Introduction

(skip this and go to the loops!)

In ’99 or 2000, I got a Korg AX1000G guitar multi-effects pedal.  I used it up until August 2014, when my eldest daughter, Rachel, bought me a brand, spankin’, new DigiTech RP500.  So at that point, I started “painting” with a new palette.  So the loops below may have been done with or the other of these pedals to get the main sound effects (check the tags).

Somewhere around 2009-or-so, I started doing “prayer-room-style” worship sets at our church (and now we have a real “house of prayer!“)  For those who are not familiar with this context musically, there can be loooooooooong periods of time where spontaneous/improvised singing is done over a repeated chord progression.  Often, with our small set-up, I was the only musician and singer.  What does this mean?  It means my fingers were screaming! (and the accompanying chord progression could get a bit boring).

I discovered, probably around 2010, that looper pedals existed!  There was light at the end of the tunnel for my fingers and my creativity.

In 2011, I got a Digitech Jamman Delay, combination looper/delay guitar pedal for my birthday.  Happy Birthday to me!

Since then I’ve been having fun learning to exploit its capabilities.  Of course, like with all good techo-gear, I’ve also learned its limitations and have developed lots of gear-envy for other looper and delay pedals but this (now discontinued) model still does some stuff that I find unique in this genre of pedal. Even if I got other looper and delay pedals, I’d be hard-pressed to part with this one.

One nice capability is the ability to export stored loops as wav files that one can play with on computers.  So for a couple of years I’ve been storing loops that I’ve created that I think deserve a second look – in hopes that SOME day, I’d be able to:

1. Put them on-line to share with others (to use as you will)
2. Create my own “mashup” compositions using the loops as the building blocks

In a prayer-room, intercession or meditation setting, there are certain loops that have been very effective.  It’s worth noting that ALL of these have been birthed either directly in a prayer-room or in preparation for leading worship in a church setting.  I’m hoping that some of them can be used as is or in further compositions for “soaking” music or as background for meditation, prayer, intercession, etc.

My looping technique/process

My setup varies a bit only if I want to loop other things besides my guitar, like my voice or a harmonica or anything that I want to capture with a microphone.  I have a tiny Behringer Xenyx 502 mixer (yeah, yeah – I know.  Behringer is horrible, etc. blah, blah, blah).  For my purposes it works and for my budget as well.  Anyway, I can put that in front of my Korg AX1000G effects pedal and then feed that into my Digitech Jamman Delay.  Then, anything that I can put into the mixer I can loop.  It’s a bit complex to set up, especially as I am also feeding all that into a sound system.  So I usually leave out the mixer and just loop my guitar.  But, there are a few examples below of looped voices, etc. and that can be fun!

To loop something short (1-2 measures), you can just go for it without too much forethought.  This can be fine for a steady rhythm or for a simple chord progression.  When playing live, this is about all you can do.  If you go longer (at least in my experience), you’ll have problems with tempo.  I believe the pedal, under certain circumstances, is supposed to quantize the performance and make up for slight differences…but…well, YMMV!  I think that’s only when you pre-tap your tempo and that’s pretty much impossible when live-looping. If the loop comes off well, then you’re good.  You can layer it or simply solo over it, etc.  It would be rare, I think, that such a loop would be worth saving and I doubt that my collection below contains any loops made in this fashion.

What I do regularly for my house of prayer (HOP) sets, is to have about a 30-45 minute portion at the beginning where I/we sing a passage of scripture (“Worship with the Word” à la IHOP…sort of).  To have this background work for 30-45 minutes, it needs a bit of “complexity” to stay interesting.  What that means is a longer, multi-layered loop.  These days, I try to come up with a loop that’s around a minute long.  Mostly I’m doing 8 or 16 measures of something. To stay on tempo, I use the tap-tempo feature of the Jamman to set the tempo I want and turn on its metronome feature.   Then I lay down either a rhythm or the base idea that I have in my head. I often use the really cool feature of the Jamman Delay to lock the delay tempo the loop tempo.  I usually use a dotted-8th note delay (for most things in 4 without too much swing).  My different layers will not always be for the whole length of the loop.  That allows the loop to have “ebbs and flows” (dynamic changes, style changes, different effects and sounds, etc.).  Once I’m satisfied with it, I save the loop and turn off the metronome and I’m good to go.

My gear/setup

• Acoustic guitar (used on a very small portion of the loops) – Yairi WY-1
• Electric guitar – Squier Cyclone, After August 2015: Fender Stratocaster (MIM 2007 FatStrat H/S/S)
• Effects pedal – Before August 2014: Korg AX1000G, After August 2014: Digitech RP500 – these pedals are what is making most of the different effects, including the percussive sounds
• Looper pedal – Digitech Jamman Delay
• Mixer – Behringer Xenyx 502 (in use if the looped item is NOT a guitar) – Note: discovered later that this little mixer, if I run the guitar through it to switch between guitar and voice REALLY sucks the guitar tone.  So, I’ve eliminated it from the mix and just run left/right inputs into the jamman and outputs from it and then into two mono signals for either the guitar or whatever else I’m looping on the other side. Lately, I’ve gotten ahold of a 2 octave midi keyboard that I connect to my computer and using VST plugins, I create different synth pad sounds that I can also loop, or use the Black Magic Lite VST for creating a real rhythmic base to the loop (as opposed to using the guitar).  Just need a better computer to output that stuff! 😉

The Loops!

So, here you can download the single iteration loop as a “.wav” file or listen to/download a 10-times-looped “.mp3” version.  You can sort any of the columns and also do multiple column sorts via a “shift-click” on multiple columns.  Multiple clicks or shift-clicks on any column will toggle the sort of that column to ascending or descending mode.  You can type text into the search box and the display will filter the table to only show the rows where the text is found (it searches while you type and clearing the box will reset the search/filter and reveal all the rows).  Feel free to leave a comment and enjoy!