Beginners’ Lesson
One piece of gear that you’ll have seen mentioned here a few times, and which has been a constant presence in my music making and learning for almost three decades, is the looper. Loop pedals have come a very long way since I first started experimenting with the two seconds (!) of loop time in my ART Nightbass back in the early 90s. I’ve been performing live with a looper since just after those first experiments, and in that time, I’ve discovered so many ways that a looper can help me learn and practise. Used wisely, a loop pedal can help make you a much better musician, so let’s start exploring a few of the ways we can employ it in our solo practice—something that we’re all too familiar with right now! We’re going to break down the aspects that a looper can help with into three main categories: timing, harmony, and listening. Let’s start with timing.
The first thing we need to realize about practising with a looper is that creating the loop has its own rhythmic impact on our music. This is a feature, not a bug, that we’ve inherited from turntablism. The way that a DJ spins a breakbeat back to the ‘launch’ point
