How do you / What do you Loooooop ???

[rfurtkamp]

I've got five discrete looping devices in my normal chain: pair of sample and hold (and mangleable with knob and LFO) Digitech RDS 3.6 rack units, Digitech Time Bender (where I use a preset for the infinite hold as toe down on the expression pedal on my defacto normal settings rather than the actual looper included), Jamman after the Space Echo in my analog/normal guitar pathway for mostly phrase/riff sampling, and the onboard looper on the GR-55 guitar synth which is used for synth/vguitar only looping.

The static sample and hold capacity of the RDS things makes them less than ideal loopers but they're very good for background texture. If I have something going that works texturally, will hit one or both, let the thing echo out, add some LFO to taste, and go off on another tangeant.

GR-55 looper is for simple synth and vguitar (bassline usually) looping; at 20s capacity I have to keep it small and the undo/redo facility is essentially non-existent. It's for what I may want to become a central motif for a piece to become, or to provide some background pad type action if I need that from the synth.

Timebender's infinite repeat is just for pure texture; it (especially on a ducking delay setting) lets me fill a lot of space with nothing but have control over it.

Regular old Jamman is where the looping magic happens - with easy undo/redo and near infinite time constraints, I can go on extended jams with myself and let it rock out.

Everything combined lets me become a half dozen players almost instantly, but my rig is now absolutely retarded.

[sonidero]

I've got five discrete looping devices in my normal chain: pair of sample and hold (and mangleable with knob and LFO) Digitech RDS 3.6 rack units, Digitech Time Bender (where I use a preset for the infinite hold as toe down on the expression pedal on my defacto normal settings rather than the actual looper included), Jamman after the Space Echo in my analog/normal guitar pathway for mostly phrase/riff sampling, and the onboard looper on the GR-55 guitar synth which is used for synth/vguitar only looping.

Everything combined lets me become a half dozen players almost instantly, but my rig is now absolutely retarded.

Yes yes and yes... The more you think of ways to loop the further out you get... Multiple loops of different lengths create evolving patterns that are as inventive and natural and musical and several people sitting together and jammin under the stars... I can get lost in pattern recognition loops that never stop after two or three passes of an overdub...

[Muse FTW]

I've been using the KP3 (Kaoss Pad) and it's brilliant when the BPM drift doesn't get too bad.

I usually am layering for solo stuff.

with the Roland SPD-S;

I forgot about my SPD-S... The ladies love it, put one on a stand in the practice room with cowbell and they'll ring it till you make her go home...

I like the drift of the KP3 and 2880... I let the loops play for a long time before I finally use them... I always have a huge hard on for Basinski type loop degradation... I think that's the beauty of using loops in music, it's adds an evolving growing life like quality to static music... I try to make as much of my music as possible with actually touching the instruments... Creating music by proxy... Let it do itself...

While I agree with this in principle, it becomes a pain in the ass when recording the other loops which run in parallel because they'll start and end in different times, and when playing with others, they have trouble following along.

[Gearmond]

I use a digitech jamman solo with the extra footpedal (which is fucking annoying because it only SOMETIMES works) and the looping function of the hardwire delay and occasionally the infinite repeat paired with a long delay (2 seconds +). I use them like El Ten Eleven mostly, or at least I hope to. start a loop with one, loop something else with the other, switch memory spots on the jamman, stop the other, record a new loop, then i can switch between the two or start a new loop, and just fuck around with loops as song sections, which is kinda roundabout, i guess, but it works. i really wish i could save loops as they're playing, because thats whay i'd love.

the RC-50 seems to have a use i'd want for it to do (independent loops on top of each other to make polyrhythms n stuff), and so do some of the new vox loopers

[sonidero]

I still need to figure out how to upload better...

Here's what I mean, I played some loops into the Flashback with my new Hi Flyer and then into El Cap and then 4 tracks onto the 2880... I let each play for like 13-21 minutes then layered another... Two minutes of guitar noise...

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/fuzz-sounds/univox-hi-flyer-loops[/soundcloud]

Also my new Soundcloud page for demos; which this is the first, is Fuzz Sounds... You can email fuzzsounds@gmail for coolness too...

