Looping with the Strymon El Capistan

In pursuit of ambience

I have been using the Strymon El Capistan delay pedal for a number of years now, primarily as a utilitarian and versatile delay that lives on my pedalboard, fit for a broad range of applications / gigs. I have only recently started to use its tape looping function, as I have been putting together a band to play All Codes music live. The looping features are limited, but limitations foster creativity, as I discussed in my DAW Like a Console write up. 

I won’t go into detail on the El Capistan’s full feature set - you can get a sense of that on their website if you’re interested. Strymon has recently come out with an updated version of the El Capistan, V2. I have V1, and it seems that all the settings and features from the looping perspective are the same. 

When the pedal’s tape head mode is set to single, and the mode is set to C, the El Capistan functions as a sound-on-sound (SOS) looper. You can press the tap footswitch once to start the loop, then again after some duration to determine the loop’s end point and to start sound-on-sound mode. I.e., the duration of time between these two taps determines the duration of your loop. You can then press tap again to end the loop entirely, stopping playback. The loop length has a max duration of 10 or 20 seconds depending on which side of 12 o’clock the time knob is set when you start the loop. If you try to go over this duration the pedal will simply end the loop at the max length. 

Sound-on-sound is a pretty common concept from the world of tape machines and the idea is pretty self explanatory. The loop is forever circling back around and always recording. Each sound you add will get placed on top of the previous sound you added. Because of this it is easy to get loops that become very texturally dense, get much louder, and spiral out of control. The repeats knob on the El Capistan can curtail this, fading away material as it gets older and older in the loop as time progresses. Tape age, wow & flutter, and the other cool tape-emulating effects on the El Capistan can come into play here to develop a very interesting sonic world.

Most of this is easier to show than explain, so I made two videos that I have attached below. In many scenarios I think it’s better to hear something first before too much discussion.

The caption of this write up is “in pursuit of ambience.” One could argue that the above two sketches are…somewhat boring. Such is the case with most of the material I’ve been making with these techniques. The goal is to create a textural ambience that others can play over (as of now the All Codes live lineup consists of another guitar, synths, and drums). Overall, I’m trying to create slow developing themes, and drones. When these things get pushed up an octave and doubled in speed later in the performance when I move the time knob across the 12 o’clock position (more on that in a bit), I feel as though we get a sense of “instant nostalgia,” since the previous ideas developed so slowly and at times minimally.

I’d like to touch on some of the areas of using the El Capistan in this mode in a little more detail. Sometimes I go into making a loop with this pedal thinking “what sound do I want to achieve” before starting, in which case I’ll make a particular set of choices. Sometimes I just let it go wild and see what happens. You’ll note that I refer to using the El Capistan in this way as a performance. That’s how I view it - you are making a living, breathing, musical performance, not just something you set and forget like most normal loopers. I think that this idea is evident in the vibe of the videos above.

Starting the loop

Most of the time, as in the two videos above, I begin by tapping in and out of the loop with my foot while playing, in an attempt to tightly capture some progression as the basis for the start of the loop. On occasion, when I want to do things a little less planned, I’ll determine the loop duration (tap in and tap out) without playing anything, giving my loop some arbitrary length. This can be good for getting out of your comfort zone and creating something different than what you usually do.

Setting the time knob pre-performance

Where the time knob is positioned before the performance begins is important for any time / pitch things you want to happen later. If you set the time knob to the right of 12 o’clock, when you turn the time knob to the left of 12 o’clock during a loop, the loop will be played back double speed and an octave up in pitch. Additionally, any material you overdub (sound on sound) during this time will be played back at half speed and an octave down when you put the time knob back to the right side of 12 o’clock. And the opposite will happen if you start the loop / performance with the time knob to the left of 12 o’clock: when you pass this boundary during the loop your sounds will be played back at half speed and an octave down, and any sounds you overdub during this stage will be played back double speed and an octave up when you go back across the 12 o’clock boundary. There are many creative implications here. At some point in your performance do you want the loop you’ve created to momentarily bounce up an octave for a fun, sparkly moment? Perhaps you want the opposite. Maybe in the beginning of your performance it’s important for the loop to dominate, and then at a certain point you want it to fall to the background, maybe you’re playing with some others who are now going to occupy the forefront of the performance. Then it might makes sense for your loop to enter the background by slowing it down and making it an octave lower - and thus you should start this loop with the time knob to the left of 12 o’clock.

Adjusting the time knob mid-performance

On the topic of adjusting the time knob mid-performance, in order to take advantage of the potential octave and time shifts available, time itself must be considered. A time-slew has been introduced when moving the time knob over the 12 o’clock boundary - it doesn’t happen instantaneously and a pitch warp effect is introduced. This is of course mimicking real analog tape behavior. So, if you attempt move the time knob in rhythm with your performance, say trying to move your loop down the octave and half speed for just one bar, the time-slew is such that you will not be in the same time-reference that you were in before. In short: you cannot switch between octave-up and octave-down (and of course double speed and half speed) in time. Naturally, this is just a limitation to consider when using this pedal in this way.

Considering tape age, tape crinkle, wow & flutter

For the stuff that I’ve been doing lately, I like to start out the performance / loop with tape age, tape crinkle, and wow & flutter at their minimum. Then as the performance progresses I introduce these elements to create an element of nostalgia that these tape characteristics provide. If you have a good loop going, these effects can quickly make it feel timeless. And in truth I don’t really mess with tape crinkle or tape bias as they are “secondary settings” which require you to press both bypass and tap at the same time to access them (see the El Capistan manual). I’m too nervous to accidentally end the loop by doing this. I leave them both at their lowest setting which corresponds to the best possible fidelity for their respective effects.

Repeats

If repeats are set too high you will get a loop that keeps copying on to itself at full gain, which results in lots of volume and saturation. I typically don’t want this for what I do. So setting the repeats just right becomes a bit of a feel thing. I find that setting it at 3 o’clock produces something that works well most of the time. Then if I want whatever material I’ve laid down to disappear a little quicker, I’ll move it to 1 o’clock. Part of the performance becomes moving the repeat knob as you go. And it can also help to fix your mistakes. If your loop has accidentally gotten too dense, you can draw back the repeats and eventually end up with a cleaner slate. Of course, you have to time this out properly by setting the knob to the right position - how soon do you want the dense material you’ve created to clean up? And while you’re doing this you should keep playing to establish a new bed of material. This takes some feel to get used to, but once you do it’s a lot of fun and you can really “play” this pedal.

Bypass

Not making a sound is as important as or more important than making a sound. And the same goes for when to add to your loop. I spent a long time learning how to play in this style of music by just playing too much into the loop and making a garbled mess. A cool feature of the El Capistan, when in sound-on-sound, with tails on (!), is that you can bypass the pedal and the loop will still continue in the background while you play over it. If I’ve become a bit lost in a loop, I’ll just “step out” and start lightly playing over it. I do this at around 4:40 in the first video I shared above. Maybe doing this will conjure up an idea that I can now lay down more solidly when I tap bypass and hop back into sound-on-sound. Or maybe this will reveal that the loop is good as it is and it needs a bit of “solo” material over top. At the same time, some times I will have set up a loop just the way I like it, and I can now “step out” to play solo material over it confidently.

Closing

What techniques do you use for creating live ambient music? Are there any other unconventional loopers out there that I should check out? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading.