Re: loop device endorsement - was Santanas looping bassist

[Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

Oh, and the below came out wrong--I meant to say that starting about 18
months ago, it seemed that EVERY issue of Guitar Player had someone who
mentioned how they were using a real-time looper.

>> On the other hand, there's a John Scofield article in the same issue 
>that
>> shows his pedalboard which features a Boomerang and a Loop Station, and 
>he
>> discusses how groovy the Boomerang is.  About 18 months ago it seemed 
>that
>> every issue of Guitar Player had at least one article with some 
>guitarist
>> going on about looping in their playing, it just doesn't get headlines.
> 
> That's not huge, but it's not bad either. If he's really taking a new
> direction with his music, and it really is based on looping, and people
> really like it, some of his fans will dig on that and get interested.

***

> 
> I remember when I initially got into this, I was really surprised at how
> many acoustic finger-style guitarists were into using electronic loops in
> their playing. It didn't make any sense to me at all until I discovered
> that Phil Keaggy was really into looping and had based a lot of his songs
> on it. It wasn't just a novelty, it was an integral part of what he did 
>and
> he's pretty popular. Fans of Phil Keaggy wanted to play music like he 
>did,
> which meant they had to get JamMans like he used. Chet Atkins also. He 
>won
> a Grammy for his song Jam Man, which was based around looping with the
> JamMan obviously. But mainly it was good music that a lot of people 
>liked,
> made by Chet Atkins, who happened to use looping to create it. So people
> tried looping to be like those guys.

Joseph Arthur also does a lot of acoustic guitar looping live, but it's all
integrated into his songs.

I surprised myself recently by starting to do a lot of this, using the 
DL-4,
since I didn't want to haul a rack around for the "acoustic" gigs (I know, 
I
know--it's silly, but it comes down to how much time I need to set up 
versus
how much I need the extended features of my Echoplex, which is not at all),
after years of ambient/DJ related looping.  This is in a one-guitar, one
singer context, so as long as she and I sync, we're fine.  I don't have 
much
hope of being able to pull it off with additional musicians, based on past
experience.  But, it's sort of invisible to the audience unless you mention
it, they just think "Gosh, he sure is playing a lot of notes..."

The DL-4 got the nod over the Boomerang because it fit on my pedalboard.


TH