Re: Looping with a drummer

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

Here's what comes to mind:

- A pedal to instantly retrigger the loop takes you far. With a multi
track looper this command should affect all loops that play in
parallel.

- A way to change tempo is nice too. But this only works if your
looper can time-stretch loops. Do not use normal tap-tempo method that
most manuals recommend. Go for an EDP style tempo reset instead -
which means kicking some pedal twice with one or two bar's distance in
time and have the looper instantly calculate the new tempo. I use this
with a five to eight piece band that plays composed songs for a
dancing audience (West African stuff with an electronic edge). I loop
a little between songs but most loops in the songs are pre prepared on
the laptop that I use to amplify the EWI I play. Instead of using a
looper I put those loops into the plug-in Playback because this allows
for handling the audio in an "elastic" way to match instantly defined
new tempi by the above mentioned method. Oh, I use a "dummy" (no audio
in/output) instance of the Loopback plug-in of Mainstage's to set new
tempi "EDP style". Since this is a pro band we have stand-in musicians
to not miss out on gigs if some guy should be gigging somewhere else
with another band. The first drummer always brought a pocket metronome
and always started the songs at the right tempo, so I could set up
patches with a sampler to trigger pre sequenced lines that are to be
triggered by some of the notes I play. But then we got a new drummer
that doesn't and I needed to rework all sampler patches into Playback
patches in order to follow his tempo on stage.

- If you use a looper that doesn't handle elastic audio you can simply
record a new loop as you perform the EDP style tempo fix trick.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com
www.looproom.com internet music hub



On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Michael Peters <mp@mpeters.de> wrote:
> Maybe I'll find out on Nov 8th how Adrian Belew's drummer copes with the
> loops that come from Adrian. Does he have a click in an in-ear monitor, 
>or
> something like that, or does he simply listen to the loops on the monitor
> box, and that is enough to keep him synced?
>
> What are your experiences of rhythmic guitar looping in a band - what is 
>the
> best way to keep the drummer synced to the loop that you create? do you 
>use
> a predefined click, something like a Ableton backing track - or do you 
>set
> the loop timing by foot and leave it to the drummer to stay synced with 
>it?
> do you give him headphones or just point some speaker towards him?
>
> I have this fabulous bassist and drummer and we're just starting to 
>develop
> material. It is not sure if we will find a suitable keyboard player - we
> might stay a power trio for a while, and I'd like to find ways to enhance
> this situation by using loops. Not sure how though.
>
> -Michael
>
>