This isn’t a terribly new development. But it is new relative to the rest of my guitar career. I have been using this pedal during live shows and in my YouTube videos. In fact, one of my most popular recent YouTube shorts was just a quick exploration of the pros and cos of using a loop pedal (aka loop station or just loop). I will break down the pros and cons in this video, and after that I will address two extra, but I think important issues with the loop pedal. Here is the video:
This is not an exhaustive list, but I can address the points I made and maybe make them a little more clear on this platform.
Looping
Just like the video, I will start with the pros.
Pros of Looping
Full Sound
Some readers may never have used or even seen a loop pedal. The idea is that you step on the pedal to start recording a section of the song. When you step on the pedal a second time, it immediately plays the section back. And then it repeats the section. Again and again and again until you tell it to stop. Because the section of the song is playing in a loop, we colloquially refer to this technique as “looping” part of the song. Once the looped section is repeating automatically, you can play other parts on top of it. Many loop pedals (including mine) have the ability to loop multiple parts on top of each other. When a performer uses this method, the audience hears multiple guitar parts. They hear however many sections have been looped on top of each other, plus the performer can still play another part in real time. You can effectively use the looped tracks as a backing track. This created a full sound that is virtually impossible to achieve with just one guitar.
Precise Notes
Even with the loop pedal, a musician can still make a mistake. But if a part repeats multiple times in a song, you only have to play it correctly once as long as you successfully loop it when you play it correctly. After that the loop will play back the precise notes. If on the other hand you were to repeatedly play the same part numerous times in one song, you are much more likely to fumble it at least once. This can sort of work against you too. If you make a mistake when looping a section and you do not have a chance to redo it, that mistake will present itself every time the loop comes around. I have certainly done this to myself before. I’ll make a mistake in the rhythm, and then go to play a lead and it sounds imperfect even if I nail the lead. But that brings us toour next pro.
Could Play a Lead
You could actually play a lot of different things over top of a looped section. But one common way to use a loop pedal is to record the chords and then play a lead over them as they loop back. A lead can add a lot of interest to a song, but it may not be practical if you only have one guitar and no looping capabilities. The loop can allow you to keep the chords running while you play leads.
And now on to the cons.
Cons of Looping
Busy Sound
Any time you add more instruments and/or effects you risk losing some of the clarity in the sound. Especially when you’re looping the same instrument, every layer is going to be taking up basically the same space in the sound, which can lead to everything getting jumbled and a little muddy. It’s a little hard to explain unless you hear it, and I have definitely heard it from my own speakers during shows. Not pleasant.
Not as Free
When I say, “free” here, what I mean is the ability to make subtle changes to the instrumentation as you go. If you loop a chord progression, that does free you up to play other parts, but then the chord progression will sound the same on every loop. You can’t strum a little harder when you sing that important line, you can’t stop for dramatic effect and pick the progression up halfway through, you can’t throw in an extra dominant seven for funzies. You can’t change it at all. Unless of course you stop the loop and start playing without it.
Requires Equipment
It’s not “free” in this sense either. The loop pedal costs money. And you pretty much half to be playing through some kind of speaker for the part you looped to play back to you. You’re not gonna pull out your guitar around the campfire and get a backing track going. You can’t practice the parts with the loop in your hotel room or in your car on your lunch break (there are other reasons not to wanna practice in those places, but sometimes we gotta make do lol).
And there’s a more philosophical discussion around this too. It’s sort of like when I play an electric guitar. The feeling of playing with loops or effects or an electric guitar is amazing. You can feel the power in the music, a power outside yourself, even though the music is something you made… but something gets lost. At least for me. I start to feel like I’m a sort of operator. Like I’m telling a machine what to do and then watching it make music. Acoustics are more intimate. When I play acoustic guitar, it feels like the music is coming from me. My voice. Even if I’m not making the sound with my mouth. I wouldn’t say that intimacy is completely lost, even when playing electric. But I start to lose some of it. And I think I lose a tiny bit of it when I use a loop with my acoustic.