[dubkitty]

i'm going to go back and ask some of you folks questions after i get done talking about my setup and stuff.

my current looping setup is cobbled together from the least expensive stuff i could find to put together what i wanted, which is a setup where i can run two loops simultaneously and crossfade between them as if i was using a DJ mixer without putting the guitar down. from the rest of my effects, the signal goes into an Ernie Ball stereo volume/pan pedal which splits the signal into A/B paths. the A path goes to a Akai Head Rush E2 and then into a Boss GEB-7 Bass Equalizer; the B path goes to a Flashback and then to a GE-7. the outputs from the two Boss devices sum to an A/B/Y box which goes to a little solidgold(fx) buffer box and then out to the amp.

my main use for the loopers at present is for solo improvisation and compositions built up in layers in a style derived from the Fripp/Eno tape loop + guitar recordings as well as other tape compositions and various sample-based electronica forms; i typically build up a piece in anywhere from eight to twenty or thirty layers and then solo over it before returning to the theme, alternating occasional on-the-fly aleatoric stuff with pre-written pieces ranging from wall-of-feedback-in-C charts to worked-out arrangements with what Eno might credit as Fog Horn Guitars.

i plan to use the loopers for texture and general craziness in a group context should i have the opportunity, having been intrigued for awhile now by the stuff Jonny Greenwood's been doing with the Head Rush and KP with Radiohead (i particularly like what i believe is the Head Rush layering on the end of "Where I End And You Begin"). so far i've never used them for calling up pre-programmed samples, because my setup doesn't have that capability and because i rather like the without-a-net thing of having no storage, no undo, and no memory presets. however, i would really like to have something with longer loop time than the Flashback for ambient pieces so i could get a nice two-minute wash going, even though that tends to make for impractically long pieces. and obviously with a decent budget this could all be done more simply with e.g. a multi-looper and a Pigtronix Keymaster.

i've loved the sound of deteriorating delays ever since i was young and first heard an Echoplex...i often use the delays on the loop board and/or the RV-3 on my main board as sound-on-sound devices in delay mode with the Feedback turned all or most of the way up to get that kind of pre-Cambrian Basinsky thing happening. in general, one of my favorite things in the world of effects is when the boxes start thinking on their own and conversing with me...as i've recounted elsewhere, lately i've been able to use the fuzz array as a white-noise generator to drive the rest of my main board as if it were a primitive analog synth, and naturally when i run that into the looper it's even more special. but decaying delay repeats are one of my favoritest things...i really wish i could get a looper that had a variable degrade-over-time function so i could keep it going endlessly and degrading without fading out because i love the ways sound transforms as it degrades. guitars turn into electric pianos, basses turn into drums, all kinds of magical shit.

[dubkitty]

questions:

1. tell me more about what you can do with the KP3? i'm really not familiar with its looping capabilities.

2. how long is the total time for the three loops on the RC-50 once it's been updated?

[Adoom]

i really wish i could get a looper that had a variable degrade-over-time function so i could keep it going endlessly and degrading without fading out because i love the ways sound transforms as it degrades. guitars turn into electric pianos, basses turn into drums, all kinds of magical shit.

The El Cap does this pretty well. Once you get a little familiar with the different settings you can plan out how fast/slow your want it to degrade.

<span>[soundcloud]<a class="linkclass" href="http://soundcloud.com/fuzz-sounds/univox-hi-flyer-loops[/soundcloud]">http://soundcloud.com/fuzz-sounds/univox-hi-flyer-loops[/soundcloud]</a></span>

Very nice sounds.

I enjoy loop/solo so much as well, just not in the way you always see the blues guys do it in demos

Cool, this is what I wanted in this thread... I wanna break the idea of what looping is or has to be and open up some ears to what is probably the most basic structure of human's aural tradition throughout time immortal...

With the things as they are today, we really are spoilt for choice in not only the technology we can utilize, but also the manner in which we can choose to utilize them.

I think of what I do as less than looping, more as if I'm covering the roles of the dude with a violin and a dude with a synth/laptop/general spacey ear candy.

We don't use them in every song. Recently a loop thing I was working on for a section was dropped in favour of stepping on the 'infinite' switch on my Memory Man, as that added the ambience I was after. I don't really like repeating the ways in which I use them either. Or if I do, mixing up the ways to mess with them (reversing pizzicato sounds very different to reversing arco, for example.)

Having multiple loops with different qualities really opens some doors. I've spent hours ensconced in noise since I figured it out.

Excellent thread, great to read over some of the possibilities.

