Any practical live uses for a looper effect

looping?

 

maybe not in a 5 piece, but I used it in a 4 piece for drum loops and some arpeggiated keyboard parts

 

I own a Boss RC-20XL looper which I use in a classic rock cover band.

I was using a MIDI sequencer to trigger sound effects during songs but the RC-20XL is much better becuase it's simpler to use and faster to change samples. Here are the samples I use;

1. Whole Lotta Love / The effected slide guitar in the chorus
2. Saturday Night's All RIght / the Sytehsiser 'swoosh'
3. Suite Madame Blue / the 'high B' syth drone
4. Hot Blooded / the organ drone in the chorus
5. Sweet Emotion / Intro Bass Riff (I play 'lead bass' through a talkbox during the intro.)
6. Empty Spaces (by Pink Floyd, we start sets with this and then segue into 'Young Lust' just like on "The Wall").

I also cover the bass solo "The Fish" by Chris Squire / Yes by looping nine bass parts and then doing a solo over top.

Loopers are also a great pratcice device. I will record play a chord progression into my looper and have it play back infinatley while I work on a bass line to it. (Try finding a guitar player with that kind of patience )

 

loop stations are great. i am a solo bassist/freelance and frequently use my looper live. but i found out that its only good for solo purposes. i used it many times and as its great to solo and improvise over your own things and make it feel like more than x amount of people in your band, it takes away cause when you improvise with people you feel. let me stress feel. loop stations cannot feel, they are computerized and while its a great concept i hardly use loops in jamming situations.

 

There is actually part of the last song I did where I used looping on my GT-6B. There was a riff which I played, and it sounded good on top of another riff, so I looped it and played the loop on top of the other riff live. This was in a rock/metal band.