I’ve been tossing around the idea of looping with hardware for quite a while, basically since I first heard of it a few months ago. It would allow me to perform music with much more flexibility than just me playing a single instrument, and it is a lot of fun, too. I am now at the point where I have to decide what kind of setup I want to use, and work on getting it functional in my setup.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, there’s three routes you can go: a dedicated looping pedal, an analog tape delay (or equivalent), or a computer with software. Here’s a brief look at the three, and why I chose the last one.
Looper Pedals
These would include pedals by Digitech, Boss, Line6, and a few others. Each company makes a few different models, each with more buttons/features than the last. The two most popular are the Boss RC Series, and the Digitech JamMan series, both of which come in different sizes and with different features.
There’s single-sized pedals, double-sized, and huge-sized ones. These pedals start at around $100 for the singles, and up to $400 or more for the full-featured ones. Now, I understand the attraction of a portable self-contained unit, especially the Digitech ones that have SD flash card slots, which let you pre-load it with background loops. However, the single pedals only have the most basic functions, and having only one footswitch really limits what you can do with it. You can get an add-on switch for most of the smaller ones, which helps, but you’re still looking at $300 to start off with.
Delays
There’s also the way to overdub, the way the old-school guys did it, with a looping tape recorder and moveable record/play heads. The original units cost a large fortune, but you can get smaller “tape simulation” pedals that work almost exactly the same way. Some of these include theDanelectro Reel-Echo, Line 6 DL-4, Strymon Timeline, TC Electronics Flashback, and several other units of note.
PC Software Looping
However, I have access to lots of old computer parts, and there is plenty of free looping software. I can use a setup like this, but you need some way to control it live, of course, preferably with a footswitch. I happen to have a MIDI foot controller, but it’s old, and doesn’t recognize double-steps very well at all. I also have a small MIDI keyboard, but that would be hard to use with my feet.
So my next course of action would be to build a foot pedal. Yes, it’s possible to do this, it just requires some electronics know-how and a little persistance. However, the cost is significant, as the controller “brain” boards are quite expensive. You can get keyboard controller “brain” boards for fairly cheap, though, most notably for arcade cabinet emulators! This would give me almost the same functionality as a MIDI pedal, but at a much cheaper price. So I placed an order withUltimarc for an iPac-2 controller, and ordered some arcade buttons from Sparkfun.com to complete the hardware list.
The software I’m using is called Sooper Looper and runs on Linux and OSX. It’s free, and has tons of features based on the legendary Echoplex Digital Pro looping unit.
My personal looping setup is now just about complete. I’ll post up some shots of it in action soon!