Ch0jin
June 30th, 2011, 11:03 PM
OK so I didn't actually get it today, but two weeks ago, but I was bored at work today so here goes....
I've been a fan of hardware looping since I acquired a Boss RC-2 a year (or was it two?) ago. With its foolproof single button design, built in drum beats, and fancy loop quantization, it immediately became a permanent fixture on my pedal board at home for practising. I would suggest that a looper like the RC-2, or the even cooler new version, the RC-3, should be a part of every guitarist’s basic tool kit.
After plenty of good use though, the honeymoon is over, and I found myself wanting more. Quite a bit more.
You see, as a tool to help practice timing and scales, as well as record basic riff ideas, the RC-2 was great. If I wanted to get a little creative though, the built in limitations grew more and more frustrating. I'm referring specifically to the one two combo punch that is the inability to move back and forward between loops without first saving them, and the complete inability to swap between loops using your feet. Before you cry "Oh but Cho, didn't you know you can use an optional foot switch?" I'll mention that I did make a compatible foot switch, and whilst greatly enhancing usability by adding a single press "stop" button, you are limited to "Phrase up" when it comes to loop control, which presupposes that you have saved every loop you might need for a performance in sequence, and ahead of time.
I decided one cloudy winters day that I really wanted to be able to switch back and forward between loops whilst I was jamming, and that led me to research some more advanced loopers. After a bunch of reading, it was apparent that to be able to toe tap away and have loops coming in and out of everywhere, I'd need either the sort of product that "live" looping artists use, which means either the discontinued Boss RC50XL or the Texas made Boomerang III.
Now if I lived in the USA I'd probably be figuring out how to drive an RC50. They can be had second hand for half the price of a 'rang over there, but alas, they seem rare in this wide brown land. Ironically, after I decided on a new 'rang, I found out they are even more rare in Oz, with a single retail source (so much for 'street' price)
I'll admit the idea of not being able to save loops with the 'rang concerned me, but the fact that everyone who has one, raves about their awesomeness, was enough to sway me. Cash electronically exchanged, I had a shiny new looper.
Fast Forward a couple of weeks and here I am.
If you look around the web you will probably find most reviews of the Boomerang IIII make mention of its user friendly, ergonomic design. It has to be said though that it did take me some time to get the basics of operation down, as operation is different to my RC-2. I found myself getting a little frustrated at first, having to refer back to the manual to figure out why things weren’t doing what I expected. The lesson here though is RTFM. Don’t, as I did, knock back a few drinks, strap on your guitar and expect to be a one man band within the hour.
Once I worked through the excellently written manual though, trying out each function one by one until it started to make sense, I had the basics down and the fun started happening. This is truly a device that eats up hours at a time without you even realising it (in a good way). I am now able to drop in a beat, some bass lines, rhythm guitar, maybe an audio sample or two and then go to town with crazy solos over the top without looking at the manual! Success!
So here we go with a few more comments after a couple of weeks living with the 'rang.
The first thing that's glaringly obvious using the ‘rang is just how much the loop quantize feature of the Boss pedals helps out. If you miss-time a button press on the 'rang, you hear it. I tell myself being able to nail loops accurately can only help with my timing so I live with it, and honestly, in a week I've already become much better at counting myself in. The hardest part is actually timing drum samples. Whilst most loopers include drum patterns to jam along with, the ‘rang does not.
I’ve been using a couple of techniques to give myself a beat to play in time with. I have a few drum apps for my iPhone, so usually I’ll plug that into my amp, being sure to use the clean channel and no reverb for the cleanest sounding drum loops. Then it’s just a matter of tapping button three on the ‘rang at the right time to get a seamless drum loop happening. It’s a lot of work compared to the Boss units, and once the loop is stored you can’t alter the tempo like you can with a Boss looper either. Sure, the ‘rang has an octave down function, but that slows things down massively and is more of a special effect gimmick. The upshot is that you are forced to be creative rather than jamming to the same 2 drum loops all the time like I did with the RC2.
The second technique, the one most seen on YouTube, is to use your guitar to make some kind of percussive noise and then loop that. I can see that working a treat for the acoustic crowd, but as I don’t own an acoustic, I use my bass. I found by accident that if I tap the pickup in my bass hard enough it makes a “clunk” sound. The cool part about using my bass to loop a metronomic style beat, is that I can then immediately lay down a bass line or two over that, then plug in my guitar for the rest.
