My piece was created through the utilisation of a Roland TR-8s, Korg Prologue 8 and Fender Stratocaster ran through Boss DD-8 Digital Delay. All these components were separately run into an audio interface into Logic Pro X, where my piece was recorded. These elements were routed via an audio interface into Logic Pro X, using live looping via a Boss RC-300 Loop Station. The initial aim of this setup was to achieve clean layering and live manipulation of the hardware that I’d decided to work with. However, both creative and technical challenges appeared, in particular, the routing of audio between the digital audio workstation (DAW) and my looping hardware, which introduced issues relating to the setup and signal flow. These challenges necessitated a shift in my approach, shifting from a primarily technical focus towards a more critically engaged understanding of live electronic performance practice. This reflects broader discussions surrounding the role of technology in shaping music-making processes (Théberge, 1997). This essay reflection evaluates the learning process I undertook, reinforcing the development process of the performance, with special attention to the relationship between my technological setup and the outcome of the piece. It will argue that the project pushed my approach towards something more flexible and unfamiliar to me and my musical interests, through experimentation and reflection, recognising what didn’t work.
My initial approach shifted quite drastically from what I ended up producing. Influentially, I had recently been inspired by the likes of Mk.Gee and Dijon, which was what sparked my initial desire to make something purely guitar centered. I had planned to create a piece of music using solely a guitar and a pedal setup, consisting of a Strymon Deco v2, Boss DD-3T Digital Delay, Ranger FX Reverb and a Joyo Vintage Phaser. However, after a long period of experimentation, I found myself struggling to create something that felt unique, as I felt I was attempting to closely match the particular sound of those that had given me influence in recent times. After I had realised this I began making use of the Roland TR-8S drum machine, which I thought might help me shift away from the soundworld I found myself naturally gravitating back to, however I still slightly struggled with the lack of authenticity. Adding the Prologue to my setup however, really changed my creative process when working out what I wanted to make. Having the option of presets presented me with a solid foundation to then adjust settings such as the filter. envelope, cutoff, portamento and modulation just to name a few, to leave me with a sound that was completely unique. The particular sounds I ended up shaping, I feel, were reminiscent of someone within the electro-punk scene, such as The Chemical Brothers, meaning I was operating within a vastly different genre to the one I found myself having originality issues with. This shift supports the idea that adjusting the tools you’re working with can directly influence creative output (Prior, 2009).
Overall, the introduction of additional tools, such as the Roland TR-8S and Korg Prologue 8, broke up this process of creative stagnation and encouraged my departure from this already established soundworld. This presents the idea that altering the tools as well as the context of the production played a significant part in adjusting the creative identity. Due to this, I have built an awareness of how external musical influences should inform, but not impose on my approach to the compositional side the music.
Alongside this, I deliberately reduced my effects setup to a minimal configuration, primarily relying on the distorted preset within Logic Pro X and a Boss DD-8 Digital Delay. Admittedly this significantly limited my sonic options, however it proved beneficial to focusing my process, as the reduction in options encouraged a more deliberate approach to the sound design of the piece through the Prologue synthesiser. The absence of a larger pedalboard restricted the sonic output of my guitar, leading to an end product which felt slightly unprogressive aside from the brief utilisation of the delay unit. Whilst I feel that the reduction of these options helped me move away from a particular soundworld I felt stuck in, I believe that it concurrently limited the overall evolution of the piece through the lack of the guitar’s aural development. This expresses the importance of finding a sufficient balance between a part being a limitation as a creative tool yet having a large advantage when applying it to a practical environment.
The drum groove that stays predominantly the same throughout my piece, was inspired by The Prodigy, who are well known for often presenting a continuous, ‘Breakbeat-like’ groove over the entirety of their tracks (Butler, 2006). I wanted to use drums like this in order to reflect the big-beat, rave genre I was attempting to work within. I programmed these through the Roland TR-8s by altering each part of the preset’s sound, aside from the snare which struck me as an already adequate tone, directly from the preset. These drums are crucial in achieving my desired outcome and they support the piece with their repetition whilst the other instruments do the heavy lifting by driving the piece forward by displaying new themes and ideas.
The biggest struggle I faced during the set up stage of recording the piece, was the routing of my loop station, something I had not considered in the stages of practice due to all my instruments setup in a chain, being run through a mixer. When first plugging it into the interface on the day this was made, I discovered that if I wanted to be able to control levels of each instrument after recording, I would have to find a way to route the looper around this. To begin with, I quickly noticed that every time I wished to loop something new, all previous loops would go back through and loop again. I therefore knew that I needed to create a way where I could just filter through the signal I wished to loop. This entailed creating a bus track with the output being a separate one to the other instruments. Then I had to route all components to this bus track, and switch the bus level on and off based on what I wished to loop. Therefore, during the performance, I had to manually adjust the bus level through the Logic mixer, as is visible when I tend to the Logic project on occasion during the piece. When using this kind of chain again, where the looper is used to loop each element individually, I would prioritise a more efficient routing setup prior to performance. This could involve pre-configuring preallocated send channels within Logic or utilising an external mixer, as I did in practice, to control which signals are sent to the loop station. By doing so, It would reduce, or even eliminate the need for manual adjustments throughout the performance.
