Tips for Songwriters: The Looper Pedal and The IPad

Hi, Will Faeber here again talking about songwriting.

Today I wanted to talk about a couple of devices that have come out in the last few years that have really helped me to speed up my process so to speak, and I think they will help you as well! The first one is called a Looper Pedal, they have been out for a few years. What a Looper Pedal does is it’s a very simple recording device, that with just a touch of a button allows you to start and stop recording. It simply makes a loop of whatever you play. It also has a built in metronome, drum, and that sort of stuff so you can play along with the drum beat if you want to. But it’s great for songwriters because when your working on a piece of music, you don’t have to keep playing it endlessly. Most songwriters work with chord structures these days, and so what you can do is lay down that chord structure on a little Looper Pedal (pressing one button to start and the other to stop).Once you have that little sequence in, then you can just spend time singing over that sequence and improvising melodic lines till you come up with what you like (if that is the way you work).

So now another device that has become very useful these days, that has become my home away from home, is my IPad! You all are hip to the IPad! For maybe a couple dollars (3 bucks, 6 bucks, or whatever) you can buy the Garage Band app for the IPad, which is absolutely an amazing amazing device that turns your IPad into a recording studio! Your studio comes complete with guitars, bass, and keyboards that are all playable! I mean they are amazingly playable and sensitive! The first time you play one of these things, it will blow your mind at what you can do with it. But even just for songwriting alone, it’s great for just the simple act of the recording process. So what I love about the IPad app is it has a little window that drops down allowing you to pick out a section. There is a section counter that lets you pull up section A, B, C, or D and then you decide how many bars there are. That’s a wonderful way to go in and just make something simple. The microphone recorder is incredible as well, you can set it down and record a band, yourself on guitar or piano, or even just singing a song. Once again, it’s an amazingly useful device, like the Looper Pedal, only it allows you to manipulate the information. You could even use it to record tracks if you wanted to!

I am reminded by listening to Keith Richard’s book “Life”, and if any of you haven’t read or listened to it, I highly reccomend that you do so. I listen to it on tape while I work out which is wonderful! The Keith Richard’s book “Life”. It has a lot of information about how The Rolling Stones processed their music and recorded. I always respect the Stones because they were always their own producers, unlike the Beatles, they were the ones that were really behind the sound of their music, for good or bad. Certainly for good because they ended up with such amazing things. Keith Richards actually made many of the tracks, of course he was a heroin addict, so he would work on all these things and then completely forget. So if it had not been for all those tape recorders that he carried around with him most of the time, most of the Stones’ songs would have been forgotten, because he would wake up and not remember what he had done.

So, whether your a heroin addict or not (LOL), the IPad is a wonderful device because you can take it everywhere with you. You can multitrack, you can do everything you want to do, but as a songwriter the main thing is it allows you to create these sections. It will let you create a little chordal section that you can then improvise your melodies over so you can build up your song. It will even let you move those sections around if you want to. You could interchange intros with verse pieces and with chorus sections and move them around as you like to get an idea of what the song is, very quickly and inexpensively!

So, I highly reccomend those two devices, the IPad with the Garage Band app (greatest thing known to man), and if you can’t afford one of those right away, a simple Looper Pedal, which simply allows you to record and stop recording creating a loop so you can then sing along and improvise your melodies with that. Alright, that’s our songwriting tip for the day. I hope to see you all soon, thank you very much!