Hi my name is Jack Shepherd and we're at BOSS HQ and we're looking at the RC-202 Loop Station.
Now it's a tabletop unit and I'm a guitarist so it might seem a little strange at first
but I find that when I'm writing for live performance, first and foremost, it's my audience.
And I'm able to connect with them more directly and a lot more easily when they can see what
I'm doing and really relate to it.
People are used to seeing DJs, things like that, this looks like a bit like a DJ controller.
And when really need to do stuff under the hood with my feet, I can as well.
Like a lot of guitarists, I was a little bit intimidated by tabletop looper and having to take my hands
away from the instrument.
But the main reason I ended up going with the 202 and 505 is that, you can communicate
with your audience around electronic music a lot more with your hands than you can with
your feet.
I find that my songs and my writing process kind of focuses on who's going to be listening
to it, a lot more than it does on me listening back to it.
Another thing about the RC-202 is that I have all of the Track FXs and Dynamic FXs
right in front of me with the audience being able to see them.
If I need to improvise something, or have an idea that I can't get to with my feet,
I can get to it really really easily with my hands and everyone can see what's going on.
So for instance, if I'm looping something like a...
and if I want to put a filter on that here...
Someone can see me doing that with my hand and relate to that a lot more easily than
if I was using an expression pedal or something like that.
Similarly with your beat repeats and all that kind of stuff, I just find that it's a lot
easier to do things quickly and do things in a way that makes sense to the audience..
when I'm not thinking about looking down.
And that's the other thing.
When you're performing to anyone, even if you're the guitarist in the band instead of
doing a one-man band looping thing, you want to be looking
down the barrel of who you're performing to, making them feel like they're connecting with it.
So that's me on why I ended up using hand loopers and I've used just about every looper there is.
But yeah, the 202 and 505 for me are really the way to connect.
And now I'm going to take you through my track "Phase"and how we got some of those
specific sounds and effects out of the RC-202.
So we're gonna talk about how to go through doing your first loop using Input FXs
and Track FXs.
If you're anything like me, your first question is how to do your first loop when you have
to have your hands on your guitar.
The RC-202 lets you plug in a control pedal on the back panel or MIDI to control anything
on the unit if you're that way inclined, but in my case I do a lot of beatboxing so I do
my first loop with my fingers.
There's a big button on the bottom left corner and I've just used the Input FXs which
are on the left hand side and turn my EQ to get my vocal sounding a bit more bass-er for
that beatbox.
So we're gonna turn it on and off every time there is a snare beat.
And then I use the reverb
just for the snares or the claps.
So we're gonna turn it on and off every time there's a snare beat.
So what we're going to do is hit the big record slash play button
down on the bottom left, for track one
We've got the EQ on
and we've got my finger over the Reverb FX
ready to put it on just for those claps.
so it goes like this.
So when that's going around, you can start thinking about your second loop over here
I'm gonna put some snares on and some guitar yeah?
with a little bit of Delay for good measure.
Overdubbing
in orange.
Once you've got a couple of loops going
you can use the Track FX - they're on your right hand side
In this case, we're gonna use a filter to kind of take it down
almost like I'm gonna do a bass drop.
which is exactly what I'm going to do.
We're gonna go back to the Input FX
and now we've got guitar to bass.
ready to do a bass line.
so we might filter it back up over the next few bars..
like this..
Off and Record
There you go, you've got your whole track going
You can turn off the Input FX
maybe put some Reverb... and maybe a bit of Delay for the vocal
Like this.
Then you can keep going...
Use various Track FXs to take the vibe up and down
Play with dynamics a bit..
You can slice it..
Yeah. So you can keep going around
and you can use Input FXs to add more layers on
you can use output FXs or Track FXs
you can layer those with each other as well
so you can record Track FXs back into the loops.
All sorts of crazy stuff.
And you can do all these things with the foot pedals as well if you have a MIDI controller
or just a double foot switch also have a few different options you can use.
Yeah, have fun with it!