The Art of Guitar Looping
Exploring New Guitar Performance Horizons with BOSS Loop Stations
By Jim Bybee
With the explosion of digital technology, loop-based music making has come to the forefront of modern music production. Using computers or dedicated sampler/workstations such as Roland’s MV-8000, MC-808, and Fantom-X, it’s easy to put together song arrangements using nothing but music loops. While great for keyboardists and DJs, this can leave guitar players feeling a little “out of the loop.” If you’re a guitarist and want to join the looping party, let’s check out what a BOSS Loop Station can do for you.
A Little Background
For the uninitiated, a “loop” is simply a section of audio that plays repeatedly. Innovative guitarists have been making music with loops for years, primarily with delay or “echo” devices (first tape-based and later digital). Using a simple delay, a guitarist can record a short, repeating loop that’s a few seconds in length, and use it as an accompaniment for live playing. Some devices even allow you to overdub new performances while the loop plays, a feature called “sound-on-sound” recording. (By the way, this functionality is available in the BOSS DD-20 Giga Delay as well as BOSS Loop Stations.)
For all its coolness, creating guitar loops with a delay unit has its disadvantages. First, the available recording time is measured in seconds, limiting your loop creations to a few bars. Second, unless you have an external recorder handy, there’s no way to save your masterful loop creation once it’s complete—if you turn off the power or record a new loop, your inspired performance is erased!
The Loop Station Advantage
To provide performing musicians with better live looping tools, BOSS has created the RC-20XL, RC-50, and RC-2 Loop Stations. They’re made from the ground up with realtime, live performance looping in mind, and have tons of features that make them perfect for guitarists.
Perhaps the most important thing a Loop Station provides the guitarist is time—recording time, that is. The RC-20XL and RC-2 feature 16 minutes of mono recording, while the RC-50 offers an amazing 49 minutes (24 minutes in stereo). This means you’re no longer relegated to creating short, repetitive phrases—you can capture complete song sections, or even record an entire song in a single pass.
Obviously, a necessity in a performance looper is hands-free realtime control—the last time I checked, it takes two hands to play the guitar! The Loop Stations are designed for complete foot-controlled operation, with both built-in pedals and connectors for adding optional footswitches.
Under the Hood
In Loop Station lingo, a recorded loop is called a “phrase.” Once recorded, a phrase can play repeatedly, creating a continuous musical backing. Alternately, a phrase can be set to play only once when triggered (this is called “one-shot” playback). If desired, a phrase can play in reverse for wild backwards guitar effects, or be set to fade-in and/or out automatically.
While a phrase is playing, new recordings can be overdubbed sound-on-sound style. Here, the Loop Stations’ undo function is super-handy—if don’t like your overdub, simply press a footswitch and undo it, returning the phrase to its pre-overdub state. If you change your mind, press the footswitch again to redo the undo. Of course, all this can be done during a performance, without ever stopping playback!
When creating rhythmic phrases, it can sometimes be a little tricky to stop recording at just the right time to create a perfect loop. To keep your loops glitch-free, there’s a built-in rhythm guide and a Loop Quantize function. Loop Quantize is great because it automatically sets the loop length based on the current tempo setting, even if you don’t stop recording at exactly the right moment.
Finally, when your loop masterpiece is complete, you can store it in one of multiple onboard phrase memory locations for later use.
Choices, Choices…
Whether your looping needs are great or small, BOSS has a Loop Station for you.
RC-20XL
The RC-20XL comes in the popular BOSS Twin Pedal format, making it a great choice when you need a small and compact looper. It features 16 minutes of mono recording time, and can store 11 phrases onboard. It runs on batteries or AC power, and is right at home next to your BOSS pedals.
RC-2
The RC-2—the new kid on the Loop Station block—packs most of the RC-20XL’s features into a standard BOSS Compact Pedal. Its stompbox size makes it an easy fit in any guitar case, gig bag, or pedal board, while its single multi-function footswitch handles all looping operations with ease. (If you crave more foot control, an optional BOSS FS-5U or FS-6 footswitch can be connected to the RC-2’s external pedal jack to duplicate the multi-pedal control available in its Twin Pedal cousin.)
RC-50
If you’re looking for the ultimate guitar looper, then look no further than the RC-50. It features seven built-in pedals for massive foot control, and can record phrases in mono (up to 49 minutes) or stereo (up to 24 minutes). The RC-50 has 99 patches, and each patch contains three phrases—that adds up to onboard storage of nearly 300 phrases! With so much recording time available, there’s ample room to store multiple complete songs onboard, let alone simple loops.
The three phrases within an RC-50 patch can be played separately (in Single mode) or simultaneously (in Multi mode). Single mode is great for recording and playing different song sections as separate phrases (verse, chorus, etc.), while Multi mode allows you to combine phrases together to create complex sounds. When in Multi mode, you can use the Loop Sync function to perfectly lock the recording and playback tempo of all three phrases.
The RC-50 also plays nice with the outside world. By connecting the built-in USB connector to a computer, you can back up and restore RC-50 patches, and swap WAV audio loops. For synchronization and MIDI control, use the MIDI IN and OUT connectors to communicate with other MIDI devices such as sequencers and multitrack recorders.
The Sky’s the Limit
When you put on your thinking cap, you can come up with lots of creative uses for a Loop Station. You can take solo or small group performances to a new level, creating on-the-fly backing tracks for soloing or vocal accompaniment. Imagine using a single guitar to build an entire multi-layered musical arrangement—with complex chord changes—right in front of your audience. That’ll blow some minds! Perhaps you like to work with pre-recorded backing tracks—simply store them as phrases in the Loop Station’s onboard memory locations and head to the gig. On the other hand, if you’re into unstructured sounds, a Loop Station is an amazing tool for creating swirling, ambient soundscapes in real time.
By the way, Loop Stations aren’t just for guitar sounds—they also have microphone and auxiliary inputs, enabling you to incorporate vocals and external audio sources into your loop-making ventures. In fact, with its long recording time, a Loop Station makes a great recorder for songwriting ideas.
A Loop Station also makes a great practice tool. You can jam along with backing tracks to build your chops, and record your playing to hear how you’re progressing. You can even record external audio from a CD or MP3 and slow down the playback without changing the pitch—a great tool for learning your favorite guitarists’ licks.
Let the Loop Begin
As you can see, a BOSS Loop Station allows guitarists to join the loop universe, and invent new and innovative ways of performing along the way. Why should keyboardists and DJs have all the fun? Grab your guitar, head on down to your BOSS dealer, and “get in the loop” with the RC-50, RC-2, and RC-20XL Loop Stations.