Help me figure out this guy's sound, looping

[oli123]

Hi guys! So I've been listening and watching a lot of this guy's stuff lately. His name is Jarle Bernhoft and his specialty is using a loop pedal and multitasking. I'm trying to figure out what equipment he uses and how he connects everything to get the sound he has, because really... This is awesome! (search around for him on youtube if you like, a lot of impressive stuff)

 

 

This is what I've found out so far:

 

- The loop pedal he uses is a BOSS RC 50. He also has a bunch of effect pedals next to it.

- He uses a normal electric/accoustic guitar,

- and a custom EKO guitar with two bass strings.

- He has some kind of synth

- and he always uses two microphones for his vocals.

 

So I've figured quite a bit out, but personally I only have experience with guitars and guitar amps. I have no idea how to go about connecting all this stuff together. If you can help me recreate this, that would be awesome. 

 

1. First off, why does he use two microphones? It could be for back up, but I find that not very likely since he uses two at every single show I've seen, even very small ones. 

 

2. How many amps would you need to do something like this? I imagine you would need one amp for the guitar, one for the vocals and one for the synth? Or am I mistaken? Anyway as I said, I only have experience with guitars, so that leads to my next question:

 

3. What kind of amp would you connect the vocal microphones to, and what about the synth? Surely it cannot be connected to the same amp as the guitar because of all the effects?

 

If you know the answer to my questions I'd love to read it. And if you also know how I could set something like this up completely, like tell me how to connect everything to each other that would be awesome. Thank you very much. This guy is amazing though isn't he? 

[Anderton]

Here's more of this kind of thing:

 

 

It's really simpler than it looks to hook up if you have a looper to play with, but very hard to pull off live. Basically, you record a phrase and then let it repeat. You can then record another phrase on top of it, and repeat that...some loopers let you store phrases separately, some are basically "sound on sound" and once you've recorded something, you're committed to it.

If you have Guitar Rig or Ableton Live, there are loopers in there where you can practice and get a feel for how they work. It's also possible to turn a DAW into a looper with a little patching. I wrote an aritcle about how to do it with Sonar, but the same principle applies to pretty much any DAW.

 

[rasputin1963]

Digital Frippertronics! (showing my age here).

[blue2blue]

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oli123 wrote:

Hi guys! So I've been listening and watching a lot of this guy's stuff lately. His name is Jarle Bernhoft and his specialty is using a loop pedal and multitasking. I'm trying to figure out what equipment he uses and how he connects everything to get the sound he has, because really... This is awesome! (search around for him on youtube if you like, a lot of impressive stuff)

 

 

This is what I've found out so far:

 

- The loop pedal he uses is a BOSS RC 50. He also has a bunch of effect pedals next to it.

- He uses a normal electric/accoustic guitar,

- and a custom EKO guitar with two bass strings.

- He has some kind of synth

- and he always uses two microphones for his vocals.

 

So I've figured quite a bit out, but personally I only have experience with guitars and guitar amps. I have no idea how to go about connecting all this stuff together. If you can help me recreate this, that would be awesome. 

 

1. First off, why does he use two microphones? It could be for back up, but I find that not very likely since he uses two at every single show I've seen, even very small ones. 

 

2. How many amps would you need to do something like this? I imagine you would need one amp for the guitar, one for the vocals and one for the synth? Or am I mistaken? Anyway as I said, I only have experience with guitars, so that leads to my next question:

 

3. What kind of amp would you connect the vocal microphones to, and what about the synth? Surely it cannot be connected to the same amp as the guitar because of all the effects?

 

If you know the answer to my questions I'd love to read it. And if you also know how I could set something like this up completely, like tell me how to connect everything to each other that would be awesome. Thank you very much. This guy is amazing though isn't he? 

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The  mic on stage left (his right) goes into the echo loop and the other is the no-echo mic. Notice right at the beginning he greets the audience into the no-echo mic and then turns on the loop and does the beatboxing into the loop mic and then locks the loop with his foot. I think he has ancillary loops that he turns on and off for the sections, although he seems to  be using a moderately simple rig as these things go.

Some people go nuts with loop rigs. It's better now, though, since you can get gear dedicated to looping, with all sorts of neat things to make it easy. Some might say way too easy. But that would probably just be the sour grapes of early loopers from a couple decades ago (like me) who had to make do with maybe 8 second loops, often in bulky rack echo boxes or tiny, noisy foot-pedal delays (that are hard as hell to adjust in the dark, no doubt leading some to have multiples they could leave 'preset' up and stomp back and forth or stack, etc).

With regard to amps, I always found it was easier to use a single PA fed by a mixer with sends to your loop(s). Otherwise you end up trying to take a direct feed from a guitar amp or miking it -- which can get pretty funky if you're feeding the loop. (And I don't mean James Brown funky.)

With regard to FX routing, I strongly suspect he's using an inline FX chain, though I don't actually recall much in the way of FX on the vocal. I wondered if there was phasing on the guitar, I think, but as I recall it may have simply been breaking up. (Sorry, I only watched once. I'm not much of a video watcher.)

 

I have to say one thing: I was glad to see the audience finally come alive at the end but up until then, the whole way through, I kept thinking, Man, this is the most dead fish audience I've ever seen. (And I definitely don't mean Dead/Phish audience. The contrary. A bunch of stick figures barely moving.)

I thought the guy was really musical and, vocally, did a fine job. I couldn't believe the audience seemed so unresponsive. Hell, I had more responsive audiences than that in coffeehouses during prefinal study break.     

