5 Live Looping Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Show

I love the "you don't even have to consult your band members". A couple of the other virtues of solo gigging: nobody is ever late to practice; you always agree about the song set. Great tips!

Brilliant video, I especially like the Dancing tip! I need to do this more! I also think that PRACTICING the song LOADS is really important too! Keep up the amazing work - you are a looping legend!

Guilty! This is really helpful! Thanks

Yikes...guilty as charged...Great tips Em! 🤟

Great tips. I'm guilty of a few. However, 1 that I am NOT guilty of is taking a long time to layer the loop. I think I owe this to a heckler at a show in Arizona, when I was just starting the drum loop, & he yelled "I love this song" lol That taught me quite early on to get the loop going & get to the vocal part quick so that the audience knows what song I am actually playing.

Good Tips, especially the dancing. :D Many musicians (like me) are too focused on the music and forget to move haha

Wow! Very helpful! Every point valuable and applicable. Thanks. Keep up the great work!

As a drummer, I’d rather have the chords play first to get an idea of the song formate and style. I like to know when the verse comes in, the chorus, bridge, solo, etc.

Huge fan Emily! Love these tips.. tip number one is a huge one for me.. if I’m watching a performance , and 3 mins in and someone is still layering spoons and shakers and adding 6 layers of goofy mouth sounds.. then I’m out.. lol… the loop artists that I enjoy, are the ones that if you close your eyes, you can’t hardly tell they’re looping… artists like yourself, and Matt Bolton come to mind.. you guys are great at making us forget you’re even using a loop pedal.. so good!

Great video! I never tried looping before xD and worse - I have no feel for rhythm at all. Even my musician mates tell me that I should learn to count till 4. But anyways, I wanna give it a shot ;) Because I am kind of a good producer, and I wanna do something of this live

I feel called out! I notice when I screw this stuff up every time I perform lol. My performance is all comedy though so when I fumble and start over I notice it just tends to add to the laughs.

I haven't done any of those mistakes. But when I start looping I will look forward to them. This was very good. You sort of touched on my ambivalence towards looping. I want to do it - I get tired of watching almost all other loopers after about halfway through their first song. You are exactly right with the five.

Been looping since 2000. Those are a good 5. I'd like to add another. If you're performing and making it up as you go then keep focussed without tapping into the energy of your crowd too much. Once you have experienced the pain of allowing the audience way too far inside you that ends up changing everything you thought you might do and finding yourself in an uncomfortably novel situation you will know what I mean and that you do not want it anymore. So get to your groove quickly and then connect to the crowd quickly. The spirit of your new song will be established and the crowd will join along instead of painfully wishing you were doing something else. I'm a loopercussionist. . . I play percussion creating live loops to make people move their body then into ambience to stimulate the mind and back to beats! Thanks Emily.

Hey Emily. I’m just watching your collab with JP and saw you used to do Cruises. Thought I’d say hi, from a fellow pro looper who came from doing cruises! There’s not many of us! I’m a headrush user now having moved over from Boss.

OMG SUCH GREAT TIPS BibleThump 😭 I'm going to try tightening up my loops and practicing the timing of my FX pedals. I use the RC-600 but honestly think it's time I added a midi controller so I don't have to bend down and sift through menus...

I'm new to looping and this was very helpful. I definitely make these mistakes nearly every time I loop. Only way to stop is to loop even more though :D

I 100% agree with the first 4! Very SOLID tips! I hear you about #5 but that's one of my favorite rules to break. Not with 4 bars of guitar or anything like that, but laying down a short rhythm track with a non percussion instrument can be tons of fun.

Toegazing (or looking back and forth/side-to-side at one‘s various devices and screens) really kills it for me. And like you say, slow build-up is the main sin. I‘d rather here a song with fewer layers in it that actually takes off and starts reaching me emotionally than a „perfect“ song imitating an entire band. Keep it simple for me, gals & guys. :-) Oh, and maybe aim more to loop original songs folks aren‘t already familiar with. It‘s excruciating to know a song and be stuck waiting for the initial vocal (signature melody!) for eons while the looper loopsterbates in a self-indulgent, on stage Orgy of One. ;-) Doing covers means needing to get all the „essential“ (?) parts down first…or does it, really? Just because it‘s possible doesn‘t make it desirable.

I just started looping and your vids have been a huge help, thanks a ton

Pretty much all sound advice. Another one which I saw someone suggest was do not experiment too much without reading the room first. I like to try things myself if I'm feeling it but if the room hasn't shown you any indication that they're down for it then it might not be a good idea...