This question goes out to all solo bassists out there.

There is a massive sale going on now at my local music store, and I was lucky enough to pick up a Digitech Jamman, Boss DD6, and an Ebow for pretty cheap. I've been working with them for about 4 hours straight, and I'm only beginning to see the possibilities out there, especially having 2 usable loopers.

The first song I worked out took me about half an hour to piece together with overdubs. While I am assuming that the learning curve of each of the pedals and the ebow factor into this, I am a bit concerned for my ability to build a song on the fly. My goal is to be able to play solo bass at various open mics within a few months, and I think being able to create a song at the drop of a hat using a looper would be an incredible tool to have.

So, my question to all of you is: How do you approach live composition using a looper?


And for Steve: Your work with Julie McKee has made me consider working with a singer friend of mine as a duo, as our guitarist and drummer situation isn't the most stable right now. What are your thoughts on performing in a singer/bassist pair? And of course, the composition aspect of it?

Thanks for the help,
Nate

Well, first thing I can say is simply this: Don't worry about it. Using a looper to play with yourself (in the musical sense) is pretty far off the beaten path compared to most other aspects of bass playing, and it takes time to adjust to.

As you said, the learning curve of using a looper plays a lot into it - it's like starting on a new instrument. Over time, you will gain a better feel for what will and won't work. When I started with loopers, most of the stuff I came up with for the first year or so was pretty sucktastic.

The best piece of advice I found when starting the looping stuff was that it's a good idea to start the loop simple. A short groove, a chord or two, maybe even just a muted hit - use things that are easy to build on. If you put too much stuff into the original loop, you can't add too much before it starts sounding like a traffic jam. You can always add another layer if necessary.

For live improvising, the above is even more important because you want your material to sound like a song. The looper gives you the time to think about what the song is saying, where it's going, etc.

For example, if you started by looping a single chord, you could gradually add notes in that key to create a melody, and you could then add more chords to provide harmonic support. Once you have that in place, you could solo over top of that or use the other looper to do another part to the song, and then go back to the original later if it fits.

With the JamMan, you can also try using the slow fade-out function to keep building on the fly. This way, you get a song that never remains static, which is also cool.

These are just a couple of examples. The amount of ideas and possibilities with loopers are literally endless - it can be a bit befuddling at times, but it's well worth the effort!

Hope this is helpful! :)