The Song Fight Bulletin Board

So, HeuristicsInc asked me to talk a bit about loop pedal stuff.

I have a <a href="http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/ ... 1352">Boss RC20XL</a>, which is a pretty basic looper pedal. For the most part (so far as what I use it for) it has two operations: play and overdub, although it does have a bit more functionality I haven't messed with that much.

The basics of how I use it is I put it into autostart mode (where it won't start recording until it detects sound, and then trims the loop to start at that point), then I'll stomp on the play/rec pedal, play a simple bass riff or use muted strings to set up a rhythm or whatever, then after a measure or two I stomp on play/rec again and then I have a loop. If it works well enough, then I'll stomp play/rec again and then play the next layer.

Generally I'll just leave that to stuff that works through the whole song (conveniently a lot of my songs use the same chord progression over and over again) and then now that I have simulated bass and drums, I'll just do my usual vocal+guitar playing. Sometimes partway through a song I'll add another layer or two to round out the rest of the song with. (You can also nuke the most recent overdub but it takes a couple seconds to happen and it's not particularly seamless.)

There are more advanced looper pedals, like the <a href="http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/ ... ">RC-50</a>, which allow you to independently control several layers, which is probably more useful for people in general. Sean/mico saudad uses one of those, so he can probably speak to it a bit better.

Sometimes you have to be a bit creative in your arrangement. KT Tunstall uses an <a href="http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/ ... 3058">Akai E2 Headrush</a> in her <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIO2qpSsUTA">live performances</a>, and it looks like it's got the same basic capabilities as the RC20XL, though with a bit higher quality (my big complaint about the RC20XL is it records at a fairly low sample rate so everything starts to sound pretty muddy, and it doesn't seem to have a lot of headroom either so if you overdub too many times it starts to clip bad).

The 20XL does allow for one-shot sampling and reverse playback which can lead to some pretty interesting effects, though you need to buy a bunch of external pedal switches to control it (which I do have), and from what I can tell you can't seamlessly record or switch between multiple loops live, though I haven't played with it much.

I think the most important thing to do with a looper pedal for live performance is to keep things simple. You can always play more complex over a simple base, but it's way too easy for a base to get too complex and lose everything you're doing on top of it. Every time I practice with my pedal I also try doing several songs in different ways, and try to keep things improvisational. Especially in a live setting you can't really predict what might happen (for example, your mic might pick up some loud noise during an overdub).

As far as the physical hookup goes, I just have my guitar and mic going direct into the looper pedal, then the pedal going into the amp. Since the 20XL only has 1/4" inputs and a fairly crappy preamp I might try hooking up a mixer to it and running one of my MXL mics in through that, and maybe a DI box for the guitar. There's no way to make the 20XL record from only one input or the other, though.

Cool info, fluffy. I'm kind of interested in getting a dedicated looping pedal, though I'm not sure I'd use it enough to justify the expense.

My only experience so far has been with a Line-6 DL4 delay modeling pedal, which has a decent looping mode.

Things I like about it:

It's got four footswitches built in, which makes accessing all the looper's functions very easy with your feet. The first two footswitches probably provide similar record/overdub and stop/start functionality to the ones on the RC20XL. There's also a footswitch for "one shot" mode where it will immediately play the loop from the beginning then stop, and another footswitch which can toggle reverse with a single-push and half-speed with a double-push (you can do any combination of forward/revers and normal/half-speed). You also get a simple delay effect in loop mode, too, with time/repeats/mix controls. It's a stereo pedal, so you could route two signals in to it. I haven't had issues with headroom, and the recording quality is OK.

Things I don't like:

You have to manually turn the "mode" knob to/from the "Loop" mode in order to switch between it and your other delay presets. There's no easy way to do that with your feet, as far as I can tell, which makes it seem like you'd either use it for looping -or- delay live but you probably wouldn't want to have to switch back and forth between them. Also, there aren't any options for storing loops, unlike most of the dedicated looping pedals. I'm sure the dedicated pedals offer quite a few more features (autostart mode sounds extremely useful, for example, and some let you loop in a specified tempo). You're limited to 14 second loops, while other dedicated loopers can give you lots more recording time. It's also pretty expensive ($250) if you're just going to use it for loop mode (the delays are mostly pretty good, but that's for another topic).

