Strymon Timeline Looper Controls--A Better Way?

todd

todd

Member
Hey Folks--So, I setup a "Page 4" with looper controls for my Strymon Timeline. Nothing fancy about the setup:

1 - Record (CC #87)
2 - Play (CC #86)
3 - Undo (CC #89, Momentary)
4 - Stop (CC #85, Momentary)
5 - Speed Toggle (CC #95)

It works. But it has limitations, and I was wondering if anyone has figured out a way to get the buttons to more closely mimic the button behaviors on the Strymon.

Here's a few scenarios where I'd like to get the PBC buttons/colors to match what the Strymon does. Would I do this through IA cycles? Groups? CC links? I'm kinda stuck.

Scenario 1
(Strymon): On the Strymon if you hit button A, recording starts and the light turns red. Duh.
If you hit the play button while the record button is active, recording stops, recording light goes yellow, loop plays, play button turns green.

(PBC): I hit my Record (CC #87) button and recording starts. Light turns whatever annoying color I told it to. Now, If i hit play (CC #86) from here, the loop will play, the play light will go on BUT it doesn't turn the recording off and that light stays on.

Scenario 2
(Strymon): On the Strymon if you hit button A, recording starts and the light turns red. Hit it again, light stays red, loop plays, recording of another loop begins immediately.

(PBC): I hit my Record (CC #87) button and recording starts. Light turns whatever annoying color I told it to. If I hit the record button again (CC #87), loop plays, recording of another loop begins, but light turns off.

I'm sure I could come up with a few more, but you get the idea. I guess I'm looking for "IF/THEN" programming abilities?
 
It is late where I am and I just got home from the who, but I think a combination of button groups and momentary buttons or latching the with off state set to none. But I m not in front of my pbc or my computer hope that helps.

Lbc
 
Thanks! I'll look into button groups (haven't done that yet)
If you have any other ideas once you've recovered from all those Pete Townsend windmills, I'm open to try anything :)

Cheers
 
I'm still hoping to do a video on this topic, thinking it would be a good example of some advanced programming. Using a button group with the stop button on the left side (because that's the default button in a group) is the main key.

I do want to add some more advanced scripting type stuff, conditionals, etc., which would allow us to do some much more fancy button interaction. With that, we would be able to match the Timeline's looper button behavior exactly. I'm sure this'll happen at some point, but I have a lot of other stuff on the to-do list that comes first.
 
That's ok - the software work is my favorite part of this whole endeavor. If I only didn't have to actually run the business, manage production, etc. I could nerd out all day! 8)
 
My memory is terrible with how the Timeline looper works exactly in a few situations; however...

I'm going to try an IA cycle for the Record/Overdub button to see what happens.

Maybe try:

Record (red)
(step)
Overdub (amber)
(step)
Off (black)

Looking forward to getting it sorted out. Should be fun! Even if it can't be programmed exactly like the Timeline....I don't care. The PBC is a MUCH better solution than using the unit itself. I'll gladly arrange things on the PBC to make a logical setup.

The only thing on my 'wish list' is to gain access to the Looper level (having a volume up/down buttons).
 
I'm half done with a video now, trying to carve out some more time to finish it. The main thing is to have Stop, Play and Record buttons all grouped together, with the stop button on the left of the other two. That works well, the only difference is that pressing the Record button a second or subsequent time to switch between dubbing and playing doesn't produce any visible change on the PBC (but it will show on the Timeline if you have its looper mode active)
 
I've recently set up a TimeLine page similar to the video RJM did (thanks for that!). I set up a group for the main looper controls, but from my previous use of another controller, I'm conditioned to have the group ordered, left to right: REC/DUB, PLAY, STOP.
illustration_3buttonlooper.png
But as rjmmusic pointed out above, that makes the wrong button active by default (the first time I go to the TL page, the REC button is lit, even though that is not indicative of the TimeLine looper state). Has the RJM software been updated since to allow a configurable default button for the group? Or is there some way I can use the button group Action configuration to set the STOP button to be active when the group is first initialized?
 
You could turn on Update on Preset Change for the three buttons, then go to each preset, select Stop, and use the Store button to save that configuration. This would reset the looper buttons back to Stop every time you change presets. Not sure if that's sufficient, but that's the best we can do at this time.
 
Thank you for the suggestion. I don't think that's what I want. Besides the repetitious task of changing all preset configurations, this would result in the looper being stopped every time I changed presets, correct? I tend to layer looped parts with different presets, so I don't think this will work for me. I suspect the answer to this next question is "no," but I'm a novice, so I'll ask anyway: can the "Sartup Macro" be used to virtually click the "STOP" button of the group on startup?
 
No, it wouldn't automatically stop the looper unless you also turned on "Send on Preset Change" on the buttons. But, that would mean that the buttons would be out of sync with the actual looper state.

I wish that more devices would follow the Axe-Fx's model of reporting looper status back to the MIDI controller. It allows us to keep things in perfect sync at all times.

Currently, you can't have a macro affect a button state, but that's on the to-do list.
 
Gotcha! Thanks! And thanks again for a great product and for your ongoing effort making it even better!
 
todd said:
Scenario 2
(Strymon): On the Strymon if you hit button A, recording starts and the light turns red. Hit it again, light stays red, loop plays, recording of another loop begins immediately.

(PBC): I hit my Record (CC #87) button and recording starts. Light turns whatever annoying color I told it to. If I hit the record button again (CC #87), loop plays, recording of another loop begins, but light turns off.
Click to expand...

I have my PBC Looper page setup with an IA Cycle for the Record button (like fevzay's previous post) and it solves this problem.

The Record, Play, and Stop buttons still don't interact with each other like they do on the TimeLine, but the Record button itself is pretty close.

First press starts recording and the LED turns red.
Second press plays the initial recording, begins overdubbing, and the LED turns yellow.
Third press continues playing the loop, stops overdubbing, and the LED turns off.

If you don't plan to do any additional overdubbing from there everything works pretty close to how it does on the TimeLine. If you keep pressing the Record button though things get kind of confusing in terms of knowing what is actually happening on the TimeLine vs what you're doing on the PBC.

I also used a similar IA Cycle setup to have Undo and Redo on the same switch with a different LED color for each.

While the PBC can't interact perfectly with the TimeLine's looper functions yet, this setup has worked really well for me.
 
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