Looping bassists...what's your technique

[cosmicevan]

I'm about to embark on the Blooper journey, though I still use 2 loopers w a flip flop / pedal switcher between for most of my looping. I've gotten into more of the weird loopers too and depending on the music, at times I'll use a Count to 5 for looper or even an 856 for Zellersasn. I'm hoping to add a Chase Bliss Mood at some point too.

 

[expatmuso]

I'm about to embark on the Blooper journey,

I'd be curious to know about how this journey pans out

 

[cosmicevan]

I'd be curious to know about how this journey pans out

After day 1 I will report I am SUPER impressed. Basics are easy to grasp and the advanced features immediately make my mind explode with ideas. I have not even considered MIDI or dip switches...and I initially was certain that this would be tabletop but now I have a lot of ideas on using this on a pedalboard. Its got a LOT of functionality packed in there thats all very accessible.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

We can hang. :::beer:::

I am totally into asynchronous looping...which admittedly may be because I started with really primitive loopers that didn't offer much control over exactly when/where the loop would start or stop. (E.g., the Electro-Harmonix 16-Second Digital Delay...both original and reissue. Neither was particularly controllable when it came to selecting loop start. But they were so cool that their "bug" became a desirable feature.)

But that aesthetic is also influenced by a rather profound experience I had 20-something years ago playing with Mat Maneri's Inslut, a (presumably short-lived) band that was his attempt to blend avant-garde microtonal jazz with hip-hop. The DJ in that band had the typical hip-hop DJ setup of two turntables and a mixer with a fader...but his record bins, instead of containing tracks with funky drumbeats that he could loop and scratch to create rhythmic beats, consisted of albums like Elliot Carter's string quartets, or Ornette Coleman's 1960s free jazz quartets. His use of arrhythmic material to create a sonic atmosphere/environment for the live musicians to frolic in definitely impacted the way I use live looping nowadays.

My current rig still includes the two Electro-Harmonix 16-Second Digital Delays (original & reissue) plus a tc electronic Ditto, a tc Electronic Flashback (which mostly lives in loop mode), a Montreal Assembly Count To 5, and a Chase Bliss MOOD. I don't think anybody could manage to get all of those in sync if they tried! but it's so much fun when they're caterwauling asynchronously that I'm not sure I've even been tempted to try.

I tried a two ditto set up on my dual rig.
(Bass amp and "guitar").
Combined with the on/off custom switch I have for each amp......
It was a total nightmare to pull off live with the band.

On the other hand I found it to be an awesome tool for other applications such as ambient/noise/texture sounds I may have talked about in the ambient thread.

 

[Bob_Ross]

It was a total nightmare to pull off live with the band.
On the other hand I found it to be an awesome tool for other applications such as ambient/noise/texture sounds I may have talked about in the ambient thread.

To be perfectly clear: When I have the 5 or 6 loopers caterwauling asynchronously the last thing I'm trying to do is lock in with a drumbeat. Or even with myself, necessarily.
One of the most salient features (I almost said "The whole point" but that's not really true) of my having multiple nested looping delays is to introduce un-predictability. To smear the edges so the repetition isn't so overtly repetitive. To embrace chaos.

So I'm almost never looping a bass line or a groove or a lick that needs to be perfectly metric and locked to someone else's grid. Folks that pull that stuff off live with a band have my utmost respect...but also rarely sustain my interest beyond the Parlor Trick aspect of the performance.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

To be perfectly clear: When I have the 5 or 6 loopers caterwauling asynchronously the last thing I'm trying to do is lock in with a drumbeat. Or even with myself, necessarily.
One of the most salient features (I almost said "The whole point" but that's not really true) of my having multiple nested looping delays is to introduce un-predictability. To smear the edges so the repetition isn't so overtly repetitive. To embrace chaos.

So I'm almost never looping a bass line or a groove or a lick that needs to be perfectly metric and locked to someone else's grid. Folks that pull that stuff off live with a band have my utmost respect...but also rarely sustain my interest beyond the Parlor Trick aspect of the performance.

100% agreed. It was mostly used for the chaos, unpredictable aspect of the looper. I especially like glitching the Ditto....(sample a super short part, hit record and stack as many layered as you want, it becomes a huge swelling rapid machine gun “tremolo” type effect....a real speaker popper.)

I was not looking to synch everything up with the band anyways....was never the plan.
I just found it was too much to control at the same time. Since it’s just me , the drummer and the singer that also does live loop sample manipulation.
Loop A, Loop B, Bass, “guitar”, On\off channel bass, on\off channel B.....plus some FX......I was having issues with what the F%^& is going on.

I may put only one Ditto back on but as the second pedal in the chain, after the tuner.....it may be easier to control like that....??

(I can send you a link to my said band’s bandcamp to give you an idea, you can even steal our album!!!!!)

 

[Bob_Ross]

After day 1 I will report I am SUPER impressed. Basics are easy to grasp and the advanced features immediately make my mind explode with ideas.