At the song’s peak quantity of simultaneous loops, I did find it tricky to distinguish each separate sound source, including the one I was inputting at that moment. Although it’s tricky to make out due to the quantity of tracker being played, some of the later loops I played were sometimes slightly out of sync with the others due to the lack of coherence between tracks. This therefore led to a performance quality I was not entirely satisfied with when completed. Similarly, the loop pedal made mistakes mostly irreversible, for example if I’d realised I’d made a mistake after recording something over the top of the faulty take. This is due to the pedals ability to only undo the most recent loop without restarting the whole section of the loop. There were a couple of occasions where I had realised I’d made a mistake and therefore managed to act upon it immediately, using the undo feature by holding down the pedal of whichever section you were recording onto (BOSS, n.d). This idea of needing to make quick, real-time decisions through using the looper, rather than a choice being instantly reversible through a DAW meant I had to adjust my thinking from perfecting to committing, with the former being what I was used to. Therefore for future situations, I need to be more conscious of mistakes that I have made before it’s too late to use the undo feature, resulting in an almost irreversible, incorrect track being set.
Although I am aware that timing imperfections can provide a more humane feel to the music I did initially struggle to get the loop station perfectly in time when triggering the pedal through my period of practice leading up to the recording. I found that live looping exhibited issues that would not usually be faced when working purely inside of a DAW. I am of the opinion that in the end product I managed to create something where these issues did not stand out as much as they had done during past practice sessions, by manually adjusting the beats per minute of the machine, ensuring I was locked into a specific length of two bars to capture the input. Generally I am happy with the timing of my looping, even if it’s not perfect, it carries the live groove along rather than it sounding overly quantised. Despite this, I still believe that if I was to spend more time and become more acclimatised to hardware such as this, recording, stopping and starting the loops would have overall, sounded much clearer and coherent.
Texturally, the piece was very busy due to having the drum machine, guitar and synth, all simultaneously due to the implementation of the loop station. Something I wish I had considered is how some of these sections ended up fighting over similar frequencies, producing an outcome which was muddy at points. Although the Prologue bass sound I used did feature an important amount of high end, the body of it clashed with those frequencies transmitted by the guitar and the introduction of the kick coming out of the drum machine, meaning the separate elements are hard to distinguish at points. This proves that the textural planning is equally as important as the sound design and is something that I could have paid more attention to beforehand. On the other hand, I was happy with how the rest of the drums sat in the mix and the textural placement of the glistening sounding synth, that enters at 1:27, was a sonic addition I was pleased with.
Another challenge I faced during this project was the mental load I had to deal with throughout. Having to monitor so many varying components such as the bus’ within the Logic project, what I’d entered into each of the three loop station stores, ensuring the delay pedal would be in time when used, as well as maintaining a strong standard of artistry and development from beginning to end proved to be testing. I do feel in places, the development of the music lacked due to my focus being required for many different things, meaning there were sections not undergoing too much change. There were also occasions where I hadn’t remembered to change the bus level in order to ensure I was looping the correct component of my setup, due to the amount of things I had going on that needed keeping track of. This is what I felt led to an issue at around the five minute mark, where I suddenly dropped out the guitar loops rather than the synth loops which was my original plan. This sounded particularly harsh and resulted in a structural change that I was displeased with.
In terms of my planning for this, it was fairly minimal, with the only active decisions I had made prior to hitting record were textural, rather than a conscious focus on how to shape the piece structurally. This element changed with each practice and take I did, meaning the final product was created through quite a spontaneous process. While I am of the opinion that this spontaneity contributed to a sense of authenticity within the performance, it also introduced structural issues, in particular, inconsistency. Having to rely on addition rather than a transformation of the music, due to the loop pedal, parts of the song resulted in lacking direction, creating moments where the progression of the music was static, partially caused by my previously mentioned point on mental load, with my struggling to keep up with the bus’ via Logic and each track I’d entered into the loop pedal.
Overall, my final product displays strengths and weaknesses in the approach I took. My implementation of hardware successfully resulted in a convincing soundscape of the 90s big beat soundworld, whilst maintaining originality due to my relaxed focus on structure and overall planning for the piece, resulting in something organic to my musical creation that I am used to. However the issues I faced, predominantly with the looper, such as monitoring, routing and timing, suggests that I could put time into refining this method of composition. Despite the piece exhibiting significant sections of cohesion as well as clarity, it also presents inconsistency, due to the complexity of the setup, or rather my lack of knowledge surrounding these instruments, meaning there were sections I was not executing in the most efficient manner. This is a reinforcement of my previous point that a higher level of musical intention alongside ensuring my performance setup supports the desired outcome, would have resulted in an overall, more desirable outcome.
In conclusion, this project has given me an insight into the relationship between the technological setup, compositional process and the final performance within an electronic, big beat sound world that was shaped away from my original guitar-focused mindset by the extended tools and technology I utilised. The combination of hardware and software, and the challenges I encountered during the implementation process, have enabled me to develop an educated and more accurate understanding of how technical decisions influence musical outcomes than I would have done prior to this. The process highlighted important areas for overall improvement, such as timing accuracy, structure planning, and efficiency of my process, whilst also demonstrating the creative possibilities of limiting elements of the setup as well as making use of experimentation. This task has contributed to a change of direction in my approach, enabling me to move towards a more reflective practice that will benefit my future work within electronic based music.
Butler, Mark. (2006) Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Prior, Nick. (2009) ‘Software sequencers and cyborg singers: Popular music in the digital hypermodern’, Journal of the Art of Record Production, (3).
Théberge, Paul. (1997) Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
Boss Corporation (n.d.) RC-300 Loop Station Owner’s Manual. Available at: https://www.boss.info/uk/support/by_product/rc-300/owners_manuals/d99c3dc8-09a4-4856-851b-9afef427f286/ (Accessed: 28 April. 2026).
The Prodigy (1997) The Fat of the Land. XL Recordings.
The Chemical Brothers (1997) Dig Your Own Hole. Virgin Records.
Mk.gee (2024) Two Star & The Dream Police. R&R Digital.
Dijon (2025) Baby. R&R Digital.
