How To Use A Looper Pedal

Learning how to employ a looper pedal to layer guitar tracks can exist a fantastic way of getting more out of your guitar playing. Use it equally a learning tool and stack tracks with a harmonically 'correct' approach or free your ears from all constraints and just encounter what happens!

Hither, we've written an audio-visual guitar piece that's nearly similar a mini-orchestra, just we're actually only scratching the surface of what's possible and hopefully showing y'all how a looper can make a piece greater than the sum of some easy-to-play parts.

It'll too introduce you lot to the almost important elements of looping – namely, perfecting your timing and using dynamics and space and then your parts flow.

And the adjacent pace? Well, you're limited only by your inventiveness! Endeavour incorporating percussive strikes as a groove to jam over.

Alternatively, place your looper after some effects in your betoken concatenation to really broaden your options. Simply remember the gold rule to give each function its space, with lows, mids and highs overlapping and intertwining.

Hear the looper example in full

Guitar i: The foundation

How to use a looper — (Image credit: Time to come)

Guitar 1 acts every bit the foundation upon which everything else is built. Think like a bassist would – melodic but consistent and leaving plenty of space for everything else that follows. You don't accept to first in the low register, but it does give you scope to starting time moving higher in pitch with subsequent parts.

Guitar 2: Chords

Develop that foundation by adding some simple chords. The trick is to get-go to make full things out but not too much or you'll be playing over a wall of mud – we've stuck to some simple two-note shapes. Never lose sight of the key signature (A modest here). You lot e'er desire a rough thought of where you tin go next.

Guitar iii: Simple melody

With the foundation in place, we're developing a melody, which nosotros're keeping simple so information technology'due south easy to add harmonies or a more detailed office. We've shifted higher in the register to make the office stand out. A big role of looping is the contrast betwixt the low, center and high register.

iv. Guitar 4: Harmony line

The melody is now harmonized, and to begin with, simple harmonies of 3rds, 4ths and 5ths give a skillful audio – yous tin experiment with more adventurous harmonies as you progress. Alternatively, endeavor playing an octave upward.

5. Guitar 5: Busier part

The space in the previous loops leaves room for usa to add this final function which is busier. Calculation this type of rhythm changes the experience of the loops and gives everything more of a experience of urgency. Think of this part equally being more of a riff-based idea every bit opposed to the chords/melody approach.

Looper legends

1. Frippertronics

Long earlier loopers became pedalboard mainstays, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp played into analogue tape reels set up side by side with what's recorded on one being sent onto the other and so returned, creating a filibuster effect to which you can add new layers of guitar. Robert called this influential organization 'Frippertronics'.

ii. KT Tunstall and the 'modern' approach

For a looper masterclass, cheque out a alive operation of Tunstall's 2005 track Black Horse And The Ruddy Tree. One of the earliest artists to popularise loopers in what nosotros'll call 'the modernistic age', Tunstall incorporates percussive acoustic guitar strikes, vocal harmonies, handclaps and tambourine equally a backing for her lead song and strummed guitar.

iii. Open up-mic goes stadium-sized

If anyone demonstrates the sheer calibration of looping's potential to elevate what is ostensibly a solo open-mic acoustic functioning to a U2-esque stadium caricature, it'southward Sheeran. Ed'south Chewie II board is MIDI-enabled, driving Ableton Live and allows him and his live engineer to control the loops at all times.

4. Art-rock and avant garde

Merrill Garbus' output with Tune-Yards features looped live drums, vocals and percussion. Tash Sultana'southward Jungle is a modern looper guitar classic, with Tash integrating pitch-shifted parts for the bassline, live looped synth drums and chorus-drenched chords.