ARIatHOME has amassed a loyal legion of social media followers thanks to his unique online improv performances. The livestreamer cut his teeth in his home studio with marathon performances lasting up to ten hours. Eventually, to keep things fresh, he designed an elaborate 55-lb. mobile rig that allows him to take his performances outside and collaborate with artists he meets on the streets, primarily in New York City. No matter where the music takes him, his trusty BOSS RC-505mkII Loop Station plays a central role.
Bringing the Studio to the Streets
You come from a classical music family. How has that foundation impacted your musicality?
My siblings and I had to take piano lessons when we were growing up—that’s the biggest part. Then, my parents very kindly let me stop taking lessons when I was around 11 because I hated practicing. But we had this really nice piano in our living room. From around age eleven and up, that’s how I started improvising on the keys. My dad was always saying really nice things like, “That sounds like Debussy,” even when it sounded terrible.
How did you come up with the idea for your mobile rig?
I first got into improvised music because I like making music. However, producing beats or songs was really stressful for me because of the number of decisions you have to make. I started improvising a few years ago, just in my room, so that I could at least make music instead of getting paralyzed by decisions.
After three or four years of that, it got a little dry. I wondered how I could make this more fun and more interesting and a way I could connect and be social. It was sad when it was a nice day, and people were outside having fun, but I was making my music locked alone in my room. There are a lot of introverts in the livestreaming space, but I’m not. So, I needed to get outside somehow.
How long did it take to put your rig together?
A long time. I had the idea in 2022, but the first version wasn’t built until April 2023. And then it didn’t even work very well until the very end of 2023 or 2024. And stuff still randomly breaks. It’s pretty smooth now. But anytime I’m on a stage, there’s a chance that something can just go terribly wrong.
When I built it, I hoped it would take my more complicated setup and make a very plug-and-play solution. Which it is when it works, but sometimes it doesn’t behave very well. I find the more stressed I am, the more likely it is to experience problems. I think it sort of responds to me in a bit.
"The full composition is with the looper. I use Ableton, but it's mostly a patch bank for my instruments. Everything is recorded onto the RC-505mkII."
The Looping Command Center
How did you first discover the BOSS RC-505 Loop Station?
It was a Marc Rebillet review video. I spent a summer at an NYU sound program when I was 16, and I remember wanting to get a looper for it, but I couldn’t really find an adequate multi-track looper. I was watching Reggie Watts back then, but I wanted more tracks than he had on that little green box thing. Then, three years later, I saw a video of Marc, and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s multiple tracks, that looks pretty good.” That’s when I got the RC-505 in 2019.
How do you incorporate the looper into your Twitch streams?
The full composition is with the looper. I use Ableton, but it’s mostly a patch bank for my instruments. Everything is recorded onto the RC-505. That way, I can have all my plugins and constantly pick different sounds out of CPU-intensive plugins because I’m constantly overdubbing everything. The whole song is made on the RC-505.
"I like the idea of a livestream that looks and sounds really polished."
How do you incorporate the RC-505 into your live performances?
I don’t use any prerecorded loops. I had a few drum loops in Ableton, but I can’t really sync them up because I rely on the RC-505 clock; that’s where my metronome is. I don’t have a lot of time sync effects—MIDI clock is its own thing versus Ableton Digital, but I prefer running it from the RC-505.
What kind of layering techniques do you use with the RC-505mkII?
I do a lot of little sounds to add complexity to songs. I overdub a lot. I’ll do 32 bar loops where I’ve spent an hour just adding, adding, adding. So sonically, instead of playing one instrument, the whole line, I’ll do some of those loops, and then I’ll add a little sound here and a little sound here.
For vocal hooks, I record the main line, and then I record two more of it in the left and the right, and then I record harmonies also in left and right. When I’m outside, people are confused why I’m recording the same chorus over and over. Because you can’t really tell it’s stereo in the speakers. My main priority is for the actual mix to sound really good.
I like the idea of a livestream that looks and sounds really polished. For a while, I prided myself on how good my mixes were with the RC-505. I mean, inside, the mixes are obviously better because it’s so difficult to do it outside. But it’s definitely important to me that it sounds as studio-quality or professional as possible.
