Documentation for scene control

[g1l3sp]

Hi Sander,

One thing I'd like to learn with Shoopdaloop that I am not understanding from the documentation is how to work with "scenes". I see the term referenced a few times, but I don't see it explained.

First, for context, let me explain what I think a "scene" is, as I could be wrong about the concept as it applies in Shoopdaloop. In my brief experience playing with loopers, I have come to understand a scene as a named set of loops that have are grouped together by the user for simultaneous playback. These groups are useful for triggering complex transitions between different sets of loops.

So I may for example have an intro scene that is made up of one or more drum loops and a bass part, and then I have a verse scene that uses the same drum loop as intro, but adds another drum loop with some hi-hats, has a different bass loop, and adds a keys loop as well.

Labeling these sets of loops as scenes then gives a mechanism to trigger the transition from the intro parts into the verse parts in a single action.

If that all makes sense, does this concept, or something like it, exist in Shoopdaloop? And if so, can you give me a brief rundown on what the controls to operate it are?

Thank you!

[SanderVocke]

Hi! I didn't notice this post for a while. In ShoopDaLoop I aim to tackle this with "composite loops". You can use any loop slot for combining multiple loops into a composite one.

The composite loop can act as a "scene" by combining multiple other loops in parallel, or as a "sequence" by combining them one after another.

You can even use those composite loops in other composite loops, e.g. to schedule the sequence of "scenes" into a song.

For organizing them: you could put the composite loops into the same track(s) as the audio/midi loops, or create separate tracks for them that don't have audio/midi ports.

I will respond later with examples of the controls.

Also, this is one of the main parts that needs more work, both in terms of some buggyness and in terms of user experience.

But for the "scenes" use-case I would say it is already fully usable.

[SanderVocke]

Ok, so a little bit more practical: the relevant part of the docs is in https://docs.shoopdaloop.com/usage.html#controlling-loops, in the section "Composite Loops". I think the docs can be improved, but they do explain the basics.

If you select an empty loop slot, then hold Ctrl+Alt and click other loops, the selected loop becomes a composite loop. Any loops clicked this way are added to the selected composite loop in parallel (like a "scene").

The composite loop turns pink. The other loops that are referenced by it get a pink border when it is selected. To see the way the composite loop ("scene") is composed, you can select it and open the details pane. Here is an example:

Here, loop 5 is a "scene" composite loop that combines loops 1 and 2. Using the loop controls on loop 5 will now trigger 1 and 2 simultaneously.

Instead of "Alt" or "Ctrl+Alt", with the details pane open you can also add loops to the composition by dragging them in. You can also remove them the details pane by right-clicking the composition elements.

If you like to set up your "scenes" horizontally, I would recommend to add a new track and select "trigger-only" for the track type. Drag the new track to the left. You can use the slots in that track to make composite loops that combine the whole row for the other tracks.

One thing I like about this approach is you can freely select the loops that make up a scene. The same loop can e.g. be used in multiple "scenes".

I hope this makes sense. As I mentioned this part needs more work to make the composite loop "editor" more user-friendly. The main bug that exists in the composite loops at the moment is that for sequences in a composite loop, the sequence playback may get interrupted when the GUI is busy (e.g. saving the session). It shouldn't affect "scene-type" composite loops because they trigger everything at the same time. This bug is one of the reasons I'm making a push to move the loop behavior away from the GUI code.

Let me know if you have any questions!

[SanderVocke]

One more thing. Once you have your scenes laid out, if you select "play" on them, normally it would just start playing all the loops in the scene - but it wouldn't stop the loops from other scenes.

So in this scenario, it makes sense to enable the "play solo" control at the top (or enable it temporarily by holding shift). With "play solo" active, other scenes should stop when you play your next scene.