[DarkAxel]

Awesome description Adoom that is what I'm talkin bout right thurrr... We will win you over Axie...

true, Adoom, a nice read

about winning me over... the thing is - yeah, i layer a lot of stuff when i record... but if i'd loop, i'd loop live, i wouldn't just use prerecorded samples... and there's not much space for me to do it i believe. You guys prolly make a lot more looping-friendly music

it's interesting to read though... Dubkitty, do you have any clips? i'd be interested to hear that

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

i think i need an el capppppp

[kbit]

i think i need an el capppppp

You would like it a lot for the degrading loop feature.

[Muse FTW]

questions:

1. tell me more about what you can do with the KP3? i'm really not familiar with its looping capabilities.

Basically you have four independent tracks you can loop on: A B C D

You can't dub over on the same loop (so if I had one drum pattern on A, and I wanted to add another drum pattern to go along with it, I'd have to use another slot; you can't record over the pattern already in A).

While this is a hassle (and I'm sure with the next iteration it'll be fixed), this allows for each loop to be turned "on" and "off" independently, and allows for more flexible triggering. You can record "one-shots" which do not continuously loop, but can triggered for the sound to play (imagine triggering a short 1 bar drum roll).

You can control the level of the loops, change the speed of the loop itself, and use any of the on board effects of the KP3 to modulate the sound.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[dubkitty]

so the KP is actually functioning as a sampler that loops and has onboard effects. that's an interesting-sounding addition to the kind of stuff i'm using. i also like the possibility of doing software-based editing with the KP to add more tools to the everything-on-a-rotatey-knob arsenal i'm now using. the thing other than expense that makes me nervous is that a complicated piece of gear to learn will give me a great excuse to spend months sitting around learning new gear rather than creating with the gear i already have.

can you "bounce down" the A/B/C tracks to D like you would with a 4-track tape recorder?

[dubkitty]

I think of what I do as less than looping, more as if I'm covering the roles of the dude with a violin and a dude with a synth/laptop/general spacey ear candy.

We don't use them in every song. Recently a loop thing I was working on for a section was dropped in favour of stepping on the 'infinite' switch on my Memory Man, as that added the ambience I was after. I don't really like repeating the ways in which I use them either. Or if I do, mixing up the ways to mess with them (reversing pizzicato sounds very different to reversing arco, for example.)

Having multiple loops with different qualities really opens some doors. I've spent hours ensconced in noise since I figured it out.

Excellent thread, great to read over some of the possibilities.

the way i think of it really is different from piece to piece, i.e. from application to application. i have a piece where the loops do bass, guitar, and faux organ chords with chorus/"Leslie" for Pink Floyd vibe, and another where choirs of pedal-steel-esque notes pick out a background against which faraway horns fade in a two-chord change that bass pedal tones then invert. i'm particularly fond of taking long melodic passages and breaking them up into rhythms which get introduced one at a time so the passage gradually materializes out of seemingly random or simple notes...i've been influenced by the late 20th-century minimalist thing, Steve Reich and Harry Partsch and Gavin Bryars, and by electronic dance music as well which was heavily influenced by the Minimalists. i like music that appears out of the fog.

BTW sonidero, i could have listened to like 8 or 10 minutes of that.

[sonidero]

questions:

1. tell me more about what you can do with the KP3? i'm really not familiar with its looping capabilities.

Basically you have four independent tracks you can loop on: A B C D

You can't dub over on the same loop (so if I had one drum pattern on A, and I wanted to add another drum pattern to go along with it, I'd have to use another slot; you can't record over the pattern already in A).

While this is a hassle (and I'm sure with the next iteration it'll be fixed), this allows for each loop to be turned "on" and "off" independently, and allows for more flexible triggering. You can record "one-shots" which do not continuously loop, but can triggered for the sound to play (imagine triggering a short 1 bar drum roll).

You can control the level of the loops, change the speed of the loop itself, and use any of the on board effects of the KP3 to modulate the sound.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Yes also you can choose the loop length in 1, 2, 4, or 8 bars... After you sample the loop is split up into 8 parts and you can turn on and off any of the steps using the 1-8 buttons on top of the pad...

can you "bounce down" the A/B/C tracks to D like you would with a 4-track tape recorder?

Yes you can bounce down and with effects if you want... It's a really nice looper once you get the hang of it... I will do some guitar through it this weekend and post it here...