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Restarting Phase Aligned Loops
Hello. I'm having trouble doing something that seems very basic to me, so I assuming I'm searching for the wrong terms or something equally obvious. On a hardware sequencer, this would be called "reset". Say I have an eight step sequence. A "reset" would send the clock back to step one regardless of which step the sequencer is on.
Specific to Loopy Pro, here's what I'm trying to do. Say I have a song that has a regular 16 bar phrase length and I have the clips for that song phase locked. And let's say I want an intro that is a different length than the main phrase of the song. But what I want to do is have the phase locked clips all start over at the beginning of their 16 bar loop when the intro stops, regardless of whether that intro stops in phase with everything else. So maybe the intro is only 8 bars, but when it stops, the main 16 bar phrase of the songs starts over when the intro ends. If it helps: think "All Blues" by Miles Davis. 12 bar blues with an 8 bar interlude. Any time you go from the interlude back to the 12 bar form, that 12 bar form starts over.
From the searches I've done, it looks like a follow action triggering "Phase Align Clock" would do this, but it doesn't. Not on my phone, not on my tablet. I've also tried "Phase Align Clips" for all the clips that aren't the intro but that doesn't work either.
I've looked at Phase Align Clock under Clock Actions in the manual and it looks like it is exactly what I need. The clips all offset to the new clock alignment. What am I missing?
Thank you!
edit: this is without any controller attached. thanks again
Comments
@Superaction80 : phase-locked loops are always locked to the clock. It sounds like you should be using free (non-phase locked) loops. Pretty much any time song sections are different lengths, you will want phase-lock turned off.
100% understand what you’re saying but at the same time the manual says the below text and the app’s behavior does not seem to match it
“Phase-Locked Loops! Phase-locked clips will be offset (rotated) to stay aligned with the new clock phase when you use Phase Align Clock. Use this action with care when there are phase-locked loops in your project.”
What that means is that if you phase align the clock of phase-locked the clip’s start point is moved (offset) . Here is an example.
Let’s say you have a four bar loop. Let’s say that it’s playhead is at the beginning of measure 3 when you trigger phase-align clock.
The clock will reset its position to 12 o’clock. The audio in the clip will be rotated so that the clip’s start is measure 3 (where the playhead was when the realignment) happened.
Try it.
If you have song sections of different lengths, you really don’t want phase-locked loops.
@Superaction80
See the Verse Chorus Looper in the Sample Projects for an example of a project designed for sections with different lengths that uses Phase Align Clock when a section starts.
This scenes based project applies the same technique to a scrnes-based project:
Video;
https://forum.loopypro.com/discussion/66124/song-looper-template-in-progress
Project:
https://forum.loopypro.com/discussion/comment/1427187/#Comment_1427187
Information about phase-lock and free loops:
https://wiki.loopypro.com/Phase-Lock_and_Free_Loops
Thank you so much for diving into this.
My understanding of what you are describing is exactly what I want to happen. But it doesn’t, which leads me to believe I’m missing a step. See linked video.
https://youtube.com/shorts/h3xYgsrb28U?si=mEsFg2oECg0ikLI6
In your video, we can’t see the clock and I don’t know what the phase-locked loop is supposed to sound like. So, I am not entirely sure what is happening.
Can you zip and upload your project to somewhere from where I can download it.
When song parts are different lengths, it will be a lot of work to do what you want to do using phase-locked loops and simple with free loops.
Why are you wanting to use phase-locked loops rather than free loops?
Sorry, just shot that video on the phone. If you look at it, you can see the little clock indicator on the second clip does not reset to 12 o’clock when the first clip stops and and triggers the “phase align clock” follow action.
The why of my attempt to do this is because I have loopy Pro set up to replace a different piece of hardware for providing looped live backing tracks. Basically every song has one of six different stereo backing tracks playing behind it. These are controlled by MorningStar MC8. Six of those foot switches are dedicated to firing one of those six clips. In some cases, the songs we are playing have trophic chord changes. Think of a blues progression for instance. The reason I want these to be phase aligned is because if I switch between say a clip, that is drums, bass, and electric piano playing through that progression and one that is the same thing minus the electric piano, everything will stay in phase. So maybe I want the piano to drop out for the first four bars and come back in.
The previous hardware set up that I’m trying to replace only played phased aligned loops. So I’ve discovered a lot of really cool stuff you can do with that when switching between different variations of the backing track.
@Superaction80 : we see the clip’s pkayheaf not the clock. If you make a screen recording, we will see everything. Having your project would help.
I am not understanding from your explanation why you are reluctant to turn phase-lock off.
For free loops, you can use mute/unmute to have the same behavior as phase-locked groups. You can also use the phase-align clip action in a play follow action to align a free clip’s play head with the master clock (and you will want each new section to align the clock and set the master to the section length as in the projects i mentioned).
You might also explore a group turning phase lock on for itself when it starts and turn it off when it stops.
Ok having the clip’s play head reset is really what I’m trying to achieve. What’s the best way to do that?
Using free loops.
Phase-locked loops are not intended for this use-case.
I have suggested above some ways that you can have groups of free loops behave similarly to phase-locked loops. Mute/unmute is pretty much exactly how phase-locking works.
Cool. Thanks. But in that video I posted, isn’t the expected behavior to have all the phase aligned clips reset to 12 o’clock when the phase align clock follow action is triggered?
Here's a link to the project from the video
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ix3fjh58hgnscpllxcebj/Definiton-2.lpproj?rlkey=54886qsw8sbm8m6frz9fcjjhr&dl=0
It depends on where the clock was and what its length was, which we couldn't see.
Your phase-align clock action wasn't using the master clock setting and its settings was short, so the clock aligns to that next boundary. In that case it didn't necessitate rotating the clip. If it was set to a longer length (like 4 bars) you would get a rotation of the clip that would be obvious.
In any case, if you want the clips to start from the beginning, turning phase lock off is the way to go. Trying to make it work reliably with phase align clock would be complicated if it is even possible. Phase locked loops weren't intended for this sort of use-case.
Thanks!