I had a few messages after OM22 asking about my setup, and encouragement to do a post about it so I’m happy to oblige. Like many of us here, I picked up my first ‘ditto’ single track looper somewhere in the middle of Justin’s Blues guitar lessons. I just wanted to be able to create a quick backing track so I could practice over.
But after a while I started to think, ‘this would be a lot better with a chorus’…and then it snowballed.
Caveat
First of all let me state I’m not very experienced at this at all. I’m very much in the early stages of learning. I just checked and the first time I tried to use the looper as part of a song was when Justin hosted a Christmas open mic, 15 months ago (and yup, it didn’t work out as intended that time either) .
There are a lot of resources and videos online. However I do have to say that for me at least, while youtube videos may provide guidance on how to use tools, or what specific settings do, or inspiration, I really needed to just experiment to understand how to manipulate it. Modern loopers are so configurable that you can ( and I would say should) set them up for a way that makes sense for you.
I’m a better computer programmer than I am guitarist. That may work in my favour in terms of how I organize information and remember/manipulate settings, pedal mappings, etc.….but I do think anyone could learn it with practice.
And finally with respect to my setup, it is always evolving. I keep thinking of things that would make it easier -and the answer is usually ‘more pedals’… someone please stop me.
My Tech
RC600 Looper BOSS - RC-600 | Loop Station
The main workhorse and my first multi-track looper, so I can’t do much of a comparison with others but my general thoughts are as follows.
It’s a great piece of equipment. However it was pretty buggy on release, and I would say it was at least a year after release before it was even useable due to various bugs - very frusturating. But, since they patched it, it is delivering.
It’s a 6 channel looper, though I find I rarely need more than 3. So there are plenty of other options across the budget spectrum. That being said, you are very limited with single track loopers and would have to get pretty creative, so I would recommend that you have at least 2, preferably 3 if you wanted to explore this topic.
When I first got the RC600, I tried to make use of it’s myriad of effects. I rarely use them for a few reasons. First, I don’t seem able to get great tone out of them. Second, it is difficult to manipulate them on the fly while also managing the looper. Let the Looper do what it does best.
Important to note, modern loopers have settings that can make them pretty forgiving, so you don’t have to be perfect at timing.
Utility Footswitch https://www.boss.info/ca/products/fs-6/
This just let’s me assign a couple extra foot switches to anything I want really. I change this depending on the song, and it’s all controlled on the RC600. So for one song, I might have these set to a guitar/vocal effect when pressed, and on another song it might do something like ‘stop track2 and bring in track 1 and 3’. (Just saving me an extra click when playing.)
Guitar Effects https://line6.com/helix/
I’m currently using a Helix, but I think this is very individual. Use what you like and get good tone out of, and enjoy using. The only thing I would say is if you also want to be also operating a looper - you will make your life easier if you can change to your desired tones with ‘one click’. If you need to ‘go to bank 2, and click preset 3 then turn on the chorus’ to get the specific tone, you are not making things easier on yourself.
I’m currently using the Helix for guitar and vocal processing. I will likely stick with that for some time for the guitar, although I would be interested in a dedicated vocal processor.
TCHelicon Harmony Singer Pedal TC Helicon | Product | HARMONY SINGER 2
This is a fun little piece of tech. It seems most other harmony effects, will take the input and adjust to a 3rd or 5th, or some combination. Which is ok, but limited. ( What if you need a minor 3rd?). Also some of them require you to set the key ahead of time.
This pedal takes both the mic and guitar as input - and adjusts the vocal harmony depending on the chord coming in from the guitar.
This is great, but with some caveats. Works great over a major chord, every time. If you are playing a minor chord, you have to make very sure your minor 3rd is ringing out, otherwise it may not recognize it as a minor chord - and then it defaults to the major 3rd. Likewise with a power chord…the underlying chord could possibly be minor, but the pedal is going to assume major. This pedal is almost too much fun for it’s own good….I have a tendency to overuse.
