The Achilles heel of any layering aficionado is the ability to reproduce everything in a live environment. Alison Chesley, aka Helen Money, resists the temptation to layer -- or even use her looping pedals -- before her songs are written.

In this video, Alison shows us her Roland VS-840EX, which she uses to record her sonic ideas. It's complete with old school zip disks, before disks started trying to be chic and changed to "discs."