I was hoping I could satisfy my Blooper jones through you vicariously, but comments like ^^^that are just making me wanna buy one even more!

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

I was hoping I could satisfy my Blooper jones through you vicariously, but comments like ^^^that are just making me wanna buy one even more!

 

[CarlMega]

/SNIP PIC OF ME RIGHT NOW

So timely: Looping, Ambient, pedal GAS. I have a EHX SuperEgo coming which blew my mind when I saw it demo'd online. Was planning on the Freeze but, man, what I saw the Ego doing was next level.

I did get Janek's book btw and I want to give it proper attention. It'll be a slow work-thru for me but it gets my brain working thru musical soundscape construction.

On the hindsight front, when I bought my looper I went for full-featured - the Boss RC-3. Thinking I'd be doing practice recording and keeping a diary of various loops n such. That's not proved to be the case and further, it introduces noise in my signal chain (despite being isolated) so it kinda grinds on me. I'd rather have several mini-loopers a la TC and keep it simple and fluid & present in the moment.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

So timely: Looping, Ambient, pedal GAS. I have a EHX SuperEgo coming which blew my mind when I saw it demo'd online. Was planning on the Freeze but, man, what I saw the Ego doing was next level.

I did get Janek's book btw and I want to give it proper attention. It'll be a slow work-thru for me but it gets my brain working thru musical soundscape construction.

On the hindsight front, when I bought my looper I went for full-featured - the Boss RC-3. Thinking I'd be doing practice recording and keeping a diary of various loops n such. That's not proved to be the case and further, it introduces noise in my signal chain (despite being isolated) so it kinda grinds on me. I'd rather have several mini-loopers a la TC and keep it simple and fluid & present in the moment.

Skip the book. Why the heck do I need someone else to tell me how i wanna make loops...??!?!
Do your own thing imo.

My 2 cents.

 

[CarlMega]

Skip the book. Why the heck do I need someone else to tell me how i wanna make loops...??!?!
Do your own thing imo.

My 2 cents.

I feel ya. In fairness, we're probably at different points.

I imagine other musicians who are further along on their ability/musical journey can jump directly into the personally creative end. I've found that if I do that unstructured, I tend to gravitate to what I can play *now* vs. trying to emulate or reconstruct ideas other people have... when I work on other people's material / ideas, I need to apply myself to get that skill and thus it expands my repertoire.

Take all that with a grain of salt, as I've only been playing (tho diligently & deliberately) for like 3 years - so I'd have no right to firm stylistic ego & zero chance of sounding like Janek. I'm in sponge mode - listening to everyone, stealing... exploring with curiosity but (hopefully) putting in the work to improve.

(heh - that turned into a speech! sorry about that!) Cheers!

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

I feel ya. In fairness, we're probably at different points.

I imagine other musicians who are further along on their ability/musical journey can jump directly into the personally creative end. I've found that if I do that unstructured, I tend to gravitate to what I can play *now* vs. trying to emulate or reconstruct ideas other people have... when I work on other people's material / ideas, I need to apply myself to get that skill and thus it expands my repertoire.

Take all that with a grain of salt, as I've only been playing (tho diligently & deliberately) for like 3 years - so I'd have no right to firm stylistic ego & zero chance of sounding like Janek. I'm in sponge mode - listening to everyone, stealing... exploring with curiosity but (hopefully) putting in the work to improve.

(heh - that turned into a speech! sorry about that!) Cheers!

I hear ya. Keep workin hard my friend.
3 years....I wish i could go back and kick my own butt when I was at that stage.

Side note: no one told any of the hip hop pioneers how to sample and chop stuff. Heck....they all started doing those with pause tapes, not even samplers.

Just keep that in the back of your mind.

 

[cosmicevan]

I was hoping I could satisfy my Blooper jones through you vicariously, but comments like ^^^that are just making me wanna buy one even more!

So funny you say that since I felt that way about you and the Mood. I will say that getting a Blooper made me want a Mood even more. I may end up selling some stuff to get a Mood...time will tell, but I'm now starting to re-enter the something comes in/something goes back out for gear purchases.

Blooper is a looper at it's heart. It's got a lot of interesting functions like one shot recording (for applying effects) and layer controls so you can easily bounce back and forth between overdub states (let's you access the last 8 layers recorded). These features on their own are really useful, but they open up all sorts of creative workflows such as setting repeats low allowing you to emulate a delay and create a massive delay trail (which can be minutes long if you want) -- and then evolve the sound - aka frippertronics. Along the way you can capture whatever points sound cool and then store them as layers. It gets wild. It's like one of those tools that is designed in such a way that it can do anything you can think of around basic looping, but because the architecture is so open it allows you to do things that are blocked on most traditional loopers, like adding effects, changing modes while recording, etc which opens up a kind of bottomless pit of creative options...but again, it's a looper, whereas Mood comes across more as an instrument to me. Blooper will loop what you tell it to loop and you can get to a place of happy accidents, but it isn't designed for that...well maybe it is, it's still so new for me. Mood seems to be designed for that.

