Looping like a hardware looper

[MackieD]

I hope this is the correct place to pose this question. I would love to set up an 8 or even 12-bar loop. My idea would have 5 or 6 softsynths on separate instrument tracks. My hope is that there would be a way where Pro Tools acted more like a Boss looper where once the first loop was recorded on track one I could switch to track 2, as seamlessly as possible, hopefully without being forced to stop down and re-arm.

Hope that makes sense. Any help greatly appreciated!

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by MackieD

I hope this is the correct place to pose this question. I would love to set up an 8 or even 12-bar loop. My idea would have 5 or 6 softsynths on separate instrument tracks. My hope is that there would be a way where Pro Tools acted more like a Boss looper where once the first loop was recorded on track one I could switch to track 2, as seamlessly as possible, hopefully without being forced to stop down and re-arm.

Hope that makes sense. Any help greatly appreciated!

Interesting question and yes being a guitar player with some looper experience makes total sense
I don't know for sure --But I don't think it is possible at least not without as you say either stopping to change the record arm status
OR
With the possible exception (but I have never tried it ) of having enough room at the end of loop to undo record arm on that just recorded track, and then record arm the next track all while having the click keep going
(With Midi in PT you can record arm on the fly ) But not sure that accomplishes much over just starting and stopping and using preroll and the click which is also only going to take a few seconds.
Either way unlike the looper you are not going to be able to come in right on the down beat without there being a silence gap in between the different takes

[DetroitT]

I have not tried this but what about “trackpunch” in loop record?

[Actionmusic]

You might be able to do something with Melda Superlooper https://www.meldaproduction.com/MSuperLooper

[skylar_battles]

MIDI loop recording will be wonky until playlists are fully supported, but you should be able to freely switch between INST recording tracks with command up and down. Loop record on will give you separate MIDI clips per recording pass which is what you’ll want for this workflow. The other option is loop playback, regular record mode, and midi merge on to overdub midi per loop pass. You can always punch in on midi. Effectively the only recording modes are loop record and regular record. Quick punch is effectively the same as regular record mode because you can’t drag our pre-roll for example for MIDI. The other newer record modes are only supported in Audio and redundant for how MIDI works in Pro Tools.