Here are the loop jams I captured from the month of July. Overall this month didn’t come as naturally as some. A lot of loops were a struggle, and I didn’t get as much time with the guitar as I’d like. But I soldiered through regardless, because… that’s what practice looks like.
The embedded clips below all show the same thumbnails, but I assure you they are each set to jump the right unique moment. Full video here.
Loop 1
Using the “bit crush” mode on my new Dark Star Stereo to get that low bitrate gargle that makes me think of Disasterpeace on the FEZ soundtrack. There are al of chiptune-like tracks that use that I like. I’m still trying to figure out how to harness it.
Loop 2
Leaning into starting with the bass and also vibing with the bass drum rhythm. For a rhythm layer on top… hyper reverb warble tones? Again playing with the Dark Star trying to have a bit crush follow the lead. I’m not sure it works.
Loop 3
This one didn’t come together until I plugged in that rhythm on the bass. Arguably I still didn’t know what to do with it, but it definitely had a beat to it.
Loop 4
Again, trying to make sure my bass rhythm locks in with the kick drum. I really like taking the two harmonizing bass lines together. That gave it the sense of self enough to then let the final guitar melody on top be… sweet? It sounds sweet to me.
Loop 5
An exercise in what happens when you have something “stationary” and then put chord motion on top of it. I think I had been listening to some Pumpkins recently, because this is really going for wailing and sentimental distorted guitars. My daughter actually came in while I was playing to give me a hug, which was super sweet, but then mid-hug she remembered I was recording and sheepishly exited very quickly. I cut that out of the recording, but that’s what I’m smiling about.
Loop 6
The core part reeks of “random noodling I would do when sitting down to a guitar”. There’s just a type of thing I’ll probably default to playing, and it’s pretty much always something like this. I do dig the large delay with the single note slides.
Here are the loop jams I captured from the month of June. So many new developments this month. A new bass! A new couch! Also some music was made.
Some time ago I filled the 100 memory slots of my Boss loop pedal, and lately I’ve been going through overwriting the old with new recordings but not changing the rhythm from whatever was there. So pretty much every one of these loops started as “here’s some preexisting rhythm, figure something out”.
The embedded clips below all show the same thumbnails, but I assure you they are each set to jump the right unique moment. Full video here.
Loop 1
I wanted to get something low-fi and mellow, and one way to get that is with some vibrato (like via my Julia) and then to EQ down to a narrow range. I used my Pitch Fork for a quick and dirty bass without having to swap instruments. And of course some tremolo (via the Monument). From there it’s slow jam town.
Loop 2
I love playing with my pedalboard and an electric guitar. But… sometimes it’s great to set up a mic and keep it to acoustic instruments. First the nylon guitar that I learned on as a kid. Then the acoustic bass I got from a used shop in college. And then the bouzouki I got this past summer in Greece. It’s not often that I use the bouzouki for the final lead layer, but I think this jam slaps.
Loop 3
This is my friend’s song “Dance with Me” that I wanted to practice a bit before she and I performed it later. I created both the verse and chorus in my loop pedal so I could particularly practice playing through the transitions. Since the original song doesn’t have any drums, I used the loop pedal without any rhythm track.
Loop 4
I wanted to do something with more of a distorted and fuzzy core, using the Wave Cannon. Wild response swing from the acoustic jams? I don’t use the Q-Tron often (because it’s a very particular flavor), but that’s what’s giving the wah-like envelope filter on the first half of the lead section.
Loop 5
This one started with me noodling something simple out on the keyboard, a locked chord with a descending root note sequence. Just some slow simple chords with tremolo on top of that. Behind me you’ll see the new couch we got for my music space; something wider than a chair so that I can play while in it, or someone can visit while I play.
Loop 6
The acoustic bass seen above in loop 2 has been my only bass guitar for over twenty years. As a birthday gift to myself this year I bought an electric bass guitar, a Squire Precision. So obviously this loop needed to start with the bassline. I put a strong chorus effect to the chords over top (via the Julia), an effect I generally don’t use much of but it felt right here. The best part of this loop is the slide down and pause that breaks up the flow.
Loop 7
Still getting into my new bass, so I had to start another loop with a bass focus. Bass harmonies! Since the bass was doing more work, the chords are minimal (but with an aggressive amount of tremolo). The halting rhythm of this one took me longer to figure out, meaning my daughter had to pop in and tell me it was late and to turn it down. So I didn’t get as much time to jam on this one as I often do. A good reminder to break out the headphones for late night.
