Something new! Over the past few years I’ve been dabbling with playing guitar. In spite of weekly lessons, I felt I wasn’t making that much progress so I do what I always do: set a hard-to-reach goal!
The idea was to perform again at the Y2K International Live Looping Festival with a minimal setup. This year it featured:
- Guitar
- Looping / effects pedal
- Mic
This is a detailed breakdown of the whole set:
Equipment setup
I like to travel light: the main part of the rig fits into a backpack, an extra bag was needed for cables, and I brought a mic stand.
The inputs:
- The guitar sends signal to the looper
- The mic is used mostly for beatboxing and audience interaction
- The looper is a combination looper and effects pedal
- An expression pedal controls the guitar input volume
The outputs:
- The house mixer gets two 1/4″ cables for stereo output
- The laptop is connected via USB and captures high quality audio along with video from the laptop’s camera
Guitar: Model 1
TL;DR It’s an electric, but it can sound acoustic. It has a built-in EQ booster.
This is a pretty special guitar. It’s handmade in Santa Cruz, California, at the Rick Turner Guitars shop. They carry on building instruments in Rick’s legacy, and have a high level of craftsmanship.
This Model 1 is the “C” Piezo Deluxe. You’ll first notice it only has 1 pickup: a rotating humbucker. People argue what is the best angle (or no angle) for it, but I like a slight tilt. It has a single coil tap for a brighter Strat-like sound. It also has Tune-O-Matic style bridge with individual piezo saddle pickups for some very acoustic sounds. The body is chambered 2-piece mahogany—the hollowness is more for weight management than tone. The maple neck is a short-scale 24-fret ipe-topped fingerboard.
The electronics blending is probably the most interesting part: a knob at the top smoothly blends between piezo-only bridge to pickup-only. (I only used full-piezo or full-pickup.) The volume pot and tone pot (with single coil tap) are typical. Inside are 2 9V batteries for a high headroom preamp. An unusual feature: the toggle switch turns on an additional EQ board which has a filter sweep and intensity knob. Altogether this leads it to have some really interesting sounds:
- For acoustic strumming and finger picking: full piezo and EQ off. (Sounds amazing through an FRFR.)
- For bright riffs: pickup-only, 1-coil, and EQ off.
- For twangy riffs: pickup-only, 1-coil, and EQ on set medium-high.
- For loud guitar: pickup-only, humbucker on, EQ off.
- For grungy guitar: pickup-only, humbucker on, EQ on set medium-low.
I find plugging the guitar straight into a tube amp reveals a lot of the character just on the clean channel alone:
- For lots of dynamics: light picking or strumming
- For heavy leads and distortion: pluck hard
- For grunge chords: strum hard
BOSS RC-600 Loop Station
TL;DR it’s a 6-track looper. It’s an effects pedal. It has lots of inputs. It does amp modeling. It’s a USB audio interface. And everything is assignable.
This is so complicated it deserves its own post.
At the end of 2023 I had guitar effects pedals but no looper; I really wanted something with more than 3 tracks, and the RC-600 is one of the few options. After I got used to it, I ended up selling off my other pedals because this one unit does so much.
First, it is an audio interface. You can put mics and stereo inputs into it, and send out through one of 3 stereo outputs (plus a headphone jack). It supports expression pedals and MIDI in/out. And, it delivers audio both ways over USB.
Second, all 9 stomp buttons are assignable. It’s too much choice. This is where I landed:
- 1 mode select button
- 1 tempo tap button
- 1 mic mute/unmute button
- 6 buttons that change based on mode
The RC-600 gives you up to 3 “modes”, and I assigned the top left button to do this:
See the other post for details!
In brief, Mode 1 and Mode 3 give me up to 5 loops. Mode 2 is all about effects. And Mode 3 has 2 buttons dedicated to stopping all playing loops and turning the metronome on/off.
During the performance I basically do 3 things:
- Go to Mode 2 to choose the effects for the part I want to record
- Set up the guitar for the part
- Go to Mode 1 and record the loop or play the lead line
Once all the loops for a song are in the looper, it’s matter of turning the loops on/off while the lead line is being played.
The expression pedal was something I felt I had to add. I found that the signal from the guitar was just too hot for the guitar-to-bass effect (G2B). I couldn’t tune the effect the way I wanted and I didn’t want to grab the volume pot on the guitar itself. So I found a big Behringer effects pedal that seemed to be compatible with the RC-600.
- Full down is 100% guitar input level
- Partly tipped back is 75% level
- Fully tipped back is 50% level
I also found the T2 Other Chords loops to also need backing off the input a bit, so you’ll see me record those mostly at 50% level.
Song charting
TL;DR Each song was broken into loops and leads.
This was the plan as of mid-2024. During the performance, several unexpected things happened but I made some course corrections mid-set.
Up until earlier this year I was still settling on what I thought was a good mix of songs. Would it be 3 songs? 4? 6? Would it be a remix? Would I add some improv or original songs?
By June I felt I had to be locked down with the set list and these set of songs seemed to work together. They could all be pitched into similar keys that could use standard guitar tuning. And they could all be simplified into a lead and 4 loops.
Each loop had its Mode 2 effects settings, and T1/T2/T3 was the Mode 1 loop track it would be recorded on. T5/T6 ended up being just Mode 3 T4.
