Live band use of loopings

[Frank Gerace <seahorse@user1.channel1.com>]

In one of the pieces we do  (Dreamchild) Cheryl, our
bassist/vocalist/wire-strung-harpist, will loop her voice on her jamman 
over
a loop I created with the guitar.  The nature of this piece is such that a
little drift doesn't hurt the piece.  
        On another one, I loop the entire verse while she accompanies on
bass.  When she starts singing (the second verse) I switch pathes on VG8 
and
add some fills and harmonies, a solo, etc.  The thing there is the decay of
the last chord and the rest in between measures.  If I was a little sloppy
puching in I can wind up with a fraction of beat more or less and since she
plays a pickup line for each verse, she has to figure out the space
requirements and adjust her lines accordingly.  
        We don't use drummers so we don't have that problem.  Our time is
pretty good, so we don't have problems that way very often either.  Our
synching problems, when they happen at all, seem to be from not having the
technology dance of the record buttons down as well as we should.  She also
uses her jamman to sample lines from a verse that she'll harmonize in the
next verse while replaying the sample.  Again, the key is foot pedal 
accuracy.
        Dreamchild isn't a totally loop oriented entity so all our stuff
doesn't utilize looping technology.  We are hoping to incorporate more of
it, including looping the harp as well.  I use the loops for texture
(ambient variants) in some songs and build some trancy patterns that are
sung over in others.  By working with the capabilities of the equipment in
composing pieces and wrking with someone else with a looping device, we
manage to deal nicely with issue of time drift.  
        At one point I tried looping sections of a song written prior to
acquiring my jamman to see if I could play all the parts I overdubbed in 
the
studio at home.  This would have required looping a few different patterns
of fingerpicking of the same bar length, but I ran into trouble with the
arrangement of the song not having the 'right' number of bars of the same
length so I couldn't come back in with the right pattern at the right time.
As that was a few years back, I don't remember exactly what the arrangement
was, but it was the middle section that threw the time off.  Nowadays, I
write with capabilities of the device in mind.

Frank Gerace
Dreamchild