Using Loops in Worship – Part 4: Equipment for Making Loops

Posted by admin on Dec 1st, 2009 | 3 comments home title

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This entry is part of a series, Using Loops in Worship»

plug Using Loops in Worship Part 4: Equipment for Making Loops Loops in Worship Now that you’ve read through the getting started posts, it’s time to get down to the real deal: setting up your worship environment for using loops. Note: these are all products that we’ve used and fully support at LoopingWorship.com, and we’ve included affiliate links to each product to help pay the bills! Here’s a basic equipment guide and what you might reasonably expect to pay.

Loops. Check out our worship loops library for some great loops made by the team here at LoopingWorship and by others in the loops community. All the loops you’ll find will be ready to go for use in worship, but you might want to make some changes to the actual instrumentation/sounds/structure. In that case, you’ll want to download the .rns (Reason) file and take a look at the equipment below.
Propellerhead Reason 4.0 Recording Software ($399 at Amazon.com). The de facto standard in loop creation, Reason is a one-stop shop for making some pretty amazing backing tracks. While other music-creation software specializes in recording and audio editing, Reason doesn’t allow recording live instruments (although their new software plugin apparently does); instead it focuses on software instruments that are built-in to the standard Reason package or can be purchased as upgrades called Refill packages. If you are willing to drop a bit more dough, the Propellerhead Reason Premium Edition is about $516 at Amazon.com, but includes many of the most popular Refill packages.
Ableton Live 8 (about $500 on Amazon). Ableton Live is the software tool we’ll be using to play the loops in a live setting. While Reason can play loops as well, Live takes much less processing power and can handle multiple outputs (remember we had determined we needed at least two or three outputs–at least two for stereo L and R and one for a click). If all you need to do is play the loops, you might consider purchasing a light edition of the software. If you want to go with just the Ableton option and throw out the Reason package altogether, check out the Ableton Suite 8 Full Version.
A computer. Preferably a laptop, you’ll want a computer that is dedicated to playing the loops onstage, but you’ll also want your own computer to be able to use Ableton Live and Reason to make and edit loops. We recommend an Apple laptop, either the MacBook Pro or the smaller MacBook. These are going to set you back a few K, but they’re more than worth it. Each Apple computer comes with some pretty awesome built-on software, and you’ll be able to get years of use on- and off-stage from them.
A midi keyboard. If you are musically trained enough to know your way around a keyboard, you’ll get a ton of use out of a small two- or three-octave keyboard. Reason and Ableton Live both can read data from most midi keyboards, and if you have an Apple computer, you probably won’t even need to install a driver. We recommend the M-Audio Session KeyStudio ($99 on Amazon.com).
An interface. You’ll need a way to hook up Ableton Live so you can route the click and stereo L and R tracks from your computer to your FOH mixer. Here at LoopingWorship, we recommend the PreSonus FireBox 6X10 Firewire Recording Interface. This interface allows you 6 simultaneous outputs and two simultaneous inputs, and will double as a great tool for recording guitar, vocals, or keys. Your computer must have a FireWire card and input slot in order to use the FireBox, but the benefit of FireWire (as opposed to USB) is that the processing takes place inside the FireBox unit, and not in the computer’s central processor. Basically, FireWire will save your computer’s processor for processing the loops.
Audio-Technica ATH-M30 Professional Headphones. Ear buds just won’t cut it. If you expect to be able to get a full-spectrum idea of what your loop sounds like, invest more than just 20 bucks in a good pair of headphones. We also recommend a high-quality pair of studio phones like these: Pioneer HDJ-1000.

This list, while not all-inclusive (you’ll still need a band, a soundguy, and a PA…), should be plenty to get you started making and editing your own loops. Feel free to comment below to add any details or products you’ve used that you recommend. We’re always looking to find the best new products and deals, so let us know what you find!

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Entries in this series:

Using Loops in Worship - Part 1: Do You Need Loops?
Using Loops in Worship - Part 2: Where Do You Start?
Using Loops in Worship - Part 3: What is a Loop?
Using Loops in Worship - Part 4: Equipment for Making Loops
Using Loops in Worship - Part 5: Equipment for Using Loops

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