The plan for each song was:
- Tap in the tempo (if needed)
- Beatbox the percussion
- Lay down the Bass or Rhythm parts
- Lay down the Other Chords in the beginning of the song, or maybe during a middle section
The trick is trying to do this process while one song is playing, deleting loops as needed. In the video, I ended up not having enough time to rewrite the beatbox loop on Mode 3 T4 between songs. So, you’ll see me instead dial in a bass instrument or do quarter note plucks while I tap in a faster tempo. I’ll also dial in settings, hold down a loop button to clear a track, and then begin recording the new part on that track.
Getting different tones
There’s a lot of combination work to get the different tonalities for each song that came down to 1) what setting was the guitar in, 2) what picking method, 3) what were the effects pedal settings. The song chart had the general strategy.
Bass. In practice sessions my guitar instructor and I felt the bass was coming across too heavy. This led to getting an expression pedal and using it to back off the guitar input.
- Slap-pop bass: Model 1 in Piezo Mode, thumb pick the low E string, plucking the D string, palm mute
- Heavy bass: normal-picking with palm mute
- Soft bass: thumb picking and palm mute
Acoustic strumming. Model 1 in Piezo Mode, reverse grip on the pick, angled light strumming, expression pedal backed off. (This is my favorite through an FRFR.)
Background chords and textures. Mostly light picking or light finger picking, expression pedal backed off.
- Washy background texture: RC-600 Mode 2, Bank B effects, finger picking.
- Light “upper chords” texture: Model 1 in pickup mode, 1-coil tap, finger picking, RC-600 Mode 2, Bank A, no distortion.
- Light backgound “chugging”: Model 1 in pickup mode, humbucker engaged, RC-600 Mode 2, Bank A, distortion on, light picking, palm mute.
Leads or distorted chords. Model 1 in pickup mode, humbucker engaged, RC-600 with distortion effects, expression pedal full on.
Extra lead boost. Model 1 in pickup mode, Model 1’s built-in EQ booster on, RC-600 with distortion effects in Mode 2 Bank A. Or, for “Blue Monday” Mode 2 Bank C was heavy metal distortion.
Bass drum percussion. It turns out a great way to get a kick drum is to use the Model 1 in Piezo Mode and thump the strings:
- Short kick: slap with 1 finger and hold down to mute.
- Long kick: slap with the whole palm and hold down to mute.
Comments about the songs
Levitating. I wanted a slow funky opening song. The Pulses are similar to the vocal synth in the original. For the bassline, I found putting the Model 1 in Piezo Mode and doing a slap-pluck got me a more interesting tone. In the original, there are these bridge phrases just before the choruses, and that was the idea behind the T2 loops.
Black Horse and a Cherry Tree. The Model 1 has a pretty acoustic sound when in full Piezo Mode, and it really comes out if you hold the pick backwards. You can just use your fingers to strum, but I just found it chewed up my nails. The reverse pick was just something I was messing with and seemed good enough.
Billie Jean. This was a bit of a puzzle since the pre-chorus is actually out of key. The main verse and chorus are mostly G minor (the original is a half step down F#) which puts its fifth as a D minor, but the prechorus jumps up to a D#. This is why when the T2 loop is being played back the T3 loop is paused—playing both T2 and T3 together is rough.
Lazy Eye. This one got the most editing in the middle of the performance. The routing of this song is just a steady bass on the E and the rest of the chord changes are played live. The verse parts are mostly a lead line played over some background chords in E major. I remember looking up at the clock and realizing I just wasn’t going to get to the third (or fourth) verses in time, so after Verse 2 I just straight to the loud E major power chords. I definitely didn’t want to cut that part since it was the only time I planned to demo the Model 1’s EQ boost switch.
Feel Good Inc. I had considered dropping this song from the lineup a while back. I love the song but the lead lines are more monotonous rap. During the performance I tried to add a little more color with some note changes. This song definitely has one of the more fun basslines on T1.
Danger Zone interlude. Between Feel Good Inc and Blue Monday I wanted a palette cleanser. I used this to erase all of the Feel Good Inc loops.
Blue Monday. Whether playing the original New Order synthpop version or the rowdy Orgy version, this song has a lot of small parts and a lot of lyrics. This song also got heavy editing during the performance which took up literally to the last minute. The main pieces are the big power chords in the background of the chorus and the bouncing bassline. The chart says the power chords go on T2, but I ended up putting them on T3.
Some last thoughts
It feels good to finally get a long-planned performance out of the way and to learn an instrument in the process.
Guitar is a really different instrument than the synths I’ve been playing over the years: it changes with the room temperature, there’s a lot of things that can just go wrong with it, you’re looking down at it rather than forward at it, the speakers and the room totally change the sound.
Doing covers is much harder than making up songs on the fly: there’s an expectation of getting pretty close to the melody that people remember, even if everyone knows you’re not going to play the original song exactly. And so when I accidentally put a loop on the wrong track it was nerve wracking to try to remember how to readjust the set. And, also after ironing out some technical glitches in the beginning of the set, trying to figure out how to cut about 2 minutes of material out of the set while playing was a new experience.
When I listen back to the whole performance (which happened a during the assembly of the video), I hear every unintentional note or pause. Something always goes weird in a live performance. But people come to witness musicians doing really mind-bending things and create something memorable in the moment. But I talked to a lot of people after the performance and they all said the same thing: they had fun. And isn’t that the end goal after all?