Here are the loop jams I captured from the month of January.
Loop 1 ⭐
I like how laid-back and slow this one is. And the simplicity of that extra single repeated note in the empty space. The whole thing’s pretty understated, mellow, and groovy.
Loop 2
Start with a simple percussive organ part and then give it a little more motion with the bassline. But the thing I really wanted to do here was make use of this cool drum that I was gifted. That requires that one be in a compatible key, so I had to plan ahead for that a bit. I like using the guitar as a rhythmic element to give a little bit more pulse, a little bit of sizzle.
Loop 3
Sometimes the bass takes center stage, and this is one of those. The starting guitar part and the treble chords played on top fade to the background by comparison. I was pretty happy with the lead part on this one, being a little more aggressive. You know, for me.
Loop 4
It’s not a complicated riff that the second-layer bass puts on top of this, but it is the thing that gave this loop its personality. The way these loops are put together, I might try a couple of elements together before I restart and hit record, but mostly I’m figuring it out as I go. So it’s interesting that something that can be the identity of it doesn’t arrive until much later.
Loop 5 ⭐
Another example where I felt like I needed a second line for the bass to add some harmony. For some of these parts, they could’ve been played at once as “double stops”, but that would require me knowing what I wanted from the start. The end result created a tune that I felt very happy to put a lead over. This was one of my favorite lead phrases of the month. The full version is in the long video above, not in the short, as I try to keep those under one minute.
Loop 6
That high reverb guitar part doesn’t move. The bass does move and creates the motion and harmony. I never tire of that trick.
Loop 7 ⭐
I decided to pull out the Strat for this one and put it in a different tuning: FACGCE. And since I was actually recording in the middle of the day and didn’t have to worry about waking up a sleeping family, why not a little bit of trumpet too? The horn is pushed to the background quite a bit in the mix, but I like that it’s there. The resulting groove had a great pocket to play in. I remember grooving on this one for quite a while, just getting lost in it.
Loop 8
The way the lighting changes in this recording, you’d think that I spent the whole day filming this. But no, the light just changes very quickly in January in the PNW. Clearly, my goal here was to play some acoustic instruments, as I frantically moved between them.
Loop 9
Since I was in the mood to go acoustic, I wanted to try something different by not actually using the drum track on my Boss RC-10R looping pedal and building my own instead. Of course, the problem was I was set up to run silent because it was late at night and I didn’t want to wake anyone. So that limited how much I was willing to go bang on random things to make some drum sounds. So what we get here is some bouzouki and then some shaker, and then I wasn’t really willing to do anything muchg louder after that. But I want to return to that idea later.
Loop 10
Somewhere in the back of my head for this one was Santa Fe by Beirut. I wanted to do something with the square wave tremolo below, and a simple happy chord progression.
Loop 11
So I definitely wanted to go with some messy vibrato, seasick slightly detuned vibes. I didn’t actually mean to leave it on when I started doing the bass. And I remember being confused as to why the bass sounded just slightly wrong. Yep, it was getting very slightly detuned. Oh well, I still enjoyed the overall warbly groove.
Loop 12 ⭐
This one comes into its own with that high guitar part contrasting with the swimming main chords and bassline. I’m not using harmonics in there, but it sounds like it? And maybe I should’ve? Eh, it sounds good. The jam over top of it is nice and melodic, which is what I’m always happiest with. Where it sounds a little bit like singing.
Loop 13
Sometimes it doesn’t come together. It felt like I had created a workable groove here. Guitar part with a bunch of phaser, a bassline that felt like it was moving, and a little keyboard because why not. I spent a while trying to jam over this one and it just never turned into anything I found interesting. I included one bar of solo over this in the recording you see here because it felt weird not to when every other loop I post does that. But I wasn’t happy with it. And in the end, I just turned it off instead of my usual “that’s the one.” That’s okay, it happens, and the practice continues on.
A more mellow year for television, at least for me. But certainly some diamonds in the rough. As always, this list is what I newly experienced in 2025, not necessarily what actually released in 2025.
