Using MuLab 9 within Canatabile for Live Looping

Cantabile
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Hi, all

Wot’s…Uh the Deal?

I have written a guide on how to create a live looping environment within Cantabile using the MuLab 9 Plugin.

@brad - I am more than happy for you to link to this like my other guides.

Using Cantabile and the MuLab Plugin Together

Background

Whew, this was a bit of a marathon to describe!

For a solo ambient show I putting together for a local music venue/festival, I wanted a non linear approach to backing tracks. I have been successfully using Cantabile for at least a decade now for playing linear backing tracks in Pure Floyd/Welsh Floyd (sadly defunct now and like to stay that way :frowning: ) combining backing tracks, clicks, DMX and Video cues.

However, for this new show I am doing for occasional fun, I wanted facilities more akin to what you get in programs like Ableton and to be able to trigger loops and move between them, noodling as I like and then grudgingly moving on when the audience is looking bored… :wink:

I did look at Ableton, but it looked a huge learning curve when I already know Cantabile, and I didn’t want the faff of linking the two together and then having to synchronise two data sets in two different applications.

So, I wanted a live looper within Cantabile. After a little evaluation of some options, I settled on MuLab 9 which also now comes in a plugin format, and in my experimentation it has proved quite capable in doing what I want and it meets my goal of keeping a set all in Cantabile.

I have written a guide on how to do this as it was a little complicated to set up.

It is probably the lengthiest guide I have written so far (but lots of screen shots), as there is quite a lot to cover!

I hope that it is a useful reference for those looking to do similar.

Cheers
Derek

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Thanks for sharing this Derek. Extremely well documented!

For the last few years, I’ve been using Mulab DAW version as a creation tool for making backing tracks for Cantabile’s media players. Your documentation has turned on a light bulb for me now, regarding the new Mulab plugin version. It would give an optional way of transferring my backing tracks made in Mulab to Cantabile or any other host, without needing to render everything to wave files. For that matter, even customized VSTi racks could be transferred (completely intact). Very interesting!

Thanks Dave.

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Hope it is useful. MuLab certainly looks like interesting software and if you are making your backing tracks in MuLab it should be a doddle to covert them to a Live mode, and the Custom VSTI racks would be good. I was always hoping that Brad would make a little plugin to allow you to load Cantabile Racks in other VST hosts for that reason. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for this work - immense! I’ll give it a good read. I do the occasional improv stuff using loopers, but I’ve not so far found my ideal companion, which is essentially a Boss RC-505 in software, assigned to a few footswitches (Line 6 Helix + Morningstar MC8). The closest I’ve got is Melda’s MSuperLooper.

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I’ve been using LoopRecorder https://4drx.com/plugins/product.php?p=LoopRecorder for a while and I found it easy to setup and use. It syncs with the metronome so I can also use it with various drum plugins.

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There are so many options out there when you look, it was hard to select one, but I think I fond the one that works for me.