Effects Guide: Live Loopers

Live looping has never been more popular than it is today.

Players now have the tools within a small pedal that once took multiple skilled people and incredibly expensive gear to pull off, and even then, it couldn’t be done live.

Now, artists like Radiohead, KT Tunstall, Ed Sheeran, Andy Othling (the ambient guitar genius behind the band Lowercase Noises) or Sarah Lipstate (A.K.A. soundscape artist Noveller) have taken live looping pedals from a simple—and effective—practice tool to a mechanism for building an entire performance, or creating otherworldly soundscapes previously possible only in a multitrack studio.

There are actually two completely different types of pedals called loopers, so let's clear up any confusion about those differences first.

One is used to enable or bypass complete effect pedal chains allowing players to use one footswitch to switch in multiple effects, or shorten the signal path to avoid loss of tone.

This article, however, will concentrate on the loopers that allow the player to record loops of themselves and play those loops back while adding more layers live or recording additional parts.

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What Is a Looper?

Loopers allow you to record your input signal and play it back indefinitely. This is achieved by converting the analog input signal to digital and storing it in RAM (or another form of media). This is similar to how a sampler works, but with a different feature-set and purpose. What sets one looper apart from the next is what it allows you to do after the loop is recorded.

A basic looper will let you to record, playback, overdub (recording additional parts over your previous loop), and adjust the volume of playback. More extensive loopers add in features such as playback speed (1/2 speed, double speed), undo/redo (also used to change parts for verse/chorus) stutter, reverse, and more. Some loopers even have effects like delay and reverb. Others have included a drum machine for practicing with or building full band multitrack loops.

The top of the line, large loopers usually also offer the ability to record separate loops. This allows you to build up layers of loops and record different parts of a song and switch between each loop as needed.

As if that weren’t enough to get you on board with looping, many loopers also offer the ability to hook up to your computer via USB to transfer loops to and from the looper to save them to work on later, or manipulate them in software and load them back in. Some allow you to save to internal storage or a variety of removable media such as SD cards. This gives them the ability to act as multitrack recording workstation for songwriting and recording demos.

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Speed

Some loopers will give you the ability to play back the loop at different speeds. These loopers don’t have advanced signal processing capabilities however, so any change of speed will also change pitch.

Recording a loop at normal speed and switching to half speed will sound an octave lower, just as recording at half speed and switching to normal speed will sound an octave higher. Very useful for emulating bass guitar when pitched down, or making high-pitched arpeggios sound like staccato bells.

It takes some practice to get used to. You have to re-think your parts and play them half or twice as fast as your destination tempo in order for it to turn out the way you intend. A great performance like this is by Gerry Leonard from David Bowie’s band on the track “Sunday” from A Reality Tour.

This live performance starts with Leonard playing a slow arpeggio into a looper which is subsequently doubled in speed, throwing the speed up an octave. This loop runs into a second looper pedal and is sped and pitched up again, adding new guitar parts along the way before the loop is stopped. He brings it all back in with a stutter effect. Leonard makes the whole thing seem effortless and magical at the same time.

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A Perfect Practice Tool

As sweet as a lot of these features are, loopers can also make you a better player.

Record a loop of a basic rhythm guitar riff, and you can spend hours soloing over the top. It’s a rhythm guitarist that will play forever, never get tired, and always plays in perfect time (as long as you recorded it that way). It's a perfect practice tool.

If you’re having trouble singing and playing guitar at the same time, you can loop the guitar part and start singing over it, slowly starting to play guitar in sync to the loop.

Just wrote a cool bass riff? Loop it and pick up your guitar to finish writing the song. You can overdub the rhythm guitar track while you work on lyrics, or lead guitar. If your looper pedal has an on-board drum machine your demo is practically in the can.

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Overdubbing

This is where the fun really starts.

Let’s say you’ve recorded a loop playing a basic rhythm by hitting the strings with your pick hand. You can enter overdub mode and record on top of this loop with a quick lead line. The looper helps you to build all this up as a live intro and then allows you to hit "stop" to allow live guitar for the verse, while bringing the initial loops all back in for a chorus.

This may be hard to wrap your head around without really hearing someone doing it. Ed Sheeran has perfected this method of song creation live and you can hear him building the layers in the song “The City – Live at Sticky Studios” from the album 5.

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Adding a Looper to Your Effects Chain

This requires some advanced planning, some trial and error, and just knowing your own personal intended uses.

You may want to have some overdubs in the loop use short delays, distortion, or other effects, and the looper must be placed after these in order to record those effects, but it should almost certainly be placed before long reverbs or delays, as these will be very difficult to loop properly.

If your looper has a stereo input, you can use the left input for your guitar, and the right for plugging in a mixer so you can loop vocals, percussion and keyboards.

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Conclusion

Loopers are more than just recording and playback tools. They are a new tool of creation and expression, changing the performance of music today just as much as the fuzz pedal or the wah pedal did back in the 1960’s.

Loopers will help you learn to play guitar, improve your skills and allow you to create cascasding murals of sonic art. With loopers, what you get out of it, can be so much more than you put in.