Here are the loop jams I captured from the month of May. I actually had the pleasure of playing with a friend multiple times this month (that’s a video for another day) but that did mean fewer solo loops than usual. A couple of these loops were however based on chord progressions from her songs, part of practicing to play more together.
I’ve been making and recording loops like this for a year, and dropping them on YouTube for at least half of that. But that’s not a great format to give extra detail. So I’m going to try delving into that here on the lob to discuss my opinion on each loop, as well as the effects and thought process behind each. Do you think I should keep doing this? Give me feedback (as comments on the video or wherever you can find me) about which loops you liked the most (that’s why they’re numbered).
The embedded clips below all show the same thumbnails, but I assure you they are each set to jump the right unique moment. Full video here.
Loop 1
This one has a relaxed slow vibe that is what I’ve really been enjoying lately. It’s also got a longer repeat with the chord progression than most of my recent loops, giving more space to be dynamic with the lead. A slow jam with a bit of overdrive crunch and some delay… I can sit in that groove for a long time.
Loop 2
I don’t start enough jams on the bouzouki. This one started with a simple riff, and then from there I just wanted to keep everything acoustic. So add an acoustic bass and a little bit of reverby trumpet (not an instrument I’m strong with, but something I love in the mix). And the only place to go from there is to keep it acoustic and layer on a jam with my Taylor.
Loop 3
This chord progression is from my friend’s song. We intend to play this and other songs of hers at an upcoming small festival, so I thought I’d practice over the core structure. This isn’t really the right rhythm though (side effect of defaulting to using my rhythm looper pedal), but it provided enough to toy with. I went with a vibrato lead because the whole thing felt old timey.
Loop 4
I started with a bass line just by using the Pitch Fork to down-octave my guitar (a common option for when I just want to get moving quickly). Add some tremolo chords on that and… we’ve got another slow jam. These days these are my favorite place to sit.
Loop 5
Another example of workshopping something over a chord progression from a song I’m supposed to be practicing. I liked the downward motion of the simple faux-bass. Given that arrangement, a fuzzy guitar sounded appropriate. And if I’m not mistaken, this is my trying out the Wave Cannon to get some middle-of-the-road distorted tones.
Loop 6
I try to film the whole process of creating the loop so I can include the original samples for the edit. This was an example where I had got interrupted, had to step away after starting the loop, and come back and recreate it. Which gives me a lot more ability to be precise in planning for an end destination (instead of what I usually do which is just layer until I’m happy). The key part was the second layer here with the fixed “pedal tone” (not a single pedal note, but a stationary repeating section). It felt right to keep a clean tone on all those first bits, until the contrasting tremolo chord sequence came in. Just a bit of overdrive for the lead tone, with reverb coming from the Afterneath if I’m not mistaken.
As I learned to play guitar first, my bass guitar playing is a but too… guitar-like. Poking around on YouTube I came across a video that goes through 50 songs to learn on bass. I thought I’d try walking through that myself, grabbing tab for each. And as long as I’m doing that, I might as well share.
My guitar pedalboard has continued to evolve from its last iteration, and after many stable months of the same configuration I’m calling this “version 3.” Why change it at all? Two instigating events:
My daughter built the JHS Notaklon and I needed to find space to fit it in. But also adding another “dirt” pedal made me question what I already had.
While in Greece I acquired a tetrachordo bouzouki, an 8 string acoustic instrument. I wanted to incorporate that into my looping/recording rig, and to do that I needed a setup for capturing instruments with a microphone.
These challenges forced me to rearrange, but as I did I discovered opportunities to optimize and refine.
Microphone as an input
While this was built to be a guitar pedalboard… it has potential for more. For example I can plug a keyboard into it and add reverb or delay or any effect I like. But not every instrument has a 1/4” output. Some acoustic guitars have pickups built in and a 1/4” jack, but not all, and even still putting a microphone up to it is the best way to capture the instrument’s sound. My new bouzouki certainly has no built-in hardware. I’m also experimenting with other instruments, like the trumpet. So I need a way to capture instruments via my good ole SM57 microphone and put them through the pedalboard. For the difference in cabling (XLR vs. 1/4”) and signal compatibility I needed a microphone preamp.