So, as a looper, it's probably like a B-.

It seems like the price points with looping pedals kind of determine how much control you're going to be able to have over the loops. For <$200 you get a pedal with one footswitch. For $200-$250 you get ones with 2-4 switches. If you want more control you have to shell out even more money, like $500 for the RC50.

It sounds like the DL4 is at least as competent as the 20XL, so since you already have one of those you'd might as well just stick with it, even if you do have to manually switch between loop and delay mode. It's not like the 20XL lets you switch to delay mode at all, for example (since it doesn't have one), and even switching between autostart, one-shot, and tap-time mode requires bending over. (Also, one of my biggest annoyances with it is that it always boots up in tap-time mode, and I always just leave it turned on so I can never remember how to put it into autostart mode when I need to.)

I don't think I've ever had a loop longer than 10 seconds or so. It does have enough storage for an insane amount of loop time but that's intended for having a bunch of loops stored on the device - great if you want it as a drum machine, I guess, but not terribly useful for build-it-live performance. But again, I haven't really messed much with the slot selection stuff so maybe having more space is useful? It just seems like it'd be mostly annoying to do one song where you build up loops in multiple slots and then have to go and clear it out afterwards, since even just clearing out the crappy preset loops when I first bought it was a pain.

I've actually seen some pretty amazing stuff done with knob-twiddling on the Line 6, like this one guy who makes a capella glitch noises and so on (unfortunately I can't remember his name or any keywords or I'd totally link to the YouTube video).

I got an RC-2 loopstation (the smallest of the BOSS loop pedals) last week, and I'm going to use it on Saturday at a solo gig at an art gallery opening. I intend to buy an FS-6 pedal to use with the loopstation.

The RC-2 works for my purposes, right now. One technique I'm working up is to record an intro which is my chorus chord progression into the looper. I then stop recording, play the first couple verses of the song, then start playing the loop while I sing the chorus, recording the chorus vocals into the looper on top of the chords. Then stop recording and play the next verse and bridge-- when the chorus comes around again I can start the loop playing and harmonize on top of myself! At the end of the song if I repeat a couple choruses I can stack harmonies.

And if I feel like it I can then add a coda to the performance, by just continuing to stack stuff on the loop. When I'm through I reach over and slowly turn the volume off on my amp, then stop the loops.

It's a very simplistic way of adding some extra parts to a Guy n' Guitar performance.

The FS-6 is another box, branded Roland, which is just a pair of controller pedals-- one "momentary", the other "toggle". (Roland owns BOSS, and the instructions for using the pedals together are in the RC-2 manual.)

The FS-6 plugs into the RC-2, and you use the extra pedals for functions like "stop/start"-- normally to stop the loop you have to stomp twice on the RC-2 pedal. The function I'm most keen to try, however, is "next pattern", which will let me record multiple loops on the RC-2 and switch between them using the FS-6. So I can record my chorus progression, then my verse progression, and switch between them as I need to.

It gets pretty complex pretty quickly, but I'm pleased with the results so far. Loop pedals make it really easy to kick ass on songs that use only one chord progression. "Such Great Heights" is one example which I'm working up for the gig on Saturday.

I've been reading a lot about live looping with Ableton Live, and I'm keen to try it-- looks like you can get a lot of control over the performance, but it also looks like a lot of effort to set up and learn to use effectively. The loopstation pedals have a much lower learning curve, I think. Well, actually I could probably replicate the RC-2 pretty easily in Ableton, but an Ableton setup is like $600 for the software and then more still for a MIDI controller pedal to use it with.

As an update, I just dug out my older Yamaha mixer and one of my MXL v63ms, ran the guitar and mic into the mixer, the mixer into the loop pedal, and the loop pedal into the amp, and I got a MUCH better sound that way. The guitar was only improved a little, but the mic was way the hell better than the crappy Radio Shack dynamic I was using before.

Unfortunately, my practice space setup is nowhere near my computer (and my computer area doesn't have room for the whole setup), so recording it is a pain. You'll just have to hear me on the SF Tour.

jb wrote:I intend to buy an FS-6 pedal to use with the loopstation.

