Set It and Perform It: The Automation Lab That Plays Your Set For You

There's a moment in every solo performance where you wish you had a third hand — to trigger the slice while you're playing the melody while you're reaching for the next loop. Buhr Looper's Automation Lab is that third hand. It's a visual sequencer where you arrange action blocks on a timeline, hit go, and watch your set perform itself with perfect timing.

A timeline of moves, not a piano roll

The Automation Lab isn't about automating a filter cutoff. It automates performance actions — the things you'd normally trigger by hand or foot. You build a set as a row of draggable blocks, each with a length and a target, and the playhead fires them in order.

The block palette covers the whole looper vocabulary:

• Record — capture a new loop at this point in the set.
• Play / Empty / Stop — start, blank, or stop a loop.
• Slice & Sample Slice — chop the loop or flip it into pads.
• Auto Instrument — turn a loop into a playable pitched instrument.
• Reverse — flip a layer backwards.
• Cut/Play — beat-repeat re-trigger on a subdivision.
• Musical Fill — auto-generate a fill or variation over a chosen section and division for hands-free build-ups and transitions.

Drag blocks longer or shorter, set toggle states, choose fill divisions and sections, and point any block at a specific looper instance. You're literally drawing your arrangement.

Choreograph the visuals too

This is where it gets cinematic. Every block can carry up to three video effects, and each effect ramps from a start intensity to an end intensity across the block's length. So a 16-bar "build" block can crank a zoom blur from nothing to full, flicker a strobe in for the final bar, and resolve — automatically, identically, every single show.

Pair that with Buhr Looper's loop-tile reveal animations and color grades, and the Automation Lab becomes a director's chair: the audio moves and the picture moves, on cue, hands-free.

Run it once, or loop it forever

Each set has its own run and loop-enable controls. Fire a set as a one-shot intro, or loop an 8-bar groove section indefinitely while you improvise on top. You can keep multiple sets ready and switch between them — verse set, chorus set, breakdown set.

Trigger it however you perform

The Automation Lab fits any rig:

• Buttons — run sets straight from the UI.
• MIDI — sets are MIDI-mappable, so a footswitch or pad launches them.
• Host automation — the set triggers are exposed as host parameters, so you can fire them from Ableton clips and bake your arrangement into the project.
• Across instances — via Mission Control, an instance can publish its Automation Lab state to share a sequenced performance across multiple loopers.

Why this changes how you play

Two scenarios show the power:

The solo builder. Program an intro set: record a chord pad, auto-instrument it, play a bass loop, slice it, then loop the section. Hit one footswitch and you've got a full arrangement assembling itself while you stand center stage and play over it — no menu diving, no missed cues.

The reliable show. Touring the same set? The Automation Lab makes "the drop" land in exactly the same place with exactly the same visuals every night. Your spontaneity goes into the performance on top; the scaffolding takes care of itself.

Built for real time, safely

The whole thing is designed to run during a live set without hiccups — block parameters are cached so the audio thread isn't doing heavy lifting mid-performance, and the timeline supports zooming and panning so a dense, multi-block set stays readable while you build it.

The Automation Lab is the difference between operating a looper and conducting one. Lay out the moves once, and from then on you get to be the musician, not the technician.

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