Bill Walker stopped by the Moog Sound Lab to treat us to some incredible live looping improvisation on the Moog Lap Steel.
Ok the gear breakdown (in Bill's own words):
I was running the Moog lap steel through a very basic rig starting with a Keeley compressor set for light compression and a bit of signal boost, into and ethos preamp for both clean and overdriven tones ,into a TC Electronic G Sharp for some dynamic delay and reverb, and finally in to a Looperlative LP-1 8 track loop recorder. I use a Gordius Little Giant midi foot controller to send commands to the Looperlative. My two expression pedals control volume and feedback for my loops.
I use a number of looping techniques that include track speed manipulation, reverse loops, and quantize replace functions. The quantize replace function is what is creating the percolating sequencer sounding loops. I had my quantize replace set to a factor of 16, meaning every time I hit my quantize replace switch , the looper would record for only a 16th of the total loop length. You do this enough times and a cool sequence of notes starts to emerge. I'll often start a piece by first recording a blank loop, and then one by one I start to build a sequence of notes until a highly rhythmic pattern emerges, even out of completely rubato playing.
Its a harder technique to describe than it is to show :-)
www.moogmusic.com/lapsteel
http://www.youtube.com/user/BillWalkerGuitar