Daws with Live style looping pattern mode.

[dellboy]

Are there any daws,other than Live and Bitwig, which have a looping pattern mode which works in the same way as Live ?

I know Reaper has an addon, and Sonar has a partial loop mode, but I mean a fully functioning integrated looping pattern mode.

And if not, why not ?

Should it be an essential component of any modern daw ?

[whyterabbyt]

And if not, why not ?

Probably because a linear DAW and a performance DAW have different requirements and potentially different audiences.

Should it be an essential component of any modern daw ?

No, I dont think so.

[chk071]

TBH, i found many things pretty unintuitive, when i tried Live Lite, and, some things were even completely alienating. I guess it's a great tool for live use, and for quickly sketching stuff together, but... i "grew up" with linear tape machine style DAW's like Cubase, so, it's hard to get used to such a completely different workflow. Not that they make it very hard, there's a lot of built-in help in Ableton, which is nice.

[dellboy]

I am thinking more along the lines of a linear daw that has a loop function built into each tracks options.

Record a five bar linear track and right click and enable loop.

Record the next track of nine bars and enable loop and they sync.

The next track could be linear or looped for however long as required.

For the way I work it would be great for sketching out ideas.

Saves messing around with copy functions.

[kb420]

Are there any daws,other than Live and Bitwig, which have a looping pattern mode which works in the same way as Live ?

Mixcraft? You already mentioned Sonar.

Should it be an essential component of any modern daw ?

I guess that all depends on one's perspective. I grew up using hardware sequencers which were pattern based, so for me Live made sense with the Session View and scenes. I thought that it was a fun way to arrange a track. Over the years, I've come to realize that I don't see it as a necessity as much as I once did, and the truth is, other DAW's have now evolved. Cubase and Studio One both have what's called an "Arranger Track" which can actually behave just like scenes in Ableton Live. Even without an Arranger Track, I've just become a lot more comfortable with a linear timeline anyway. Once I truly learned to navigate the different DAW's I've been using, having patterns just seemed less and less important. The Arrangement Window of any DAW is a blank canvas for you to paint whatever picture you want.

[kb420]

I am thinking more along the lines of a linear daw that has a loop function built into each tracks options.

Record a five bar linear track and right click and enable loop.

Record the next track of nine bars and enable loop and they sync.

The next track could be linear or looped for however long as required.

For the way I work it would be great for sketching out ideas.

Saves messing around with copy functions.

I think you should definitely check out Mixcraft. It can do this exactly as you described.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0grIYiIOE

[whyterabbyt]

I am thinking more along the lines of a linear daw that has a loop function built into each tracks options.
Record a five bar linear track and right click and enable loop.

Record the next track of nine bars and enable loop and they sync.

The next track could be linear or looped for however long as required.

I see all sorts of cases and edge cases that would need to be clarified for that. What does a track loop? Where does the oop start and end? What else loops? Where does recording happen on the timeline when you're looping something else?
etc etc.
And in the end, why roll this functionalilty into tracks when it could be done with more control with a plugin?

For the way I work it would be great for sketching out ideas.

Saves messing around with copy functions.

Ive been doing that for 15-plus years with Sonar with its Acid Loop handling. Mark a clip as a loop, drag it out for as many repetitions as you need, and it'll match tempo etc.

[dellboy]

Ive been doing that for 15-plus years with Sonar with its Acid Loop handling. Mark a clip as a loop, drag it out for as many repetitions as you need, and it'll match tempo etc.

Yeah, I have been trying this for the last couple of weeks in Sonar, and generally it works well. In fact, I have not fired up Live for quite a while and have roughed out ten or so songs in Sonar using this method, so I guess it is a good workflow as far as linear goes.

[whyterabbyt]

Thinking about it, for your idea to work, tracks need to be rethought in the first place, though that's not necessarily such a bad idea.
The classic linear model of a track is that its one of many parallel containers, time-triggering the playback of a sequence of clips, with global 'processing' control over the container. Modern iterations give more individual 'processing' control over the clips too, though not the triggering.

The Live Session View model, in comparison is basically 'manual' triggering of mutually-exclusive sets of clips.

I guess there could be a more clip-centric take on tracks, where they are still laid out as 'cues' on a linear track, but the control over whether they actually play or not, or loop, etc etc can actually be manually controlled from 'outside' the track, ie by the user.

[DJ Warmonger]

And if not, why not ?

Should it be an essential component of any modern daw ?

Live was originally designed as a performance sampler and only later became fully-featured DAW.

[dellboy]

I think you should definitely check out Mixcraft. It can do this exactly as you described.

I have just downloaded and installed Mixcraft.

I could not find anything in the right click menu that allowed looping of a clip ?

It does have a very easy to use mode just like Sonar that allowed clips to be dragged out to any given length.

I would like to select a clip on a track and loop independent of all the other tracks, but Mixcraft just loops all the tracks to the same length and in the same fashion as other daws do.

[kb420]

You can set loops to different lengths in the performance panel.

[BrokenTrance]

Stagelight.

[melomood]

https://www.musicradar.com/news/acid-pr ... d-moved-on

[Tux]

The OP is basically describing Orion.

I notice that this topic comes up fairly regularly.

And yes I do agree that pattern sequencing should be standard on all DAW's, most music is made up of patterns after all - especially dance music.

It's the reason that I continue to use Orion and will continue to use it until someone comes out with a suitable replacement that isn't expensive resource hungry bloatware.