Bastl Midilooper: Hands-on Inspiration

Bastl got in touch with us to announce their new cool gadget, Midilooper. Rather than being a sequencer, it is a device inspired by audio looper style workflow with a really fast, performative, single gesture interface.

Looping is a blazing fast way of music making and looping in the control signal domain is a key feature that allows for all remaining parameters of your device to be tweaked and modulated on top of the looped sequence… or MIDI CC looped!

Midilooper can be synchronised to MIDI or analog clock and it can also run on its own (tap tempo/free running). It has 3 voices that can each be assigned to a different MIDI channel, allowing it to control and loop 3 individual units of gear. Each voice can be individually recorded, muted, overdubbed, or cleared.

Midilooper also offers some basic processing of the recorded information: transposition, velocity locking and shifting, quantisation, shuffle, humanisation (random variations of velocity), adjusting the length of the loop, or doubling and halving of playback speed.

In addition, it features CV and trigger inputs for seamless integration with modular synths: reset, retrigger, velocity, and transpose. It can also be controlled with foot pedals.

As you can see in the above video, there’s a lot of fun to be had with a device like Midilooper. If you already have a capable hardware sequencer, such as the Squarp Pyramid, you are probably familiar with some of its features (and probably won’t need to buy it).
If you are new to the whole ‘Midi looping and treatment’ business, then I would definitely recommend checking out the Midilooper. It’s not cheap but it’s won’t break the bank either, and it’s MUCH more fun than a plugin!

Main features

• 3 independent voices (each has MIDI channel assigned) • overdub/overwrite
• transpose mode
• octave transpose
• quantize, velocity lock, shuffle, humanize • odd looplengths, time stretch
• mute, clear, erase
• one MIDI Input and two MIDI Outputs
• clock input (accepts analog clock or TRS MIDI Clock) • analog reset input
• metronome output
• CV input connectivity (transpose, velocity, re-trigger) • pedal control (record, clear, voice selection)
• USB powered
• adjustable divider/multiplier for analog clock

Price and Availability

Price (excluding tax): 239€. Shipping now.