You can read about the features and functions all over the web so I won’t dive into that here, but instead talk briefly about what I’ve been using for the last couple of weeks. I am mostly using the newly implemented “Synch” play style which basically means you record a short percussive loop first, and all your other loops are synched to that (but not to each other). Due to the lack of quantisation, you need to be accurate with your button presses as I’ve mentioned previously, and I’ll often have several attempts at getting my “backing track” right before I launch into screaming solos mode.
Once you get your timing down and your loops recorded, the fun really begins. And oh what fun it is. I mentioned at the start that after using the RC-2 for a while I wanted more, well here’s where I expand on that a little.
Let’s say I want to jam over a verse and chorus, or even verse, bridge, chorus, instead of just playing over the same chord progression over and over.
To achieve this on the RC-2 I would have to stomp on the button, play the first section, double stomp to stop, then reach down and turn the dial to ‘save’ and press the ‘save’ button. Then turn the loop select dial to the nest free spot (assuming you haven’t saved any loops in it, if so you’ll need to erase it first which involves more twisting of dials and pressing of buttons with fingers rather than feet) and repeat the procedure. Then to jam over those sections you’ll need to reach down to twist the dial to move between saved loops. Not particularly user friendly.
To achieve the same result with the ‘rang is easy, and done completely with your feet. Tap a loop button and it starts recording, tap it again twice to stop (tapping it once will stop recording and start looping). Tap a second loop button and start playing the second phrase, tap again twice to stop. That’s it, you have your two (or up to four) sections ready to roll without using your hands. To actually start jamming, you can set up the ‘rang to play the loops sequentially with a button press, or simply bring them in and out at will. From there you can easily stack extra layers on loops, take them back out again, even delete and record new loops while other loops are playing. Awesome.
It’s a small thing I guess, but another thing I love being able to do on the ‘rang is to trash a loop while I’m recording it, something not possible on the RC-2. Let’s say I have a drum beat and a bass line running and I’m trying to record a rhythm loop and half way through I botch it up. On the RC-2, that means stopping all sounds, deleting the layer (or ‘stack’ in ‘rang speak) and starting over. On the ‘rang all I do is tap the ‘erase’ button and the loop isn’t saved but the rest of your loops keep running.
Basically being able to run loops while still recording new ones and messing with them is amazing fun. I’ve even started running my laptop into the second channel of my amp and using Audacity, I inject movie quotes, samples of other songs, and well, anything you like, all live. I also often use an app called ‘sample toy’ on my phone to record and sample sounds that I then mess up and loop (if you have seen a Korg KAOS Pad in action you get the idea)
I've been a fan of hardware looping since I acquired a Boss RC-2 a year (or was it two?) ago. With its foolproof single button design, built in drum beats, and fancy loop quantization, it immediately became a permanent fixture on my pedal board at home for practising. I would suggest that a looper like the RC-2, or the even cooler new version, the RC-3, should be a part of every guitarist’s basic tool kit.
After plenty of good use though, the honeymoon is over, and I found myself wanting more. Quite a bit more.
You see, as a tool to help practice timing and scales, as well as record basic riff ideas, the RC-2 was great. If I wanted to get a little creative though, the built in limitations grew more and more frustrating. I'm referring specifically to the one two combo punch that is the inability to move back and forward between loops without first saving them, and the complete inability to swap between loops using your feet. Before you cry "Oh but Cho, didn't you know you can use an optional foot switch?" I'll mention that I did make a compatible foot switch, and whilst greatly enhancing usability by adding a single press "stop" button, you are limited to "Phrase up" when it comes to loop control, which presupposes that you have saved every loop you might need for a performance in sequence, and ahead of time.
I decided one cloudy winters day that I really wanted to be able to switch back and forward between loops whilst I was jamming, and that led me to research some more advanced loopers. After a bunch of reading, it was apparent that to be able to toe tap away and have loops coming in and out of everywhere, I'd need either the sort of product that "live" looping artists use, which means either the discontinued Boss RC50XL or the Texas made Boomerang III.
Now if I lived in the USA I'd probably be figuring out how to drive an RC50. They can be had second hand for half the price of a 'rang over there, but alas, they seem rare in this wide brown land. Ironically, after I decided on a new 'rang, I found out they are even more rare in Oz, with a single retail source (so much for 'street' price)
I'll admit the idea of not being able to save loops with the 'rang concerned me, but the fact that everyone who has one, raves about their awesomeness, was enough to sway me. Cash electronically exchanged, I had a shiny new looper.
Fast Forward a couple of weeks and here I am.
If you look around the web you will probably find most reviews of the Boomerang IIII make mention of its user friendly, ergonomic design. It has to be said though that it did take me some time to get the basics of operation down, as operation is different to my RC-2. I found myself getting a little frustrated at first, having to refer back to the manual to figure out why things weren’t doing what I expected. The lesson here though is RTFM. Don’t, as I did, knock back a few drinks, strap on your guitar and expect to be a one man band within the hour.
