Loopcenter
What it is
Loopcenter is a program
I wrote basically as a music-practicing tool. I didn't want to
shell out for a Boss Loop Station guitar pedal, and I figured I
could achieve the same functionality pretty easily with a simple
program. The result was 'Loopcenter'.
Loopcenter lets you simply record loops for any audio you route to
it (via JACK), and it plays it back in a loop. You can overdub the
loop as well. Every recording is rounded to the nearest measure.
Accordingly, you can adjust the beats per measure, and the
tempo.
I usually use loopcenter to practice improvising over a chord
sequence.
What it requires
Loopcenter compiles on
linux and Mac OS X. It uses the JACK audio server for getting sound
in and out. The following libraries are required:
What it looks like
Pretty basic, but
functional:
How to get it
Download Loopcenter from
the Sourceforge
download page.
How to install it
The
usual linux install; make sure you have JACK and FLTK installed,
then:
./configure
make
su
make install
How to use it
Start the program by
typing:
loopcenter
at the
command line. It automatically should connect to your sound card,
but fiddle with the JACK connections if you need to. Adjust the
tempo; you can tap the tempo by repeatedly pressing the 't' key
until you get the tempo you want. Set the desired number of beats
per measure.
When you're ready to record, hit the "start recording" button or
the spacebar. If this is the first "layer" of recording (i.e. not
an overdub, but the base track), the program gives you one warm-up
measure before it begins recording. After recording, hit the
spacebar again. The program will loop what you just played. You can
record subsequent overdubs by using the spacebar again. If you are
unhappy with your recording, hit "erase current" and try again.
If you would like to save your track, hit "save current". Then you
can change the selected phrase and record other phrases, and return
to your original saved track later.
Misc
I wrote this program before I knew about SooperLooper, another looping
program which has similar (but more) functionality; I highly
encourage you to check it out. Loopcenter might be a bit
simpler to use, though.
Loopcenter's audio I/O was done with the RtAudio library,
which allows one to develop cross-platform audio applications for
Mac, linux, or windows with the same code. In principle,
Loopcenter could be compiled for windows, since the GUI library,
FLTK, is also cross-plaform, but I haven't been able to do
so. If someone was interested in doing this, that would be
pretty neat, but I don't have enough experience getting this sort
of stuff to work in
windows.
Nick Choly <ncholy "at" gmail "dOt" com>