About Looping...

[rjgoos]

I know nothing about "looping." I have not seen anyone do it in live performance, but have seen a video or two on the web.

The concept seems interesting to me....if I am playing a mellow song three or four times through on the Stick, record it the first time through, and play along the next two or three times through, for variety and harmony.

Any loopers here? Any suggestions for equipment for what I have described above?

Is it easy for looped pieces to become boring and repetitive?


Jay

[traktor]

Roland (or Boss, I forget which) Loop Factory is inexpensive, easy to operate, small, and works well.

Teed knows more. I don't know if he monitors this list frequently, but teedrockwell or some such should show up as a member for email, most likely.

I think the maillist is called "Loopers Delight". Search should find it. Probably lots of info there.

[Jersey Ray]

Is'nt somebody here supposed to win a free Roland Loop Station? Who ever won that contest??

Loop music can be boring and repetitive, or it can be great and uplifting. or it can enhance a lysergic voyage. I have found that the best loop musicians, or at least my favorites, learned how to play in real time first, before they were loopers.

Although there is all kinds of loopers, I have observed that the majority work in the ambient music world, so for a tapping musician, this means,

1. get a volume pedal
2. tap note with volume all the way down
3. gradually raise the volume with the pedal
4. pick a new note and repeat steps 1 through 3 ad infinitum. :)

I remember this great loop music night at the Lion Fish in Philly, not too long ago, maybe 1997. The acts covered the whole spectrum. the highlight for me was Paul Mimlitsch's band "Emergence of Man".

[traktor]

Loop Factory ....

Nobody won.

The contest was open for about six months, but when statistics were checked, yours truly was the high referrer with three referrals but had ruled myself ineligable. One of the other moderators had two referrals, and another moderator had one referral. And that was it.

As you may recall, it was a contest to be won by the person who referred the largest number of new folks. ("Refer" in this case, to be measurable, was to be specifically done by clicking the "email to a friend" link.) Pretty much nobody did so, and so nobody won, and after many months, the contest was deactivated, as we'd all grown tired of looking at the flashing advertisement at page top.

Short version: Nobody entered, and nobody won.

That contest was quite some time back. And apparently, you, Jersey Ray, are the only person to have noticed.

Pity.

[Jersey Ray]

yeah, but if I had 'noticed' how easy it would have been for me to win, maybe I'd be looping with it right now:)

I have the Akai Headrush, which, at the time, 1999, was a really good deal, I think I get about 20 seconds for $175. There are also some special little features/quirks with this unit, as you will find with all of them.

Today, I am sure that there are much better deals (Roland, Line 6, etc.) in looping pedals - check your local catalog.

J.R.

[rjgoos]

Well, I was thinking...if a person had a simple and lovely ballad, hymn, or folk tune, and could play it through once, while recording, and then play along with the recording, perhaps with different harmonies for the next two or three verses...that it might provide more variety than just playing the song through three or four times. One would need a loop device capable of minutes, not seconds, of play-back, though.

I suppose that there are real risks associated with this, for live performance. If there is a mistake in the first verse, the rest of the song will suck. The higher the technology, the greater the chance for disaster, I guess. If you got the first verse wrong, it would all be wrong.

I think that, apart from public performance, that looping might be interesting for experimentation and improvisation. One could record a set of chord progressions the first time through, and then play along with the chord progressions with different lead lines, improvisation, etc. You would need to be alone in the house, so the repetition did not drive the family nuts, though.

Jay

[Jersey Ray]

RJ,

what you describe has certainly been done. with the lower prices of good memory chips, today's cheaper loop devices can give you a minute or two. Of course, back in the dark ages of 1999, you had to spend quite a bt of money for that. But I digress... Teed Rockwell has looped, in the way that you describe, with his Indian music. i also tried something like this with Shona music, but in the end I was not satisfied with the results.

With looping in general, it is a good idea to play new (non looped) stuff over your loops, because, of course, the same loop over and over will get boring. The really good loopers have tricks of the trade to keep it interesting - maybe your loops are ambient, but your real-time solo is a scorching lead. or your loops are new-agey arpeggios, and you float some ambient pads in real time over this. Or, the real piece de resistance.. use two looping devices, that are unsynchronized and have two ambient loops of different length drifting over each other. In this way it is always changing and the same music never actually repeats itself. the possibilities are limitless, and I should really leave it to the true loopers to reveal the rest. I have only looped at home, for my own entertainment.

J.R.

[Cygnus]

I have alot of great audio software on my pc, where I do most of my recording and mixing, and editing. Looping is as easy as "copy and paste" with most of the programs. Reason, Frooty loops, etc.
(just to name a few) Looping is a great tool IMHO :)

[3 dogs at night]

I do a bit of looping in my software, but it's not a dynamic performance oriented process. It's more of a way for me to improvise and experiment. I use FruityLoops, Samplitude and Ableton Live. Samplitude and FruityLoops work very well together(or seperately), I'm not so happy about spending my $$$ on Ableton though. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. I think it is easy to let looped pieces get boring. If you have several phrases in memory and can switch between them on the fly it's not so bad. I can do that with my ASR-10 but it's a keyboard so I can't input a new loop on the fly. I'm assuming the loop station will let you input on the fly. I think Jersey Ray is onto something with that volume pedal though. As for annoying my wife and pets, I avoid it entirely with a good set of headphones. I'm not exactly full of novel insights when it comes to looping, but it's been forever since my last post and I was starting to feel guilty.

tom