The experience of this show is alternating between beautiful shots of food preparation and stressful environments where everyone is yelling at each other. It is simultaneously very pleasant and very unpleasant. The characters are endearing and broken. It’s terrific. Yes, chef.
Seth Rogen often plays the loser stoner role. In this show he is certainly a bumbling failure… but also a studio executive? Everything is continuously just about to fall apart, with millions of dollars in the hands of people making bad decisions. It’s all very well filmed, and chock-full of “as themselves” industry cameos. There’s one episode that’s about the process of filming a “oner” (filmed all in one take) that itself is a “oner”, and is both incredibly anxious to watch and impressive. Sometimes the ongoing outright failure of the characters grated on me a little bit, but overall I felt like this show had enough heart to rise above.
This is basically The Goonies, but Star Wars. You know, kids swept up in an adventure, way over their heads. Also pirates, including a smarmy one-eyed droid and a sleazy Jude Law. I found the whole thing very charming. It didn’t try to be too much. There’s no big mythology, no interweaving with a grand epic. Just a story about kids seeking secret treasure and missing their parents.
I’ve talked about my love for the first season of Andor before. The second season essentially tells the tale of how we get to the overtly totalitarian empire that we see in the original Star Wars trilogy. Which frankly, in the year 2025, is not an easy story to be digesting in the name of entertainment. It’s science fiction… right? The second season doesn’t quite hit the high highs of the first season’s multiple cascading climaxes, instead only really having one. But a climax is still a climax. So instead of being the best thing ever, it’s merely really good.
I had previously enjoyed watching the Double Fine Adventure documentary, and also the Amnesia Fortnight movie. The same studio and film crew came together this time to document the entire experience of creating Psychonauts 2, the sequel to one of the most innovative games of all time. I watched this documentary after completing the game, of course, which was quite excellent and a worthy follow-up to its predecessor. I had no idea that this documentary was going to be as long as it was. It covers the whole process from initial inception to its final release in 2021, including how the studio had to navigate the pandemic. We’re talking over 30 full-length episodes. I certainly wouldn’t have expected my daughter to be into watching this with me, but she was. It’s very much see-how-the-sausage-is-made, workplace drama, and product-on-fire content. Not what you would assume is desirable television content for a tween. But we both found it fascinating.
This is stretching the meaning of what constitutes “television”, but I get to make my own rules. Every year on the 1st of October, these two musicians (Rob Scallon and Andrew Huang) get together and make a 10-track album all in one day. They don’t record an album of their latest compositions. No, in one day they start from a blank slate, invent, write lyrics, riff off of each other, and capture the whole thing on video as well as in the DAW. The first of these I caught was from this year where they made the album in a Guitar Center while it was open. And from there I dove into the preceding years and a bunch more of their collaborative content. If you’re interested in the process of making music and writing songs, while being truly playful in multiple ways, this is a great watch.
Here are some other shows I watched (or started) that are worth a little mention.
Interview with a Vampire: I’ve read some of Anne Rice’s vampire books, but weirdly not the first and most famous one. But I’m very fond of the movie from the 90s. I’m enjoying this new adaptation immensely. But I’m not done with it and feel unable to give full commentary. I certainly like how a more expanded format gives these characters in this world of darkness more time to breathe. Well, not literally. They’re dead.
The Rings of Power: Season 2: The series seems to be divisive. I myself have a deep fondness for the Lord of the Rings source material, so I should be a critic. Instead, I remain a fan. This is an important period in the history of Middle-earth, and with the second season we’re now actually dealing with the titular rings of power. I think this show is handling the material and the substantial interpolations with just the right amount of gravitas. I’m still along for the journey.
Three Body Problem: The book wasn’t originally written in English, but that’s how I read it. And now here we have another level of adaptation to television. It’s pretty far removed from the source. I thought the book had interesting concepts, but ultimately was… just fine? As a television show it felt even more clunky but also… just fine?
