Breakthrough using looper to help with learning to solo

Been playing for well over 10 years. Tried several times to learn to solo, hours and hours spent on scales, yet when I started soloing was underwhelmed with what I did and gave up. Third time lucky. Picked up the challenge again. One bit of gear that’s helped a lot is a looper.

First challenge is getting a looper that isn’t hard to use. I recall a Justin lesson on the topic. The research I did (forums, etc) gave me the strong impression a 2 button looper pedal is a LOT easier than the one button which requires a double tap.

I bought my looper many years ago and with the 2 buttons it’s always been easy for me to use. Only took a small number of tries to get the start and stop of the loop in time with the 4 bar beat. The model I bought is the Ditto X2.

With my learning to solo, the looper has been helpful in 2 ways. First, I put down a sequence of bars, in my case I’ve been playing along to Wagon Wheel so it’s a sequence of 8 bars in total. Then I just noodle along to that loop.

The other challenge I’ve faced with soloing is that I’m a rhythm player, and am used to just strumming along to the whole song (or fingerstyling along). Then when it’s time for me to play a solo, I get all befuddled and flummoxed trying to get started on the solo. Very frustrating.

With my learning to solo, I’ve recently come up with several of my own solos, but trying to mix them up with strumming, then soloing, then strumming to wagon wheel just made me all the more befuddled.

Enter the looper. Today I spent quite some time with the 8 bars in the looper, strumming along to the first 8, then soloing for the next 16 bars, then back to strumming for 8, soloing for 16, etc and at last was able to make the transition from rhythm, to solo, back to rhythm, to solo, etc etc

Woo Hoo.

It’s still messy at times but for me, more often than not, it was very good.

The same could be done with a backing track on repeat, for me I seem to enjoy the looper more. And having a looper that’s easy to use sure helps.

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Yeah Looper pedal thread.

Yeah I fully agree with you. I started using one recently and its made a big difference.
Tou can also play just one chord on a loop and go through and find eactly which notes sound good and which dont. Then you work you solo around the good sounding notes when on that chord.

Like you said you can get a lot out of the most basic looper. I don’t have anything complicated either, and I sort of like it like that.

This new girl of ours was my sound engineer for the night.

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One thing I can’t even imagine about my guitar playing is how to live without a looper… :slight_smile:
When I find a good backing track on YT, I always prefer to record it myself on a looper than play along with the original. Sometimes I change the tempo or add some elements that make the backing track more attractive.
Good example of how to use looper you may find here:
https://community.justinguitar.com/t/one-chord-vamps/352639

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Great comment re looper @tony. I had the same realisation.

I was expending way too much effort on soloing without any chord backing. Way too much wandering and not focusing on the rhythm and the cord changes.

Using the looper has helped me ‘hear’ the changes and also I feel like leaving space isn’t a problem because the backing cords fill the gaps.

And I agree about the importance of practicing flipping between strumming and soloing. It’s a live skill that we easily overlook.

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I also realize after thinking about it the looper is so much easier than a backing track to make quick / instant changes to what you are playing along to. Want to play faster? Just loop it again, Want to play slower? Loop it again.

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I agree, and of course you’re also putting practice into your rhythm playing at the same time!! Win, win! :slight_smile:

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I noticed another benefit of looping to get my transition from rhythm to solo and back again. Often when I started strumming again, I wasn’t quite on the beat where I should be. It helped me to then strum more quietly and adjust, something that will help me when playing along with others.

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That’s a really good point Tony, keeping with the rhythm is key and someone else mentioned finding the correct note and noticing that it sounds good. More practice required, dust off my dusty looper and try again!

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Interesting thread as I recently wanted to finally put my looper into use for some time (maybe since in BLIM, there was bass6, chord playing and soloing on top) but now, I finally did!
And it’s really fun! :slight_smile:
I’ll try all the things suggested, here and in the thread you linked, @JackPK
Thanks a lot for this, Tony and hope you’ll continue to have fun and learn with your looper!

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Fantastic Dom. Bass 6 is one of my favorites. There are so many variations also. You will use it a lot in regular playing. Now that I am more comfortable and I just leave it on my little board. I uses it for a lot of small practice help.

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I’ll use it a lot from now on! I actually thought about taking the last BLIM challenge or performing on the graduation party, but only if I had gotten my looper got to work before, because I’m not a great solo player (while already having improved) , but with that looper pedal, I could put my rhythm playing to good use and a tiny bit of simple soloing is good then! :slight_smile:

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Thanks guys, do you have the link to the bass6 chord playing and soloing on top you speak of?

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I learned it in the Blim class. The link probobly wont work.

But it is basically the major 6th arpeggio, playing the 1st,3rd, 5th and 6 of that major scale. Something like that. Tic Tock blues bass I saw it refered to also.

Do you have a basic 12 barr blues going on your looper. Then as the cord changes so will your Root note which is the 1st and you play the 4 note arpeggio pattern over them with the blues shuffle beat.

Edit:I found a link to one of his regular lessons that covers this info.

https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/about-that-bass-be-105#learn-more

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Thanks! you are cool

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And that goes well with what Justin calls chunka chunka :slight_smile: like here… https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/12-bar-shuffle-riff-bg-1306
Or also, there’s a more advanced lesson in grade 4 around the one that Jason posted above.

And for the soloing on top… as I’m not comfortable moving around the pentatonic patterns yet, I play chords, A,D,E and simply play anything in the Am pentatonic scale on top. Me too, I’ll upload a video soon when I got a tiny bit more used to my looper pedal.

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