Side note: no one told any of the hip hop pioneers how to sample and chop stuff. Heck....they all started doing those with pause tapes, not even samplers.

Just keep that in the back of your mind.

This is a great point. I was listening to an interview with (I believe) Rick Rubin and he was talking about hip hop and electronic music and how the best and most unique music comes from those who grew up listening to other music and bring their own spin to it since they don't follow "the rules" that were established before them...they bring things like rock sensibility to electronic tracks and hip hop. As someone getting more into creating electronic music or just a hybrid of things I like as a solo artist I really like that concept because I tend to focus on how it's done when I get into new things as opposed to what new spin can I bring to it.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

So funny you say that since I felt that way about you and the Mood. I will say that getting a Blooper made me want a Mood even more. I may end up selling some stuff to get a Mood...time will tell, but I'm now starting to re-enter the something comes in/something goes back out for gear purchases.

Blooper is a looper at it's heart. It's got a lot of interesting functions like one shot recording (for applying effects) and layer controls so you can easily bounce back and forth between overdub states (let's you access the last 8 layers recorded). These features on their own are really useful, but they open up all sorts of creative workflows such as setting repeats low allowing you to emulate a delay and create a massive delay trail (which can be minutes long if you want) -- and then evolve the sound - aka frippertronics. Along the way you can capture whatever points sound cool and then store them as layers. It gets wild. It's like one of those tools that is designed in such a way that it can do anything you can think of around basic looping, but because the architecture is so open it allows you to do things that are blocked on most traditional loopers, like adding effects, changing modes while recording, etc which opens up a kind of bottomless pit of creative options...but again, it's a looper, whereas Mood comes across more as an instrument to me. Blooper will loop what you tell it to loop and you can get to a place of happy accidents, but it isn't designed for that...well maybe it is, it's still so new for me. Mood seems to be designed for that.




This is a great point. I was listening to an interview with (I believe) Rick Rubin and he was talking about hip hop and electronic music and how the best and most unique music comes from those who grew up listening to other music and bring their own spin to it since they don't follow "the rules" that were established before them...they bring things like rock sensibility to electronic tracks and hip hop. As someone getting more into creating electronic music or just a hybrid of things I like as a solo artist I really like that concept because I tend to focus on how it's done when I get into new things as opposed to what new spin can I bring to it.

Interesting side note:

Amp Fiddler gave Dilla his first sampler without the instructions on purpose.

Let that one sink in

 

[cosmicevan]

Ok. So yeah, this blooper thing. Wow.

The layers thing w one shot recording is phenomenal. Mix those real time controls w.2 modifiers that can be recorded in real time as layers. Wow

 

[expatmuso]

Here's a 30 minute-ish performance I did as a self-isolation Facebook stream recently. I thought it turned out decently. I'm applying some tips I learned from the Janek Gwizdala book, especially about using a delay pedal with muting to get percussive textures. Looping is done with an EHX 22500 dual stereo looper.

Anyone else streaming livelooping?

 

[cosmicevan]

Here's a 30 minute-ish performance I did as a self-isolation Facebook stream recently. I thought it turned out decently. I'm applying some tips I learned from the Janek Gwizdala book, especially about using a delay pedal with muting to get percussive textures. Looping is done with an EHX 22500 dual stereo looper.

Anyone else streaming livelooping?

There's a group I used to be a part of called "Loopers Delight" that has transitioned to facebook. They do a lot of live stream looping and whatnot.

I checked out some of the video, was cool stuff.

 

[Bob_Ross]

There's a group I used to be a part of called "Loopers Delight" that has transitioned to facebook.

Oh wow, talk about a Blast-From-The-Past! I used to frequent Looper's Delight 20 or more years ago...was in negotiations with Kim Flint about putting some tutorials and product reviews up on the site prior to his untimely passing. Didn't realize they'd carried on after his demise. Is the Facebook version of any value?

 

[expatmuso]

Looper’s delight Facebook Group is worth checking out if you’re into looping. Someone just posted an interview with Dubfx. He’s quite engaging and does some cool demonstrations.

 

[cosmicevan]

Oh wow, talk about a Blast-From-The-Past! I used to frequent Looper's Delight 20 or more years ago...was in negotiations with Kim Flint about putting some tutorials and product reviews up on the site prior to his untimely passing. Didn't realize they'd carried on after his demise. Is the Facebook version of any value?

oh wow, I never heard Kim had passed. I too was into Loopers Delight about 20 yrs ago. I lived in the city at the time and used to even go to the live looping things down in alphabet city. My original looping rig was a pair of Electrix repeaters that I controlled w a behringer fcb1010. I still have (and proudly wear) my loopers delight t shirt