Tom Sanderson: organ, drums, editing and mastering
Alan Sanderson: guitar, bass, looping
Alan’s Notes
We got together over Labor Day weekend for an in-person jam, and I brought along my MOD Dwarf so we could do a loop jam. There weren’t enough audio inputs in Tom’s studio setup to do the song I had been thinking of, so we decided to revisit the Valentine’s Day Jam. We spent an hour or so working out bugs in the pedalboard I had built, and then we recorded a 15 minute jam.
This version is a bit different, as all jams will be. The tempo is a little faster and the guitar sounds are more crunchy. The organ sounds are better on the older recording, because Tom’s Roland has better controls than the setBfree plugin we used on the MOD Dwarf. But I was happy overall with the result, and I think Tom did a good job of collecting all of the needles in the haystack in his editing.
This loop jam was a proof of concept, and we have ideas for our next jam. The looper plugin I used can switch between A and B sections, so we will play around with that possibility. We could even add vocals and try to do a conventional song this way.
Tom’s Notes
In about 2000 I made some DAW multitrack recordings on a budget multitrack software called Magik (I think that’s the name) before purchasing a Yamaha hard drive-based machine. Wanting to collaborate online with friends and relatives, I tried about ten years ago to make DAW recordings which ultimately got me frustrated with the latency issues. I finally decided to revert back to a digital hardware multitrack machine (Tascam 24SD).
A few months ago I got a new laptop in the hopes of getting more familiar with DAW recording. I haven’t experienced any significant latency issues this go round but my audio interface only has two inputs (I am still testing the waters on DAW workflow before fully committing to a more technical interface). It is sufficient for two mono inputs at a time and could probably handle a USB MIDI instrument at the same time but not much more.
On this recording, Alan and I contributed instruments in two passes to make the loop: #1 Tom (keyboard percussion) and Alan (rhythm guitar), then #2 Tom (organ) and Alan (bass). Over the loop we then recorded 15 minutes of add-libs with Alan laying down some pretty good guitar licks on lead guitar and me trying to keep up on organ. We recorded the whole thing including a couple of false takes on a stereo track. I later took the stereo track made edits to highlight what I considered the best add-libs – it was necessary to do this the slow way with a graphic WAV editor instead of modern tempo matching because the loop had slight tempo variations.
We are considering developing this jam into a proper song but in the meantime I enjoy both jams this piece has spawned.
Info and Stats:
- Production Dates: 9/5/2026
- Equipment:
- Interfaces: PreSonus Audiobox USB96, MOD Dwarf
- Keyboards: Roland FA-06
- Instruments: Fender Stratocaster, Peavy Fury Bass
- Software:
- Studio One [version 4], CoolEdit 2.0
- MOD Dwarf plugins: Looperlative, GxSupersonic, Vintage Cabinets, x42 setBfree, FuidGM Drums, Stereo Gain, Stereo X-Fade, MIDI SwitchBox 1-2
- Tracks: 1
Sanderson 