Seems like a cool pedal, though did you see in the reviews on Musician's Friend that it only runs on battery power?

jb wrote:I've been reading a lot about live looping with Ableton Live, and I'm keen to try it-- looks like you can get a lot of control over the performance, but it also looks like a lot of effort to set up and learn to use effectively. The loopstation pedals have a much lower learning curve, I think. Well, actually I could probably replicate the RC-2 pretty easily in Ableton, but an Ableton setup is like $600 for the software and then more still for a MIDI controller pedal to use it with.

I'm sure you and fluffy have seen this, but for anyone here who hasn't seen it yet, this video of Kid Beyond shows him talking about his custom Live setup, using some Windows software that turns MIDI into keystrokes, so he can control Live using a MIDI bigass pedalboard. He does some really amazing stuff, that I don't think he could do with any of the loop pedals, but yeah, he probably spent a ton of time working out his setup.

State Shirt also does some amazing looping stuff. His rig didn't involve a computer, but the last time I saw it a huge pile of gear was involved, and it probably took a long time to work all that out, too. Granted, he's doing guitar and vocals, so that makes it more complicated than just using one audio source.

Probably in another generation or two the looping pedals will start to catch up with the custom setups in terms of flexibility control.

Lunkhead wrote:State Shirt also does some amazing looping stuff. His rig didn't involve a computer, but the last time I saw it a huge pile of gear was involved, and it probably took a long time to work all that out, too. Granted, he's doing guitar and vocals, so that makes it more complicated than just using one audio source.

I forget which loop pedal he was using back in SF Van Nuys but most of the complexity in his setup was with the effects pedals, and also I think he had a couple of routing switches so that he could have only one input get looped at any given time (which is the big drawback to the 20XL).

He had a mixer, a Line 6 ToneCore delay pedal, a Line 6 DL4, and I think he also had a couple of Gibson Echoplexes in a rack, among other miscellaneous items, if I recall correctly. I think he's said that he has since simplified his setup. Ethan, are you out there?

I use the L6 tonecore into an RC-20 for most of my delay needs. It's not the "XL" version but it still holds almost five and a half minutes of sample; I have no idea what happens when you run out of space.

It's okay for building up a loopy song but not for anything too fancy. I also use it to trigger prerecorded stuff-- for example, I had a whole screechy heavy metal guitar solo saved on it for Goodbye Monster, though I ended up not using it at the Brooklyn show. (I was playing the song slower than usual, so the tempo was all wrong.) The RC-20 also has a line in that I've used to connect an iPod to. It takes some trial and error to get all the levels right but it's worth the effort.

Ben Krieger was using some kind of pedal, too. I couldn't see what it was but it looked (from the audience) like it had four or five separate foot buttons. Not a DL4.

The one thing I'd recommend, whatever system y'all end up using-- practice. It's harder than it looks to get the timing exactly right when you first start building up a loop, and it's painfully obvious (and painful) when you miss. I suppose that goes for everything, though.

Lunkhead wrote:

jb wrote:I intend to buy an FS-6 pedal to use with the loopstation.

Seems like a cool pedal, though did you see in the reviews on Musician's Friend that it only runs on battery power?

I didn't, which surprises me since I wouldn't think it'd need any power at all. But in any case, I've been using the RC-2 on battery power for a couple hours of playing time and it's still going-- since the FS-6 isn't actually manipulating sound I'd think a battery would last a loooooong time. (I didn't know I needed a special BOSS power supply to plug the RC-2 in. What kind of lame company doesn't include a power supply? Sheesh.)

I have an FS-5U that doesn't require a battery. It is notched on the side to hook together with the FS-5L. It'd cost more to purchase both, but save in battery needs. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navigati ... footswitch I used the switch for keyboard, rarely, but all the time for my old digital recorder for start/stop/record. Good to have around.

jb wrote:BOSS [...] What kind of lame company doesn't include a power supply?

Has BOSS ever included power supplies in their battery-operable things? The RC20XL didn't come with one either.

Paco Del Stinko wrote:I have an FS-5U that doesn't require a battery. It is notched on the side to hook together with the FS-5L. It'd cost more to purchase both, but save in battery needs. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navigati ... footswitch I used the switch for keyboard, rarely, but all the time for my old digital recorder for start/stop/record. Good to have around.

Same here at the Rabid house. Sort of. 2 FS-5Us slotted together, connected via a cable (2 1/4" plugs on one end, mono to 1 1/4" stereo plug on the other) for drum machine/foot controller duties. Start/stop & increment is what it's usually used for. Works a treat. And toggling the polarity switch on the pedal makes it an always on/momentary off, if you're going for lotsa noise on a synth, heh.

Fluffy, were you thinking of Dokaka?

fluffy wrote:

jb wrote:BOSS [...] What kind of lame company doesn't include a power supply?

Has BOSS ever included power supplies in their battery-operable things? The RC20XL didn't come with one either.

Alex, I'll take No for $1,000.

No, but Dokaka looks cool too (although his looping stuff is still pretty straightforward, from what I can tell by skimming YouTube). The guy I'm thinking of is Jamaican (I think), and actually pushes the looper to its limit by constantly changing the tempo/length, filter parameters, etc.

fluffy wrote:

jb wrote:BOSS [...] What kind of lame company doesn't include a power supply?

Has BOSS ever included power supplies in their battery-operable things? The RC20XL didn't come with one either.

Maybe it's different over here, or maybe it's changed since last time I bought BOSS gear (early 90s), but the DR550mkII, DS330 and SE50 all came with power supplies.

Oh man, my loop version of Run Faster has gotten to the point of pure awesome. I can't wait to perform this live.

Lunkhead wrote:He had a mixer, a Line 6 ToneCore delay pedal, a Line 6 DL4, and I think he also had a couple of Gibson Echoplexes in a rack, among other miscellaneous items, if I recall correctly. I think he's said that he has since simplified his setup. Ethan, are you out there?

Hey guys, fluffy just directed me to this thread, so I'll drop in some info...

I keep modifying my setup, but in general I do use the Echoplexes for looping. They're expensive and somewhat difficult to set up but extremely flexible. I have a Line 6 Echo Park for guitar delay and a DL4 for vocals, and sometimes I'll use the DL4 for loops and vocal noises. Cheap Tapco mixer to route everything to the Echoplexes and the PA. I have a bunch of other pedals and little keyboards that I'll throw in the mix depending on how I'm feeling / how many beers I've had.

I've tried the Boss RC50 but just didn't really like how it worked, I guess I'm used to the way the Echoplexes work. Also had a Digitech JamMan but it just felt limiting. A couple years ago I also experimented with Ableton Live and a MIDI foot controller. There was a lot involved to set up MIDI note triggering and playback the way I wanted so I gave up on it. At the time you also needed some buggy shareware to sync it up with the foot controller. I'll probably look into it again at some point.

Fluf, you can call yourself, Lolloopedlooza

Bill is in the mail.

thought it would be helpful to provide a few more details...

here are a couple photos of my loop setup... Since the photos I've added a Boss DF-2 Super Distortion and Feedbacker and a Boss TU-2 tuner. Basically vocals go through the DL4 and DF2 (and a shitty Sabine Feedback Eliminator)... Guitars go through the AM4 and Echo Park. All that and a crappy Yamaha keyboard go into the crappy Tapco mixer. Routed to the Echoplexes and out to the PA and to guitar amps if I want to play loud. Borrowing a Line 6 Spider Valve from work and it's fucking awesome. Echoplexes are synced and controlled by a shitty Behringer foot controller, with a broken '1' button.

25% off the Gibson Echoplexes currently at Musician's Friend. (Now they're only $600!)

25% off the Gibson Echoplexes currently at Musician's Friend.

25% is a lot off, but still too much for how little I'd use it. I'm not good at looping, but may be a bit loopy. I'd like a Fulltone TTE for delay, but way too much cake.

Looks like I have the same weird angle SKB rack as Stateshirt, but that's where the similarities end.

oh man I totally like websites which put large blocks of text inside a blink tag so I have to read a few words and then wait a few seconds then read a few more words instead of being able to just scan the whole paragraph in one go like how the brain likes to work