How to become a one man band

There are some musicians out there who have practiced for many hours to gain a mastery of their preferred musical instruments and even have written some complex songs of their own, but they don't want to go out and perform thinking that what they first need to do is find a fellow musician with similar music tastes to form a band. Perhaps you have written a song where the solo plays on top of the rhythm guitar and you don't want to have to whistle or use a harmonica to create that solo riff that raises the whole composition to a higher level. Well, I have the solution for you, and this solution comes in the form of a loop pedal.

There are two main loop/phrase pedals on the market, the one I own is the JAMMAN by Digitech and the other is by Boss, they cost the same and the features included in both are almost identical. For the purpose of this hub I will talk about the Jamman and how it can make of you a one-man-band because with a loop pedal you have at your disposal any kind of sonic accompaniment that you can possibly imagine, and it will be ready to be played whenever you want it to, it is as precise as your head to foot coordination.

I have been to many open mikes where the performers give a CD with the backing track to the sound guy and they just grab the microphone and sing, that looks amateurish and people probably don't want that. With the aformentioned loop pedal you can bring the whole backing track already recorded in the pedal's memory or you can record the rhythm section live, right when you are performing,( more on this method later).

In order to record the backing track, you will have to create the song beforehand and then you connect the JAMMAN to your computer and add the mono sound file to the Looper's folder. This sound file has to be named LOOP02.wav where the "02" (it can be any number) will tell the pedal where to store the sound file. The jamman has 99 independent loops, each can hold 24 minutes of audio and although it is called a loop it can play the file only once if you set it that way, you wouldn't want to reach the end of the song just to have it play the beginning again. Once everything is set just step on the pedal whenever you need the sound to appear. Just as an example, I usually record a bass line this way and let it give my performance that low end plus it keeps the performance in the tempo I want.

Now, if you want to record a phrase live, there are a couple of things that you have to figure out before you go out and perform in front of an audience. First, you need to find the part of your song (verse, chorus) that you would like to turn into a loop, this part will have to appear again in the song. While you are performing just press the record pedal at the beginning of that section of the song and press the stop pedal at the end, then just step over the play pedal when the song requires that section to appear again. Here is an example, let's use Nirvana's "Come As You Are" for a second, you could record the intro (for at least 4 measures) and after the chorus and the bridge just step over the play pedal and you are ready to dish out the solo while the Looper pedal plays the famous riff for you. Of course this is an example only, you would have to figure this out on your own songs. Second, practice until it sounds as if there is no interruption between the live performance and the use of the sound recorded in the pedal.

There you have it,now you can go out there and make yourself known without having to worry about when to meet with another musician, or the ever present clash of egos that all bands have to deal with. At some point you will form a band with extremely cool people, but don't let the time between now and then go to waste without performing in front of others.