MUSIC (Live Original Performance): My first performance with a loop pedal at the Barleycorn Music Club opens up a whole new world of musical possibilities!

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Nervously watching my feet as I construct my first loop-pedal performance at the Barleycorn Music Club

Hello everybody on HIVE and especially those of the Music Community! I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa. The two hobbies I tend to post the most about on HIVE are my music and song writing (usually performed these days with fellow HIVER @clairemobey – please follow her!) and surfing.

About two weeks ago, Claire and I performed at the Barleycorn Music Club here in Cape Town. This was a real treat as the Barleycorn has been a club dedicated to promoting local music here in Cape Town since 1975, and the audience is a super supportive, listening audience… the best kind! I served on the Barleycorn committee, helping to organise the weekly gigs, back when I was a student who had just started to write his own songs. I had a lot more free time back then, but it meant I got to watch and meet a lot of inspiring talent!

Half way through our set I did the song that I was most nervous about, as I was going to use a loop pedal in public for the first time!

What is a loop pedal? It is a device that can record the instrument or microphone (in this case both) that is plugged into it, and then start playing those sounds back, allowing the artist to then do something else instead to basically “jam with himself”. You get performers who specialise in doing all of their songs like this, adding percussive sounds and trying to sound like a one-man band on every song! South Africa’s most famous version literally calls himself “Jeremy Loops”.

For the Barleycorn performance, I had a few more tricks up my sleeve (or at my feet really). I used a bass pedal to drop the sound coming out of my guitar by a full octave to make a bassline. Once all the recorded parts were done, I used a volume boost pedal to make my live guitar playing a little bit louder than the looped parts.

That volume boost pedal can also add gain (distortion) to make my acoustic guitar sound more like an electric guitar, but I plan on doing my first “Three Tunes Tuesday” post on Tuesday where I will try to demonstrate that on a more bluesy original song!


All the toys must be linked together between the guitar and the speakers!

So how did it go? Well, I was nervous! There is a lot that can go wrong if you mess up the timing while recording, or if your volume settings don’t work! I made a few little errors, but in general I’m very happy with how it came out, and with a little bit more practice I think using the loop pedal for this song is going sound polished!

The video was shot by @zakludick, and then posted to @clairemobey’s Youtube channel. I hope you enjoy it!

THE END



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24 comments
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This was so awesome! You're a great musician man, really enjoyed this performance! I will check out Claire's profile too, great to see more musicians on hive! :)

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(Edited)

Thank you so much! Ah yes, you were the person jamming over his own song asking how to best perform solo with backing tracks. You get more complex loop pedals than mine, but even it has about 99 channels with two tracks each. (In my song I did the vocal part on track 2 so I could turn it on for chorus and then off again.)

So in your case you could load full wavs to play over, or maybe experiment with some presaved drum beats, but then record a structure live and then still jam over that!

I think personally I will always want to build the loop live... It's interesting for the audience and a real challenge. It might mean learning simple beatbox (boots and cats) or using simple percussion instruments at the beginning (while recording the looped part) as well... That's a long term goal!

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Yes, that was me haha! That sounds great though man, and building up a loop live is always incredible to hear and experience. That is a great long term goal you have!

I think for my songs, playing live to the backing track will be best suited (at first!) as it is rock music - I was struggling to form a band so just went solo for this project! Still it will be fun to build up a loop! :)

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I think with a loop pedal you could do both. Backing tracks for performance and looping for fun (at first... haha)

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Awesome @jasperdick and @clairemobey.
I think I would pee in my pants and need about ten tequilas to perform on stage like that.

Have you ever watched any of Reinhardt Buhr’s youtube videos? I watched one of him doing a live loop of about five different instruments on a pavement in the Waterfront and was pretty blown away by it.

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Hi! Yes I know exactly who you are talking about. I think cello and didgeridoo if I remember correctly! Yeah he seems to be another loop pedal specialist! I think I will stick to one or two songs only!

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Yip, that’s the one along with a guitar, drumming on the box he sits on, and the others.

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Ah the drum box is called a Cajon... Hmm!

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Ahhh cool. That set your mind going? hehe.

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It does a bit! They're not cheap but they're not hellishly expensive either. There's also a kind of West African shaker that I'd love to try and copy.

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Awesome! and I hope to get to hear you using them live soon.

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Gooc job with the loop station. I want to try too with one. Looks very fun

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Thank you very much! It is fun at the thinking out stage, but you want to know what you are doing on stage, and a mistake will repeat itself over and over! Haha!

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You did freaking AWESOMELY!

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As did you! I hope I took pictures of those settings... Because they sound quite nice!

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I am sure I remember you doing that! You even took a video 👌

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Then it's just the distortion settings after that... I'm sharing a video tomorrow that seems to get it better!

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Ohh cool, another looper, watched it after you commented my video. I like this and your guitar playing! I never played live with my loop pedal but will deifinely try it one day :)

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