposal?  The answer can be found in FlyLoops turntable Parameters.

With FlyLoops you can control the turntable sensitivity and friction of each turntable independently.