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This isn't about the looper itself but about how YOU USE the looper...

I've been using loops since the 80's when I got a SK-1 for Christmas and the 90's when I got my first DJ mixer with a 2 second one shot looper built in... Now I have a Kaoss Pad Mixer, KP3, TC Flashback, El Cap, 2880, Dano Reel Echo, Boss Sp 505, a Roland DJ-70 and a MPC 1000 that I use in one way or another for loops... I like the KP's for chopping and effecting loops, the KP3 has the awesome 8 part feature that is cool for making pads... I use the TC, Reel Echo and El Cap for single loops to play over or the El Cap to crinkle and warble loops before I resample... I use the Sp 505 for "songs" and the effects and I like the screen so I can edit loops by the waveform... I don't really jive with the MPC cause it wont do things I want it to do like a simple hold, I have to pay $128 for the new JJOS which has a "Live Looper" on it that seems promising... The 2880 is my main looper that I use for demos or for making huge background drones and noise...

There are a lot of different styles that looping artists use nowadays... I wanted to use this thread for ideas about how to incorporate loops into your playing style or songs and not so much about the actual piece of equip... I hope Dubkitty, Cloudscapes, and Adoom can contribute cause I see they each use loops in their set-ups and each in a different way... How do you loop???

i use Lexicon JamMan Loopers for my band stuff. MIDI clock Sync is mandatory - we play with "click". I normally play just one time the thing that will stay in the loop, most of the time synthy bass lines. As we make kind of electronic music there is only muting the loop or deleting it to fullfill the aproach of "additive music". And i have no UNDO function. Most ohe time i do not do overdubs. I switch to the second amp and play the "overdubs" live.
The Boss Slicer is used for kind of rhytmic lead lines - no bass. Same as above: played one time, then repeated.
The other looper is the squarewave parade teaspoon SLIGHT: just for momentary "freeze" things and the pitching them by time bending. This is more the music expression tool. Here i really fight with the loop and pitch it to the right (?) tune...
So basicly two ways of using it: creating backing lines and spheres on the one hand and looping anything and the being creative with it on the other hand.
(SPAM! if anybody wants to hear and see the shit, visit this thread: viewtopic.php?f=150&t=23714 )

For the "home use" i use the RC-2 or the lofi loop junky. just record a backing straight away and search for second harmonies, bass lines and so on. basicly it is my main tool to "work" on songs at home.

I was going to suggest to post clips to this thread so we can use it as a show-n-tell...

I have never really used the Boss pedals except for the first one wayyy back when it came out... I'm sure they have improved them but I seemed to have to fight it to loop on time... The 2880 I use sometimes with midi and sometimes with out, it can act weird with incoming midi timing when using the quantize feature that is supposed to create "perfect" loops... I found that ignoring the tempo by sliding it all the way down and no click I could just play loops by ear and just punch in and out when needed... This works great for short stuff but I like to get a lil lag and let the loops run for twenty minutes and drift, that is where the best sounds are...

Was thinking about Willits and how he uses MAX to do what Cloudscapes is trying to make hardware to do and figured I could record one of my KP3 chopped loop things I do... Looping and sampling is what makes music interesting to me and it's the way almost all modern music is made to some extent; using computers to record and rearrange segments (loops) and cut and paste parts (loops)... Kid beyond puts on an amazing live performance using his voice and Ableton with a footpedal to make all the sounds... I know there are some other artists that are specifically "Loop Artists" and Roland has that contest every year but what else do y'all like???

Great idea for a thread, very interested to see how people are using their setups!



I guess I try to use them as a part of the band, rather than loops dictating what the band does.

I don't trigger samples or anything, I like to do everything live. I'm the only one in the band really messing around with effects and stuff, and since we rejigged the setup to fit a trio format, if I'm using them I generally work towards generate heft/noise , oddness/textures or ambient soundscape stuff around the piano player and drummer, filling out the sound a little or making everything a little spacier. Sometimes I use them to put together a little string trio beneath parts or in a more traditional looping way (building up a song etc. bit by bit).

As I'm doing everything live and the other guys aren't really messing around with pedals, it gives me a lot of room to get odd.All have to do is be in time, and since I'm playing violin there's plenty of wiggle room.

