Guitar Looping: Shades of Green – Phil Keaggy
Phil Keaggy really loves these looping machines, and uses them in every one of his solo concerts. He also loves talking about what he’s doing. I had the opportunity once to attend one of his performances and I really enjoyed the music and watching him build up the song with the loop pedal. It’s often hard for me to follow the steps he is actually taking to make such elaborate loops, but it is impressive nonetheless. His playing is intricate and effortless, always light as air.
In this piece, Keaggy is recording two solo parts in real time, and then playing a third part to those looped recordings. He is using two capos. One capo is cut so that he can play in two different tunings; standard and D.
Drum Machine: In the Air Tonight – Phil Collins, 1981
This song uses a strong synthetic drum track made with a 1978 Roland CR78 drum machine. It was the first drum machine that was programmable so that drum patterns could be repeated instead of played live.
In an interview for Mix Magazine, Collins, who is a drummer, talked about his unusual choice of featuring such a strong drum track on the song.
“’In the Air Tonight’ was just a drum machine pattern that I took off that CR78 drum machine. You could eliminate certain sounds and program bass drums and snare drums, so I programmed a bass drum part into it, but basically the rest of it was already on there. I probably added an acoustic Fender piano pretty early.” (Flans, 2022)
Citation:
Flans, R. (2022, November 11). Classic tracks: Phil Collins’ “in the air tonight.” Mixonline. https://www.mixonline.com/recording/classic-tracks-phil-collins-air-tonight-365521
Music Tech 2023 