Secrets of how it’s done!
The tagline on our website and promo materials boast ‘electronics’ as part of the mix so now having acquired a new floor pedal, seems an appropriate time to explain what that actually means…
We are very keen to perform our songs live as fully as possible and a major aspect of this is looping which plays a big part in the arrangements for Jazzient. Our music usually features multiple parts and previously we have used two separate 3 phrase loopers, the excellent Boss RC-300s.
We have one each and these are tethered together with a midi cable to keep them in time with each other.
But now, after a long wait, we have received the very latest unit from Boss – the RC-600 and it is set to help us expand our live abilities much (much) further. Now, we don’t need two separate units because this has six phrases! It can also separate our instruments into their own channels and the sound quality of the machine has leaped up into gorgeous full clarity too.
(Nerd alert – this is the technical stuff)
The RC-600 is a simply amazing machine with seemingly limitless possibilities. I have been getting to grips with programming some of our songs into it. This might sound strange because there’s no music being recorded at this stage. What happens here is defining things like the time signatures and which loop will do what funky things they need to do in the song.
For example our song ‘The Seashell Waltz’ is in 3/4 time and the first thing to record after a shaker (2 bars on loop 4) is a guitar fingerpicking part in 8 bars- so loop 1 is setup accordingly. The 2nd thing is a C# bass pulse which only needs 2 bars on loop 2 for speed. Bev plays the lead Sax and the song is underway with the main theme. After some floating soprano sax soloing comes a choral voice part – loop number 3 has 4 bars and vocal harmonies are layered over each other. Once in place a slicing effect cuts the vocals up into crotchets and Bev loops a unison sax note onto loop number 6 which then get sliced into semi-quavers making the rhythms bounce off each other. Loop 1 is shut off and gracefully fades out – then come some free soloing and huge pad guitar sounds using the guitar synthesizer. Finally these crazy parts fade out and we’re back to the original guitar arpeggio and play out with the simple theme.
Setting up the new Boss RC-600 has been quite a learning curve and there’s plenty more to get to grips with but I have to congratulate the manufacturers on creating such an impressive device that underneath its pretty exterior is a very powerful monster!
Now it’s back to the manuals and the wonderfully helpful musicians on FaceBook and get all our other songs organised.
Jazz-Admin