With great loop pedal power, comes great loop pedal responsibility.
The loop pedal is an incredible musical tool. It allows a single musician to do so much more than they should be able to do on their own. As a member of the audience, it feels like you’re watching something being constructed piece by piece. Whether this is exciting and effecting or tedious and boring to watch is down to the musician.
Vanessa Knight is a singer-songwriter who makes heavy use of the loop pedal in her show, making her music sound like there is much more involved than just herself at a keyboard. Like many before her, however, this is done with varying levels of success.
Knight’s strength very clearly resides in her ability as a vocalist. Her voice is truly beautiful, and those instances where the loop pedal is used to layer bass and rhythm in the form of vocals show her best work. Her cover of Ben E King’s classic ‘Stand By Me,’ which uses only her layered voice and a ukulele (played only as a drum) is one of her most entertaining songs of the night, despite its relative simplicity. Similarly, her bare bones beat and vocals cover of Alicia Keys’ ‘Fallin’ stands out as one of the show’s best. Other songs which use fewer loops, or none at all, are much more impressive because they also show off Knight’s pure vocal talent.
However, Knight sometimes falls into a familiar trap in simply trying to do too much. At a certain point, there are just too many layers added on top of one another, obscuring Knight’s voice behind a sonic wall of artificial kick drums, hand claps, and cheesy keyboard strings. In fact, many of the keyboard tones used in the show, such as the strings or synth organ, are very strange and often jar quite badly with the rest of the sounds coming from Knight’s keyboard. They are often the last layers added as well, making them conspicuously out of touch with the foundation already in place. Ultimately, there are just too many layers fighting for attention, and since all of them come from the same source, there is no way to balance them properly.
Clearly, Knight is aware of what having a loop pedal on stage can add her show. It can provide a level of complexity, harmony, and beauty which is typically impossible for a one-person show. In her more stripped down, basic songs, she shows how much her voice can do, but unfortunately, sometimes she sets too much in motion, and its difficult to find her in the midst of everything she’s constructed.