Staying in the Flow
You compose entire albums worth of music during up to ten-hour livestreams. How do you keep your energy and your creativity up for that long?
Sometimes it drops. Having an audience and people who are chatting with me helps. Energy comes from the interaction that I have. When I can read my chat, it’s a very intimate, cool experience to have these people watching me for extended periods of time.
The other thing that keeps me going is the longer I go, the better I get. A lot of it has to do with nerves. The more nervous I am, the more tropes I fall into, and the more likely I am to do things that seem familiar and are not that new or interesting. It’s kind of a joke, but I’ll say it takes me four to six hours to warm up.
The stuff that comes after the six or seven-hour mark is always the most interesting, and it’s always the best shit that happens around that time. I think that’s what motivates me to keep going—knowing that the music will get better the longer I stay online.
Are there any other creators you’ve seen doing something unique with the RC-505 or looping in general?
Beardyman is probably the most proficient live looper of all time. He’s really inspirational. He used to use the RC-505, but now he uses a looping system he made himself with iPads like a bunch of different screens. He said when you have gestural control, you can do more different actions simultaneously, which makes sense.
But the tactile element is really important for me and many people who use hardware loopers. When I’m streaming outside, and the sun is out, I can’t really look at a screen. I’ll always need at least some sort of tactical element in the looping I do.
A Sidewalk Stage
You recently performed at the boss booth at NAMM. What was that experience like?
The BOSS area was super cool, and everyone there was really nice. I got to meet and hang out with a lot of talent and musicians, including singers, rappers, and instrumentalists. The song with Adrian Lyles was great. For about an hour, people kept coming up one after the other, which was really cool.
It was very impressive how you’re able to lock it in with so many different performer switches.
It’s also becoming like that outside, which is a new challenge because I was used to running into someone and then not seeing anyone for 20 or 30 minutes. Now, as more people see my posts, they’re all coming up to me. That happened yesterday for about three hours back-to-back.
It’s got to feel good to start to be recognized on the street.
It is cool. I feel like a lot of performers really want to be on a stage, or they want people watching them. I don’t think that’s a motive that drives me. It’s cool, especially when people dance and are watching. But I think the main reason I do this is because I like making music, and I like it when the music that I make sounds good.
When a crowd forms, I find myself thinking, “I need to figure out how to run away from this crowd.” I’m a little more devoted to the music than to entertaining the people watching. But I think that’s something that I’ll get better at. The better I get at connecting with the audience, the more I’ll be able to appreciate that element and not just get too nervous and then rush the music I’m making.
"You gotta put yourself out there before you're good. That's what I did."
Perpetual Evolution
What does the future hold for you?
Right now, my goal is just to keep going but not become complacent. I built this rig because I felt like I was doing the same thing for years in my room and just getting marginally better at improvising music but not doing anything too crazy—not going out of the comfort zone that I built for myself. Similarly, I don’t want to be doing this exact same thing two or three years from now. I hope I’ll figure out some way to keep expanding and doing cooler and cooler stuff.
Do you have any advice for someone just starting out with looping?
You gotta put yourself out there before you’re good. That’s what I did. When I started trying to fast-track that production, improvising, I was terrible. Some of the beats I was making were just the most atrocious thing you’d ever heard.
When COVID started, I wanted to start improvising, and I went live immediately. I broadcasted myself being so bad. Within a month, I got on this Facebook page for college students with like 700,000 members. I messaged them and got a slot where I could livestream to this page every Friday. So within a month of beginning improv looping, every Friday, I was performing to a bigger audience than I would have for the next two or three years—700 to 1000 college students.
I was terrible. People were pretty nice, but there were definitely some people like, “Wait, this is not good.” But I still had to keep going because that’s the only way to get better. I’m only as good as my worst beat or my worst song.
That takes guts to choose a trial by fire.
Yeah, but it’s the fastest way to do it. Weirdly enough, when I went outside, I was immediately bad again. It’s so physically taxing and difficult. I’m so much more distracted because now I’m thinking about where I’m walking and what people are looking at, and I’m reading my chat. I felt like the music I was making sounded like the bad stuff from three years ago. I almost had to relearn how to make this kind of music. I was still broadcasting myself, making some pretty atrocious stuff. But I knew I just needed to do this because I’d get better and better by putting in a lot of hours.