They had plenty of opportunity and fair reason to get into the sway and I wouldn't have been surprised at all to see a different audience bust out in clap-along. Maybe they were put off by the video crew. (Or maybe his very 90s haircut. I guess they're back?) 

 

I had an all-improv echo loop act starting right at the beginning of 1990 and playing through the 90s called Frippenstein, the name a light-hearted reference to Bob Fripp's Frippertronics echo act -- later changed to Tranz Azul when I realized that Frippertronics was showing up in early online music listings just above Fripp's own one man 'mobile performance unit.' I think that was the phrase he coined. (Sorry, Bob, wherever you are, about the name thing. It was before the www and the consequences of the name weren't readily apparent at the time. Not all of us are as visionary as, well, some of us.   )

It was a tribute name but not tribute band, since I mostly used synths with a little guitar, fretless, and occasionally hand percussion, as well as guest stars supplying violin, clarinet, lap steel, recorder, percussion and such; later those guest stars and I would play around as Drift, which maybe should have been renamed Meander.    

[oli123]

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blue2blue wrote:

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oli123 wrote:

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The  mic on stage left (his right) goes into the echo loop and the other is the no-echo mic. Notice right at the beginning he greets the audience into the no-echo mic and then turns on the loop and does the beatboxing into the loop mic and then locks the loop with his foot. I think he has ancillary loops that he turns on and off for the sections, although he seems to  be using a moderately simple rig as these things go.

Some people go nuts with loop rigs. It's better now, though, since you can get gear dedicated to looping, with all sorts of neat things to make it easy. Some might say way too easy. But that would probably just be the sour grapes of early loopers from a couple decades ago (like me) who had to make do with maybe 8 second loops, often in bulky rack echo boxes or tiny, noisy foot-pedal delays (that are hard as hell to adjust in the dark, no doubt leading some to have multiples they could leave 'preset' up and stomp back and forth or stack, etc).

With regard to amps, I always found it was easier to use a single PA fed by a mixer with sends to your loop(s). Otherwise you end up trying to take a direct feed from a guitar amp or miking it -- which can get pretty funky if you're feeding the loop. (And I don't mean James Brown funky.)

With regard to FX routing, I strongly suspect he's using an inline FX chain, though I don't actually recall much in the way of FX on the vocal. I wondered if there was phasing on the guitar, I think, but as I recall it may have simply been breaking up. (Sorry, I only watched once. I'm not much of a video watcher.)

 

I have to say one thing: I was glad to see the audience finally come alive at the end but up until then, the whole way through, I kept thinking, 

Man, this is the most dead fish audience I've ever seen.

(And I definitely don't mean Dead/Phish audience. The contrary. A bunch of stick figures barely moving.)

I thought the guy was really musical and, vocally, did a fine job. I couldn't believe the audience seemed so unresponsive. Hell, I had more responsive audiences than that in coffeehouses during prefinal study break.  

   

They had plenty of opportunity and fair reason to get into the sway and I wouldn't have been surprised at all to see a different audience bust out in clap-along. Maybe they were put off by the video crew. (Or maybe his very 90s haircut. I guess they're back?) 

 

I had an all-improv echo loop act starting right at the beginning of 1990 and playing through the 90s called Frippenstein, the name a light-hearted reference to Bob Fripp's Frippertronics echo act -- later changed to Tranz Azul when I realized that Frippertronics was showing up in early online music listings just above Fripp's own one man 'mobile performance unit.' I think that was the phrase he coined. (Sorry, Bob, wherever you are, about the name thing. It was before the www and the consequences of the name weren't readily apparent at the time. Not all of us are as visionary as, well, some of us.  

 )

It was a tribute name but not tribute band, since I mostly used synths with a little guitar, fretless, and occasionally hand percussion, as well as guest stars supplying violin, clarinet, lap steel, recorder, percussion and such; later those guest stars and I would play around as Drift, which maybe should have been renamed Meander.  

  

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Thanks guys, and thank you blue for a very detailed reply. Yeah I've learned that Norwegian audiences can be quite reserved and uninspiring sometimes! 

I'm still left wondering a few things though. You say that the easiest for you was to use a mixer and that's what I assumed this guy was doing as well until I saw the video again just now. If you look at the connections he has at the back of the loop pedal (pause the video at 0:10)

you will see that he has one XLR cable, as well as a jack cable (which likely is for the synth and guitar) plugged in the inputs. If he was using a mixer surely he would only have one input cable plugged in the loop pedal from the mixer? Also I noticed that when he switches from the synth to the guitar he actually takes the plug out of the synth and inserts the same one to the guitar. So doesn't it seem likely that he isn't using a mixer after all?

If this is the case, and he isn't using a mixer, would he have to use some kind of preamp for the guitar and synth? I also see that he has some other pedals next to the loop pedal. I have trouble identifying them, do you think they are all just guitar effects or might they be something important that I should know about?

I'm not very familiar with setting equipment up for live usage, so sorry for being a complete newbie to all this, but let me see if I've got this right. If he isn't using a mixer, this would be his connection order:

Guitar/Synth > Effect pedals > Loop station > PA

Am I right? Is the guitar not even going through a guitar amplifier? 

Now I don't think it's a secret that I'm trying to recreate this set up at home, (and hopefully live too in the future!) so I need to figure out what kind of speakers to use. Presumably I can't use a PA system at home, as they are used for live performances, or can I? What are the alternatives? An amplifier? Just some normal speakers? 

I must stop now before my questionmark button gets all worn out! Sorry for asking so many questions!

Anyway it was interesting to read a bit about your story, thanks for that And thanks for your time.