I'm running dirt and delay into a Boomerang, which splits my signal into a live channel to my main amp, and sends my loops into another board, into another amp. I use pretty much everything on the Rang, the reverse, the time, different modes (mainly free looping and sync), fade in and outs. It's been a very useful tool.

On the "hand-board" I have a tremolo, a delay, a distortion (currently, it's not found a HUGE amount of use here just yet) and a HOG in ine, so I can do a fair amount to the loops pretty easily. The HOG also has a bunch of things like the Freeze function so I can easily turn the loops into a thick drone, fade out the dry signal and just effect the drone, or I can use filters/wah kinda stuff. There's a lot of options there. I desperately want that Sonic Crayon FX Compund(?, as the website says anyway) for this part of the chain.

The last thing before the Boomerang is an El Capistan, which I also use for sound-on-sound a lot, as it runs into my main amp, so I can set up stereo loops, have one setup playing/decaying whilst I mess with the other. I also use it a lot to have phrases play once or twice, which lets me set up violin harmonies/call and response kinds of things very easily. I like changing the time knob a lot, I like the sounds in it a lot.

In one of our tunes, as it currently is, I use the El Cap sound-on-sound set to repeat a phrase two or three times, creating an evolving loop, for a large part of the song. In another, I use the Boomerang to set up a thick wall of noise for the second half, whilst looping different things into different channels and reversing them, bringing them in and out for parts of first half. The song we're going to be recording next month, I use both for the second half, building up pretty washes of stuff.

So basically, yeah, either making weird string sections or as a sort of modular synth.

I use the same setup with this new group I'm in with an Electronics based guy, he uses the KP3 and Ableton living/programming, and we just improvise different stuff. It's a lot of fun. It's a very versatile setup. A lot of fun.

I hugely want an SP505. And a Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro Plus.

Um... for clips... yeah. I don't want to spam so I'll throw them in here.

Currently i'm looperless, the only thing that "loops" is my Digitech PDS 20/20... so I engage the infinite button from time to time...

1)for glitches
2)for crazy siren sounds
3)to pitch shift it for noise solos
4)for drones... just during experiments at home though



i used to have an SMMH, used it once to loop like eight tracks on top of each other for a post-rockish intro live... i haven't been a fan of looping though, i prefer two guitarists

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

Having two or more loopers in the set up is definitely something I've come to love and need... It's great if they can both fulfill specific needs like a one shot and a super long or like a clean perfect one and a destructo one... The way I imagine different set ups gets kinds wild... I want like two pan, two volume, some expression and looping/switching pedals in addition to whatever actual looper I'm going to use... Haven't gotten there yet but I was reading Dubkitty getting kinda far out thata way... I have three reel to reel tape decks that I got to make super long tape loops but I've only half assed it... Can't get the tape to splice correctly...

Anyway I want alot more of this stimulating loop talk in this thread and I promise I will post some sound clips of me getting silly in a repetitive fashion...

damn yall got some crazy setups!

lately i've been using a monome + mash (max patch) and a lofi looper from make sounds loudly.

mash is pretty fucking crazy and fun. it can do 6 independent loops, it automatically places a recorded loop on a row of buttons and u can slice/chop the loop ala 'mlr' style. its like instantaneous chopping of a loop into equal divisions of however many buttons your row is (mine is 8), where each button represents a time marker or slice of the loop. its really dope cuz not only can u capture loops live and with ease, u can then play the slices of the loops to create new shit.
u can do inner looping and granular fx within each row, and theres some pattern recorders for recording a looped sequence of button presses. instant reverse/forward, octave up/down more than 1 octave, and tape/vinyl stops. i think it can do oneshots, a mixer section for the loops and a few other things, but those are hte main features that i utilize. its nice if u have a sound card/interface with multiple inputs u can change the input on the fly to record different sources to your loops. u can also load vsts as instruments and use it as an input source to record loops that way (vst synths, maschine, etc), and vst fx's. its super flexible and def the best looper i've ever used.

i use hte lofi looper mainly because of the sound quality that u get from the loop. it just does one loop, no overdubbing.

i've been running an omnichord and an sp303, and sometimes another synth or something thru lots of pedals and a kaoss pad. record loops on the fly and manipulateeeee!

Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D. wrote:its like instantaneous chopping of a loop into equal divisions of however many buttons your row is (mine is 8), where each button represents a time marker or slice of the loop. its really dope cuz not only can u capture loops live and with ease, u can then play the slices of the loops to create new shit.

i've been running an omnichord and an sp303, and sometimes another synth or something thru lots of pedals and a kaoss pad. record loops on the fly and manipulateeeee!

Yes Sir... The KP3 will do that slice into 8 thing... I record some Juno 106 on pad A then take out a few parts and put it through the Tape Delay effect and record onto B then take out different parts and then Delay into C then take out other parts and Delay into D then play them all together into the 2880 for Loop 1... Most of my Drone stuff starts off like this...

I started keeping a notebook called "The Music and How it's Made" last year cause I was makin tape after tape of field recordings through the El Cap with loops of Microphones out my window and people were asking what I was using... When you have good loop set ups or crazy pedal trains going it's always good to capture that somehow for the futures sake... The Daleks understand loops and will appreciate it...

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. For instance, I enjoy covering the Radiohead song Bloom through a series of loops. First I loop the synth drumline (which can be heard in the From the Basement performance) with the Roland SPD-S; thenb I loop the high arpeggios first, then the lower arpeggios, and then introduce the distorted guitar shots. After 2 bars of that, I switch instruments to the bass and lay down the bass line. I wish the KP3 could layer on each of the four loops, because then I could stack the arpeggios, and still have an open channel for the second bassline that enters for the chorus.

Muse FTW wrote: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...

I use an RC-50 and an El Cap, am really surprised nobody ever reps the RC-50. Once you update the stock firmware no lag you can program out the shitty tap tempo switch (i changed mine to a phrase reverse) and all the programming is in there. You can run three independent loops of different lengths simultaneously overdubbing on each, reversing singular ones in and out at the touch of the button.

I usually use three phrases as parts of a song like samples set in reverse and add as I play. I keep one loop as my ambient backing and usually keep that going the whole way through sometimes flicking it over to reverse for a key change. Then I still have two banks left over for adding and removing a loop whilst still keeping the main one going. I use it like 3 DL4s. I think that's the best way to put it. I save synth lines and guitar parts in there so I'm not having to loop live because I have to sing too.

I also love using mic loops and getting choirs going with my own voice looping then reversing and layering independant to my guitar playing at the same time with an a/b switch which bypasses the looper, it's a cool trick.

You can make it do the one shot loop on one channel while still keeping the extended loop running on the other and having another go once forwards then switch to backwards at the end of the loop. ALL SIMULTANEOUSLY

Lately I've been using an El Cap for weird loops, totally blew away the lo fi loopers both zvex and that other one some diy guy put plans up for a few years ago. Sound on sound you know. It just adds a dimension that the RC-50 can't recreate

It's an amazing looper, I've owned a dl4, Jamman, 2880, Boomerang and to me it's easily the best. At first I thought it sucked ass and it does stock but it's easily my favourite because of those parallel loop lines, I don't think there's anything else out there that does it.

My drummer uses a Jamman out of his drum module to control electronic and synth loops. He uses software looping as well to bring in reverse snare layers and building crazy drumming rhythms. I have no idea what he uses though unfortunately

WHEEEEEE... I LOVE THIS...

Do you have to pay to update the firmware, like JJOS??? I should probably stop hating on that big ol hunk and get one, it's cool that you are doing multiple tracks like that...

Right now I'm playin my new Hi Flyer into the Flashback for loops then into El Cap for weird... The Flash does the decay fade pretty well depending on where the repeats are set... Loops on loops with an option to solo / play over top is where it's at... The longer they play the worse they get, just like bad kids...

Nah firmware update is free you just hook up the usb port to the computer and transfer it over like an eventide or something.
I was reluctant cause you know boss and the reviews but it seems that nobody is actually bothered to actually look into it it's not user friendly at all to a newcomer though the manual is like 80 pages or something

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

tommasters wrote: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...

sometimes i like just turning on a bunch of pedals and using them as the input source to creat textures and atmospheres. the ECT is great for this if you fiddle with the trim and crank the gain. rnning into some reverb/delay among other things is amazing.

similar kinda thing, on sp303 i'll turn on the vinyl sim or the noise gen and use the crackle/noise as an input.

^yea the looper demo's out there that i've seen (not very many) def don't capture what u can really do if u open your mind and perceptions