The dirt section
Looking at my previous layout I had too many “dirt” pedals (overdrive/distortion): Morning Glory, Triumph, PG-14, and DS-1. I wasn’t finding enough distinction between these 4 to justify so many slots. I picked my favorite 2 to stay (the Morning Glory and PG-14)… and then added in the Notaklon. These 3 together give me a range where I do find myself using all of them. The Morning Glory is the most subtle and almost always on. The Notaklon gives me a great sharp lead tone (and stacks well with the Morning Glory). The PG-14 is flexible and gets used for heavier distortion and sputtery tones.
Looper as an output
One of my most essential pedals is the looper, which allows me to layer my past self beneath my current self. But the looper isn’t part of my sound, it’s merely a utility that receives the output of my sound at the end of the chain. Mentally, it’s different. So I had the idea to move it off the board and be its own thing.
Enter the “baby board,” a Pedaltrain Nano (with a power supply underneath). This allowed me to group some utilities at the end of the chain. It has the looper, an EQ, and an amp sim. When months later I went to go shop for a guitar I took the baby board into the store and had everything I needed to test instruments with headhpones on a familiar setup.
Did I cheat and solve my pedalboard space problem by adding a second board? Yes. But in doing so I stumbled into something I’ve found both more organized and more independently useful.
Now let’s go into detail on each of the pedals new to version 3.
Without a microphone preamp if you plug a microphone into a guitar rig the levels are going to be way too low. It’s easy to use a microphone independently (into a mixing board or straight into a powered speaker), but my goal was to enable the live pedalboard effects for microphone input too. I opted for a reasonable used microhpone preamp. It works well enough, with some knobs to adjust the input signal. This pedal currently lives off the main pedalboard all on its own. So I have 3 sections in the chain that match my mental categorization: inputs (which has this mic preamp), sounds (the main pedalboard), and outputs (the looper and utilities).
The goal of the board is to enable me to be creative in real time. When I have to bend down and fiddle with some cables, unplugging one and plugging another in… that gets in the way of being present. I want swapping the input from one instrument to another to be immediate. Enter the A/B switch. I have this set up to toggle between the direct instrument line in and the output of the microphone preamp. So with a quick tap I can switch between the Stratocaster and the bouzouki, or between a keyboard and a trumpet.
The pitch video for this DIY kit absolutely stole my heart. So I was among the initial wave of tens of thousands who flooded orders. I put it in front of my tween daughter, and she built me a guitar pedal. Which was a magic experience and I will always treasure this pedal.
Do I like the sound of the pedal? Absolutely I do. The Notaklon gives me a nice dirty overdrive that cuts through with a warm crunch. It stacks nicely with the Morning Glory if I want something even dirtier.
I’d had my eye on the Iridium for a while, waiting for the right price on reverb. This pedal is an “amp sim,” which is to say it emulates the sonic qualities of various amps in one tiny box. You can get the response you want (Fender, Vox, Marshal, or otherwise) at the volume you want and in a travel friendly format. This lives alongside my looper on the “baby board,” as it’s part of my output section.
I feel like I’m underutilizing it. The main speaker I have in my practice space is an amp (a Vox Mini Superbeetle), and running an amp sim into an amp is sonic double dipping. I’d rather pair with a more neutral output, but my practice space hasn’t otherwise warranted a PA system or monitors. However when I use the Iridium straight into my recording mixer or use it with headphones, everything’s great.
My 2 button rhythm looper is so heavily used by me that I’ve felt some common functions could benefit from a dedicated button. Thankfully it can be extended and customized with an external foot switch. I use these 2 extra buttons for:
Tap tempo: I can change the BPM with the main dial on the looper, which is precise but fiddly. With this footswitch I can mash the added button to get the time set fast and without bending over.
Undo/Redo: Technically I can do a long press on one of the existing buttons to undo the last layer I recorded. But this is a common enough action that I prefer having its own button.
JHS made a great video to launch this pedal in late 2024. I’ve had delay effects through my Parallax, but there were some quality of life improvements I was seeking. Tap tempo is the most important one, as I have discovered that getting a delay timing dialed in with a knob is not fun. Tapping in with a foot switch is much more immediate and more accurate for my usage, plus there’s a knob to choose standard subdivisions. In fact a lot of what drew me to this pedal was the user interface; the way the functions are divided up between the switches and knobs is intuitive. Mostly the only thing this pedal gave me I didn’t have was tap tempo and reverse delay, but the way it’s packaged together has me feeling more in control.