Silo: Season 2: The show takes some pretty serious liberties with the source material. Which hey, is to be expected. But it means in those moments where the show doesn’t quite come together it’s very easy to be yelling at the TV wondering why they changed something that worked well on the written page. Ignorance is bliss, yes? In the second season we’re into the full bleak revolution by suppressed people. There’s very little levity here. Also, I found it very distracting the way the show intercut between the different storylines of the main protagonist and the main silo. To me this underserved some of the more dramatic moments from the book around the vault and the flooding and the whole story of that new world. And here I am, the cliché of the book reader nitpicking the adaptation, but also that was my experience.
Arcane: Season 2: This is still an absolute feast for the eyeballs. I enjoyed it, but I don’t know that I have a ton of new things to say beyond “yep, still gorgeous, still having a good time.”
Severance: Season 2: Everyone was super into the second season. I remain super triggered by the “innie” corporate existence and how similar it can feel to some of my less empowered work experiences. I had a bit of a sleepy response to the second season. But I know I’m in the minority.
Station Eleven: There is a familiar-yet-not post-apocalyptic premise behind this show. Of life on the other side of a world-altering pandemic, and what the new generations do or don’t adopt from the “before times.” It’s based on a book written before the pandemic we all went through. But this show, while it had its moments, didn’t stick to my bones. I found it just a bit floaty, pretentious, and ultimately dissatisfying.
Here are the loop jams I captured from month of December.
Loop 1
I think I was looking back at some old loops and wanted something with a slow groove. With a modulated held chord. I remember playing around for a while before I landed on a bass line that I liked. Well, mission accomplished, because this jam is slow AF.
Loop 2
Let’s do phaser distorted percussive funky chords and a bunch of chicken scratch. What next? Well, I’m not exactly clear on that. I’m just making all of this up as I go.
Loop 3
Whenever I go to lay down a new loop I have to clear a memory slot, because the 100 available on the looper pedal have all been used. I’ll generally give what was in there one playback before deleting it. This was an example where I liked something that was there and decided to do it differently. Inevitably the new becomes unrecognizable from what was there before. The chord progression here is two parts, once descending and one ascending, both with a chorus effect on. The lead line is some fuzz doing what felt right, which is another layer of stair step motion.
Loop 4
This started as the chord progression for the sea shanty “Bully in the Alley.” I was contemplating doing a straight take of the vocal melody, but once I laid down the main chords with that phaser effect and rhythm I had no interest in that anymore. So some simple fuzzy lead line it is.
Loop 5
It’s unrecognizable now, but again I was aiming to cover a sea shanty, this time “Drunken Sailor.” Don’t hear it? Yeah, I didn’t stick with that idea. I really liked the syncopated rhythm over the dreamy chorus-laden chords. It all came together and created a delightful base to play over. This was one of my favorite grooves to get into this month.
Loop 6
Keeping the theme of wanting to cover and reinterpret songs, I was listening to “Glory Box” by Portishead and had the idea to take the string section and do it with guitar. But of course that string part has many sources doing a bunch of different harmonies and that all came out very different with the guitar layers. Loud, really. That didn’t leave any room sonically to put more guitar on top (which is usually how I finish a loop). Plus I didn’t entirely stick to the original string bit. So this was… an experiment. A fun one.
Loop 7
Not exactly a complicated riff to start, but what I was looking for was a bit of a “pedal tone,” where the motion came from the second layer of chords on top. Which came out great, in my opinion. Very emotive.
Loop 8
I remember really struggling to figure out the final chord on this one to go with the tiny little riff. It feels a bit like a question mark. Continuing a trend for this year, this really came into its own once the bass line came together and gave it grounding and momentum. What felt awkward earlier on became cohesive.
Loop 9
Not a lot of complexity in the base loop here. I pretty much raced through to get to the point of adding a fuzzy lead line on top. I like when that traces over the base riff.
Loop 10
Enough electric tomfoolery, it’s time for raw funky acoustic guitar. Which… I immediately felt needed a muted electric rhythm on top of that. There was so much going on with the rhythm that I wasn’t exactly sure how to accompany. I’m trying to decide if that’s a problem or not. In some ways, if a thing is ever to be a song it probably needs vocals and those need a melody. And that could be traced out with guitar. But not always. I’m not technically songwriting here, so it’s fine. I think.
