Looping Lesson Archives
Getting Started with a Looper: A How to Guide
Q: I recently bought a looper after reading some of your columns. It’s for practicing, not for performing, but I’m stumped as to what I should actually do with it. Any thoughts on good (or bad) ways to use a looper for practicing? A: Good for you! Looping pedals are a wonderful tools for practice (or performance)! I’ll share some...
Lesson: Building an Improvised Composition for Solo Bass with a Looping Device
One exciting way of use a looping device with your bass is to enhance a composition. A recorded phrase can become a backbone over which to improvise. For example, a phrase can take the form of a tapped rhythm (e.g. using muted strings), a short rhythmic phrase lasting only one or two bars or a longer phrase dependent on your...
Live looping: Thinking Outside the Box
I was in a music retail outlet recently where I purchased a Boss RC-20XL Loop Station. A great piece of kit, a glowing review of which I will post separately. What occurred to me, as the eager shop assistant demo’d the device, was that live looping may have become a little typecast in the minds of many musicians; i.e. a...
Creative Looping Within Your Means
If you can plug it in or mic it up, you can loop it. That is the conclusion I’m fast coming to when experimenting with live looping technology. Although another very important rule of thumb is, “Keep it simple, stupid” :) I wanted to put a few short thoughts together on having a creative mindset when using the looper, using...
Looping Lesson: Programming the Behringer FCB1010 with Mobius
This is a lesson based around use of the popular Behringer FCB1010 MIDI foot controller surface for hand-free control of the freely available and very capable, Mobius looping software from Jeffrey Larson at Circular Labs. The Gear The Behringer FCB1010 Foot Controller has 100 memory positions to store MIDI controller data for up to 5 separate MIDI devices, and provides...