AKAI MPK Mini MPK Mini mk3 MIDI Controller | Akai Pro
So this isn’t a piece of gear I’m recommending…this is just what I happen have and all I’m using it for is the drum pads.
They are sending a midi signal to the Boss RC600 and I’m using the built in drum kits of that. My ‘drumming’ is pretty weak so I’d like to swap this at some point for something a bit more configurable, preferable with some options that can make me sound better than I am :). I thought I would be able to use the keyboard to trigger the vocoder effects in the RC600 but was never able to make it work. I could probably take advantage and map the other controls on this thing ( like use it as a mixer) - but I only explored that once and wasn’t successful. Technically it worked - the issue was with the operator 
Philosophy
This is largely subjective, but I thought I’d share my personal approach.
When I construct a song I try to find the key elements of it that people will expect, or recognize and I think of how to get those in the mix. You will almost certainly have to make sacrifices, or make changes to a song because a lot of stuff just isn’t looper friendly. People might not miss some obscure bridge, or intro/outro, but they’ll be expecting the hooks - whatever they may be.
Also a general rule for me is to try to get the song ‘up and running’ quickly. With looping, you can really only bring in one instrument at a time, and if it doesn’t happen quickly it may not hold interest. So I try to find an approach that at least gets a few instruments and maybe some vocals going together early on. Song specific obviously but something I keep in mind. In fact, I probably spend the most time focused and experimenting with the ‘starting’ aspect of a song than any other part.
And the final part for me is ‘always be playing’. In some songs I could quickly put all the parts in the loop and then just stop playing and sing when required. But I try to keep at least one part ‘live’. I just think it makes it more interesting as both a player and viewer/listener.
Live mistakes
Just like you learn to compensate/recover from mistakes on the fly with a guitar, you need to do with the looper as well. They will happen. ( Twice as often if you are me ). You’ll miss bringing in a track, you’ll record off beat, the list goes on… Just like your instrument, you just need to practice enough that is starts becoming second nature on how to recover/correct whatever happens. When I first started I naively thought I’d just practice enough that I wouldn’t make mistakes….now I realize that the ‘undo’ switch is the most used footswitch.
Troubles
I continue to struggle with a few thing.
Mixing. I have no idea how to approach this and would welcome suggestions. I find it very difficult to tell while playing how well anything is balanced. Even harder now that I’m using in-ear monitors to bring my vocals up a bit in my personal mix. Even if I could, I’m not sure I’ve got the space to also be mixing on the fly. Also in this setup - everything has to be mixed BEFORE the looper, because once it’s on a loop you can’t adjust individual instruments.
What I currently do is test every guitar setting, ‘drums’, and voice and try to adjust the settings to the same general ‘Loudness’, test with recordings, and then cross my fingers that it is still ok when I perform.
Bass Tone. I realize the ‘octaver bass’ is a poor substitute for the real thing, but I don’t want to juggle guitars. I use to have a Katana in my setup which I have since moved on from. However, I think I had a better bass tone out of that then my current setup. Ongoing experimentation here.
Tone in General. I haven’t owned a lot of gear in my life (until recently), so I have little experience here and often struggle to get something I’m really happy with. Now I have that extra challenge of coming up with multiple tones that compliment instead of compete in the mix.
Drumming is like, really hard. I’m not sure if using pads is more or less difficult. I have no experience to say. All I know is that if I don’t keep my beats dead simple, I end up redoing them multiple times.
I think that covers it, hope people get something interesting out of this rather lengthy post.
Happy to answer questions or receive any suggestions and feedback. Just as I was posting this I see someone posted a video in this section of a new looper on the market! …must …resist…
I must say I was really interested to see your setup and all in all mate I think you did an amazing job, doing all that is hard enough without the added live pressure so congrats.
. Fabulous performance at the OM - great singing and I liked the tone of your guitar and the bass your pedal produced. Mix sounded good to my ears. Interesting to hear your approach to building a song with focusing on the beginning, that worked really well in this performance. Congrats - keep up the footwork 