Meet The LC Team: Shaun Bennett

February 14, 2012 in Featured Member,Site News with 0 Comments

The LC team consists of some very talented people and I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to some of the team members. The first team member I interviewed was Shaun Bennett. 

Matt McCoy: So, what role do you play with Loop Community?

Shaun Bennett: My current role at Loop Community is to handle most of the Loop Processing. Meaning, when a contributor uploads a loop to the Loop Community site, I’m usually the first person that sees it. I process the loops by making sure that they all meet the standards set by the Loop Community team. Once each loop is processed and packaged, it’s sent to our “posting” department where they handle getting the content uploaded to the live site.

MM: Tell us about your music experience.

SB: I grew up playing music in church. Like a lot of musicians in church, I got passed around between different instruments. I started off playing drums, then guitar, and finally keyboard. As the years have passed though, I’ve gotten super passionate about programming. I love the idea of taking all sorts of sounds and rhythms and painting a musical picture with them.

MM: You’re in a band… tell us about that.

SB: I’m in a Contemporary Christian Band called Julian Drive. We’re based out of Athens, GA and I’m one of the founding members. Julian Drive has existed since 2005. We touring all over the country and play an average of 175 shows a year. I play guitar, keys and sing bgv’s in the band. What most people don’t though, is that I program all of the tracks that we use live. This plays a vital role in our sound since we’re only a 3 piece.

MM: Do you guys use loops in your live performances? How does it enhance what you’re doing?

SB: We do use loops in our live show. Most people don’t notice the tracks as much as they notice that we don’t carry a live bass player with us. I program all of the bass parts and we trigger them live with Ableton. Most of our sound if formed around the tracks that I create when we’re off the road.

MM: What do you enjoy most about being part of Loop Community?

SB: I absolutely love working at Loop Community. The thing I enjoy most about working at Loop Community is being able to work such an amazing team of people. They’ve created an awesome work environment and they put Christ first.

Shaun on Twitter and Facebook

Newsboys Loop Rig

February 10, 2012 in Triggering Loops with 0 Comments

We were with the Newsboys this week… check out their loop rig.

Original Multi-Tracks from the Newsboys!

February 2, 2012 in Ableton Live,Arrangements,Multi-Tracks,Site News,Video Blog with 0 Comments

 

Triggering Loops With a MIDI Controller

January 23, 2012 in Ableton Live,Triggering Loops,Tutorials with 0 Comments

In my last post we talked about how you can trigger a loop in Ableton with just the keys on your keyboard and gave some examples of how you can navigate and setup you computer keyboard to control Ableton.  In this post I want to talk about MIDI controllers.  MIDI controllers are a very effective tool for worship leaders and bands.  We want to help equip you as a leader to know how you could use a MIDI controller or MIDI keyboard (that you might already have at your church) to trigger your loops in Ableton live.  Lets focus on MIDI Keyboards and we will take a look at foot controllers in a different post.

How about some history ?

First things first, lets start by explaining what MIDI is and how it works.  MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface.  MIDI is a standard protocol for the interchange of musical information between musical instruments and computers.  It was developed to allow the keyboard of one synthesizer to play notes generated by another. It defines codes for musical notes as well as button, dial and pedal adjustments. (http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=MIDI&i=47014,00.asp)  The first MIDI keyboard was made by sequential circuits in 1982 and was called the prophet 600.  Please check out this video by Chris from OHDrat that explains a ton about MIDI. This will really help you understand what technology you are using (http://youtu.be/IJqTtGA0Bkc).  We have come a long way in MIDI devices / keyboards. There are many different varieties and functionalities today, but the MIDI information they use are the same.

Configuring Your MIDI Device

Now that you have a little bit of background on MIDI, lets talk about how you can trigger your worship loops using a MIDI keyboard / controller. Most MIDI keyboards now days allow you to connect to your USB port.  When you plug your keyboard into your keyboard, Ableton live should recognize it automatically (If not, make sure all the drivers are installed properly).  Every keyboard is different, but here is a tutorial video on how you can configure your MIDI keyboard to be “heard” by Ableton Live.

MIDI Mapping Your Device

After you have your MIDI controller connected and configured, the next step is to assign different keys to trigger your loops in Ableton. This is done using MIDI Mapping.  Please check out this short video clip I took of myself using Ableton’s “Map Mode”. I’m using my M-Audio Axiom 25 to launch some of my  loops in Ableton.

I hope this helps you guys out. We love hearing some feedback of what you guys are doing or having troubles with.  Please leave a question or comment at the bottom of the post to keep the conversation going.

Oh and if you would like to expand your mind on a similar subject, go check the rockumentary on the moog on Netflix.

Ableton Tip: Trigger A Loop With Computer Keyboard

January 17, 2012 in Ableton Live,Software,Triggering Loops with 2 Comments

Recently I did some research on how many blog posts are out on the web explaining some of the simplest things about triggering loops in worship or a live music setting and there was not a lot of content out there. So hopefully this post will help you understand how you can start triggering loops and also raise some questions you might have to add to this posts comment section.

Some of you have purchased loops from LoopCommunity and want to know how you can trigger these loops without using iTunes (I’m definitely not knocking iTunes :) Everyone’s gotta start somewhere!).  There are easy and inexpensive ways you can set your keyboard or MIDI controller to trigger these loops.

So lets start at the beginning.  You have a loop that you want to use with your band and you need to run this loop through a program.  You could just drop it in iTunes and press play but there is a better way that leads to better things.  Ableton Live makes it possible for you to run your loops in an easy and still, inexpensive way.  You can go download the free trial version of Ableton live here or you can get a copy of Ableton live Intro Here  for only $79.  Ableton live intro gives you everything you would need to get started creating your own loops and triggering them in your worship services.   No matter what version of Ableton you have, the function used to trigger a loop is the same. If you are not familiar with Ableton Live you should check out this video. It gives a great overview of the basics of Ableton live.

Triggering Loops With Your Computer Keyboard in Ableton

In Ableton Live you have the option of triggering your loop with a midi controller or with the keyboard on your computer.  In this post, I’m going to talk about triggering your loop with your computer keyboard. I’ll talk about MIDI controllers in a later post.  You can easily map out your set in Ableton and assign different loops to trigger, or start playing, by hitting a specific key on your keyboard (of your choice).  So essentially if you have a couple loops you want to use in your weekend service you can drop them into Ableton live and map the keys “1″,” 2″,”A”,”B” or whatever number or letter key you want to trigger  the loop.  By simply taking the step of running your Loops through ableton live it helps eliminate any accidents you could have going through iTunes or Garageband. You definitely don’t want Katie Perry to accidentally come on right after you finish singing How Great Is Our God.

In the following video, I’m going to demonstrate how to assign keyboard mappings for a simple worship set using Ableton Live.

I hope this post helps you out. Please continue the conversation and comment on this post.  We would love to here some of the questions other musicians and worship leaders have.

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