Not Looping
Even if you use a loop pedal, you may not want to use it on every single song. I think I probably use it in about 1 out of every 3 songs. Partly because some songs don’t need it and partly because, ifI am gonna use it, I kind of need to make a plan ahead of time of how I am going to use it (this is sort of a con I didn’t mention for looping.) So, for a good number of songs, I just don’t use the loop pedal and there are pros and cons to this as well. First the pros.
Pros of Not Looping
Clear Sound
This is just the antithesis of the first con I mentioned for looping. The parts do not get in each other’s way and make a messy sound because there is only one part. It is interesting to note that this pro pops up in the video right after a make a mistake and get a really muffled sounding chord. So playing without a loop isn’t necessarily “clear” in that sense. As I mentioned in the looping pros, you don’t have to worry about messing up the part you loop if you play it when you loop it. Anyway, the point is that the overall sound is less likely to get jumbled when there are fewer parts going at once.
Can Make Subtle Changes
Again, this is the opposite of one of the cons of looping. When I said looping is “not as free,” I really meant that you cannot make subtle changes to the parts you loop. But any part you are playing in real time, you can make all the subtle (or not so subtle) changes you want.
All You Need is a Guitar
If you’re not going to loop, you can just take an acoustic guitar and you’re good to go. No speakers, no pedals. Heck you don’t need an audience. Just do you’re thing!
I know you don’t need an audience to use a loop either, I was just being dramatic.
So the pros of not looping are basically the same as the cons of looping. Similarly, the cons of not looping correspond closely to the pros of looping.
Cons of Not Looping
Can Get Difficult
This one may seem like a weak point. Any instrument or set up can be easy or difficult, whatever that means to you. But, if you’re not using a loop (or a backing track or a band), you have more of a burden to carry the song with one instrument. Doing a two or three guitars arranged for one type thing often requires more brain power than looping the first part and then playing other parts on top of it. And you may not get ass full of a sound with one guitar part. Not to mention that arranging two guitars for one may not be as close to the original or the sound you’re going for as looping. Those last two sentences basically summed up my last two cons, but let’s talk about them anyway.
Not as Accurate
As I have addressed a number of times already, if you play the part you want to loop correctly when you loop it (and loop it correctly), there will not be mistakes in the loop. If you try to play the same part many times, your human nature makes it likely that you will make a mistake. But aside from that, many songs are written with multiple parts. If you loop your guitar, you can get a more accurate rendition of each part as opposed to trying to arrange all the parts for one guitar, or picking one part to play and leaving out the rest. And that leads to the last con:
Fewer Parts Possible
If you don’t use a loop, then you can really only play one part yourself. Even several parts arranged for one guitar part is still one guitar part.
Coming Back to Looping
Like I said, that is not an exhaustive pros and cons list. I am sure there are countless other issues we can find with looping or not looping. But I feel like there are two significant issues, or perceived issues with looping that I have not addressed. For one thing, there is the difficulty of using the pedal itself. It’s difficult anytime you have to be “right on the beat” with an instrument or an effect. But I found there is some added difficulty with looping because I am used to having some “lead time,” when I change something in a song. I feel like I want to activate the loop pedal on the last beat of the measure before the I want the loop to start. But I’ve got to fight that instinct and step on the pedal at the exact moment I want the loop to begin. You see, the loop station does not care about rhythm or tempo. You step on it to start recording, and you step on it again to tell it to stop. It is going to playback exactly what it hears in between. On my particular loop station, there are multiple tracks, and once you record a loop on one track, any other tracks you will automatically loop after the first one plays the loop through once. And there’s a little light that blinks to tell me the general tempo of the first track I looped. But other than that there is no sense of timing which feels weird to someone used to playing with other players. It feels unforgiving.
Secondly, I think some people see the loop as inauthentic. And I mean, I don’t think you can really make an objective statement about it. Like I just explained, there are definitely some extra skills that go into using a loop pedal effectively. As long as you are honest how you’re playing, it’s definitely a legitimate way to play in my opinion. It does have to do with the opinion of the artist, and the situation. I would just encourage anyone not to let other people’s opinions dictate how they do their work, as a rule. A general rule because of course we want to connect with other people and sometimes make money. But I make it a rule nonetheless.
Leave a Reply