Hi , I’m new , techno low level. Like to know it I can utilise the trio (no looper) and RC500 as I have both. would like trio + looper as it seems more user friendly (i’m 64) but still with it. didn’t grow with technology as I should have. Be grateful for any tips
Welcome to the community!
Loopers are basically recording devices and will record any signal you feed to them. If you put the Trio before the RC-500 so that the output of the Trio goes into the input of the RC-500, then the looper will record it and you can create loops from it.
The tricky bit, as it always is with loopers, will be timing the start and end of the loop so that you get full bars of the drum pattern from the Trio. That just requires practice.
Cheers,
Keith
thanks Keith I’ll give it a go Cheers Technodork
Let us know how it goes. I also have the Trio (original) and a Boss RC-5 and have been wondering if I could combine them somehow. Haven’t had time to play with that yet.
I have plugged the headphone output of the Trio into the aux input of my amp. After setting up the drum and bass loop in the Trio, I then plug my guitar into the amp. You could plumb in a looper, start the Trio, and commence recording your guitar loops.
As @Majik said, trick will be syncing the start of the guitar loop with the Trio loop. You could try using the 4 beat count-in of the Trio. That gives you 4 beats to get into a groove and start the looper on the first beat of the Trio loop. It may be helpful to use the Trio foot-switch to start the Trio so as to keep both hands ready to play. Little bit of tap dancing to coordinate.
Could you set up a bass/drum loop in trio by playing in the chords, record that into the looper without playing your guitar, then add the guitar chords as a new layer in the loop, then do the soloing over that? That might require less tap dancing and be easier to get nicely synced.
Alan, I am guessing that you could. Plug the amp output from the Trio into the looper, looper into the amp, and it should record. You would still have to start the Trio and hit the start and stop record on the looper at the right moments. The 4 beat count-in again helpful on the start. Trickiest part would be to hit stop record on the first beat of the next cycle in the Trio. Note, it must be the first beat of the second cycle, sometimes people think you stop recording on the last beat of the cycle being recorded.
Best thing is to give it a try. Can’t do any harm.
It took me a year to realise this!
I will! I had to rush off because I was going to see Jackson Browne in concert in Sydney tonight (he is still amazing!). But I will play with it this weekend and report back.
So the answer is yes. I used the Trio to “learn” the bass and drum part for a chord sequence, then fed that into my looper. As @DavidP said, it is helpful to set up the drum intro (hold down the part button and it will start flashing) and stop the looper on first beat of the second time around. I then recorded the chords again as a second loop.
The advantage is that my Boss gives a good visual indication of where you are in the loop, whereas with the Trio you have no idea. Not sure about the RC500.
The disadvantage is that you can’t set up different parts, which is what I am enjoying playing with at the moment.
Alan, I may be misunderstanding. Is step 1 is to plug the Trio into the looper and record the drum and bass from the Trio as the first layer of your loop? If so then what stops you programming a number of parts in the Trio, setting up a sequence, and recording that as a once off?
Though I can imagine getting the timing right to stop recording could be tricky.
Then I assume you unplug the Trio, plug in the guitar, and start layering?
Yes, true… I guess I could work out the sequence and record it as one loop. So basically it would be the whole song. That just seems a little inflexible, but it would work. The Boss has 13 hours of record time so certainly no limitation there.