I didn’t need this pedal. I wanted this pedal. It has a wizard on it and an awesome name. And with it I can create cavernous ambient echoes. The pedal sits somewhere between reverb and delay; its effect is accomplished with delay, but it feels more like a reverb in creating a feeling of physical space. It’s the sort of pedal that inspires me to play differently. It also has an expression input that affects the key space of the echoes; that one is fun and inspired an additional purchase below.
I was never dissatisfied with the JHS Tidewater tremolo on my board. But I’ve realized I really like tremolo, and if I was going to upgrade to something with a bit more control, my tremolo pedal would be a great candidate.
What the Monument gives me more than anything is tap tempo. Quickly while I’m playing I can mash in the rate I want for my tremolo and match it to what I’m playing. With a twist of a knob I can choose the subdivisions. I’m also able to adjust the waveform from triangle to a more choppy square wave, or choose harmonic tremolo. It’s a solid upgrade.
Walrus generally has awesome art on their pedals, and they also do limited runs of alternates. This is not the standard art for the Monument, but the “Kamakura” series. It certainly caught my eye, and I prefer it over the standard howling wolf. Although if I’m honest, it’s not the look I associate with the feel of tremolo. It’s very cool, but not perfect.
Between the Monument, Afterneath, and Flight Delay… I had added several pedals with “expression” input options. Previously the only pedals I had with expression options were the Pitch Fork and the Attack Decay. With a stereo splitter cable it’s possible to use my volume pedal as an expression pedal… but then it ceases to be a volume pedal. So I wanted a dedicated expression pedal. Not a top priority, but when the right deal popped up on reverb…
I ended up getting 2 things. One is a slider, which is less for your foot and more for your hand, but the user interface nerd in me finds it charming. The other is this expression “ramper,” which allows me to program the start/stop values, speed, shape, and kick the whole thing off with a press of a switch (or put on loop). It’s a creative tool in my kit that I don’t use frequently but is pretty fun. I have the slider connected to the Afterneath (controlling the drag) and the ramper connected to the Monument (controlling the rate)
Without a microphone preamp if you plug a microphone into a guitar rig the levels are going to be way too low. It’s easy to use a microphone independently (into a mixing board or straight into a powered speaker), but my goal was to enable the live pedalboard effects for microphone input too. I opted for a reasonable used microhpone preamp. It works well enough, with some knobs to adjust the input signal. This pedal currently lives off the main pedalboard all on its own. So I have 3 sections in the chain that match my mental categorization: inputs (which has this mic preamp), sounds (the main pedalboard), and outputs (the looper and utilities).
The goal of the board is to enable me to be creative in real time. When I have to bend down and fiddle with some cables, unplugging one and plugging another in… that gets in the way of being present. I want swapping the input from one instrument to another to be immediate. Enter the A/B switch. I have this set up to toggle between the direct instrument line in and the output of the microphone preamp. So with a quick tap I can switch between the Stratocaster and the bouzouki, or between a keyboard and a trumpet.
The 
I’d had my eye on the Iridium for a while, waiting for the right price on 
My 2 button rhythm looper is so heavily used by me that I’ve felt some common functions could benefit from a dedicated button. Thankfully it can be extended and customized with an external foot switch. I use these 2 extra buttons for:
JHS made a 
I didn’t need this pedal. I wanted this pedal. It has a wizard on it and an awesome name. And with it I can create cavernous ambient echoes. The pedal sits somewhere between reverb and delay; its effect is accomplished with delay, but it feels more like a reverb in creating a feeling of physical space. It’s the sort of pedal that inspires me to play differently. It also has an expression input that affects the key space of the echoes; that one is fun and inspired an additional purchase below.
I was never dissatisfied with the JHS Tidewater tremolo on my board. But I’ve realized I really like tremolo, and if I was going to upgrade to something with a bit more control, my tremolo pedal would be a great candidate.
Between the Monument, Afterneath, and Flight Delay… I had added several pedals with “expression” input options. Previously the only pedals I had with expression options were the Pitch Fork and the Attack Decay. With a stereo splitter cable it’s possible to use my volume pedal as an expression pedal… but then it ceases to be a volume pedal. So I wanted a dedicated expression pedal. Not a top priority, but when the right deal popped up on reverb…