Once I worked through the excellently written manual though, trying out each function one by one until it started to make sense, I had the basics down and the fun started happening. This is truly a device that eats up hours at a time without you even realising it (in a good way). I am now able to drop in a beat, some bass lines, rhythm guitar, maybe an audio sample or two and then go to town with crazy solos over the top without looking at the manual! Success!
So here we go with a few more comments after a couple of weeks living with the 'rang.
The first thing that's glaringly obvious using the ‘rang is just how much the loop quantize feature of the Boss pedals helps out. If you miss-time a button press on the 'rang, you hear it. I tell myself being able to nail loops accurately can only help with my timing so I live with it, and honestly, in a week I've already become much better at counting myself in. The hardest part is actually timing drum samples. Whilst most loopers include drum patterns to jam along with, the ‘rang does not.
I’ve been using a couple of techniques to give myself a beat to play in time with. I have a few drum apps for my iPhone, so usually I’ll plug that into my amp, being sure to use the clean channel and no reverb for the cleanest sounding drum loops. Then it’s just a matter of tapping button three on the ‘rang at the right time to get a seamless drum loop happening. It’s a lot of work compared to the Boss units, and once the loop is stored you can’t alter the tempo like you can with a Boss looper either. Sure, the ‘rang has an octave down function, but that slows things down massively and is more of a special effect gimmick. The upshot is that you are forced to be creative rather than jamming to the same 2 drum loops all the time like I did with the RC2.
The second technique, the one most seen on YouTube, is to use your guitar to make some kind of percussive noise and then loop that. I can see that working a treat for the acoustic crowd, but as I don’t own an acoustic, I use my bass. I found by accident that if I tap the pickup in my bass hard enough it makes a “clunk” sound. The cool part about using my bass to loop a metronomic style beat, is that I can then immediately lay down a bass line or two over that, then plug in my guitar for the rest.
You can read about the features and functions all over the web so I won’t dive into that here, but instead talk briefly about what I’ve been using for the last couple of weeks. I am mostly using the newly implemented “Synch” play style which basically means you record a short percussive loop first, and all your other loops are synched to that (but not to each other). Due to the lack of quantisation, you need to be accurate with your button presses as I’ve mentioned previously, and I’ll often have several attempts at getting my “backing track” right before I launch into screaming solos mode.
Once you get your timing down and your loops recorded, the fun really begins. And oh what fun it is. I mentioned at the start that after using the RC-2 for a while I wanted more, well here’s where I expand on that a little.
Let’s say I want to jam over a verse and chorus, or even verse, bridge, chorus, instead of just playing over the same chord progression over and over.
To achieve this on the RC-2 I would have to stomp on the button, play the first section, double stomp to stop, then reach down and turn the dial to ‘save’ and press the ‘save’ button. Then turn the loop select dial to the nest free spot (assuming you haven’t saved any loops in it, if so you’ll need to erase it first which involves more twisting of dials and pressing of buttons with fingers rather than feet) and repeat the procedure. Then to jam over those sections you’ll need to reach down to twist the dial to move between saved loops. Not particularly user friendly.
To achieve the same result with the ‘rang is easy, and done completely with your feet. Tap a loop button and it starts recording, tap it again twice to stop (tapping it once will stop recording and start looping). Tap a second loop button and start playing the second phrase, tap again twice to stop. That’s it, you have your two (or up to four) sections ready to roll without using your hands. To actually start jamming, you can set up the ‘rang to play the loops sequentially with a button press, or simply bring them in and out at will. From there you can easily stack extra layers on loops, take them back out again, even delete and record new loops while other loops are playing. Awesome.
It’s a small thing I guess, but another thing I love being able to do on the ‘rang is to trash a loop while I’m recording it, something not possible on the RC-2. Let’s say I have a drum beat and a bass line running and I’m trying to record a rhythm loop and half way through I botch it up. On the RC-2, that means stopping all sounds, deleting the layer (or ‘stack’ in ‘rang speak) and starting over. On the ‘rang all I do is tap the ‘erase’ button and the loop isn’t saved but the rest of your loops keep running.
Basically being able to run loops while still recording new ones and messing with them is amazing fun. I’ve even started running my laptop into the second channel of my amp and using Audacity, I inject movie quotes, samples of other songs, and well, anything you like, all live. I also often use an app called ‘sample toy’ on my phone to record and sample sounds that I then mess up and loop (if you have seen a Korg KAOS Pad in action you get the idea)