Koala looping tip

robosardine

I just discovered this. I haven’t seen it mentioned before so here you are in case you didn’t know.
In Koala say you can have all your pads loaded with your audio clips. The easiest way to explain this is to think of them as being maybe four bar phrases - say with bits of spoken word samples scattered in them.
Then in the sequencer draw in your red bar over the entire four bars in only ONE lane. When you play it now you can vary your sequence by simply moving the red bar to a different location.
The beauty is that you will not interrupt or ruin anything even if you move it half way through playing - it will still complete the loop before dutifully moving on to your next selected loop. Even if you are moving it back and forward if it’s say a four bar phrase in an eight bar section. This wouldn’t be required if Koala had muting of course but it’s great fun.
Now you’ve got the idea - it also works moving several red bars around so the possibilities are limitless 😃

Philandering_Bastard

This is genius! Thank you my cybernetic fishy friend.

Obo

I think I follow but not positive.... so when your performing, you’re moving the midi notes on the piano roll to vary the performance essentially by moving the note from one lane/track to the next?

Obo

Actually @robosardine figured this would be easier to figure out if I’m understanding correctly. Recorded a quick vid showing what I understand you to mean. Obviously the samples would be more coherent, I just filled the pads rapidly here for this vid.

robosardine

@Obo said:
I think I follow but not positive.... so when your performing, you’re moving the midi notes on the piano roll to vary the performance essentially by moving the note from one lane/track to the next?

Yes - that’s pretty much the idea, but you can also move them backwards and forwards along the timeline (if you are using smaller segments), and up down - anywhere really. Nothing you do seems to upset Koala - it just takes it all in its stride. If it’s half way through a phrase and you move it away for the next loop, it simply continues to play it and then plays whatever you have moved it to on the next pass like your video showed.
I’ve been using it in AUM - I’m jamming along elsewhere then will drop into Koala - mess about with a variation or two, then it’s back and forward to the synths and drums etc.

zvon

Cool tip, thanks robosardine!

Obo

@robosardine said:

@Obo said:
I think I follow but not positive.... so when your performing, you’re moving the midi notes on the piano roll to vary the performance essentially by moving the note from one lane/track to the next?

Yes - that’s pretty much the idea, but you can also move them backwards and forwards along the timeline (if you are using smaller segments), and up down - anywhere really. Nothing you do seems to upset Koala - it just takes it all in its stride. If it’s half way through a phrase and you move it away for the next loop, it simply continues to play it and then plays whatever you have moved it to on the next pass like your video showed.
I’ve been using it in AUM - I’m jamming along elsewhere then will drop into Koala - mess about with a variation or two, then it’s back and forward to the synths and drums etc.

This is definitely a great tip. I was picturing some uses for it as I made the video above. I actually didn’t even know koala had an actual sequencer until pretty recently (I think it must have been added on after I watched all the tutorial vids at launch but maybe I’m just slow!)

Thanks man