Yves Jarvisā methods for simulating effects include using a whammy bar while riding his guitarās volume for reversed guitar sounds. But many are done the old-fashioned way: manipulating tape on his TEAC reel-to-reel as it passes from one head to another.
Embracing battered 6-strings, lo-fi tech, tunings du jour, and his own restless muse, the singer-songwriter does whatever he can to make his guitar-playing life difficult.
Yves Jarvisāborn Jean-SĆ©bastien Yves Audetāis allergic to being complacent. āI donāt like to tune my guitar live,ā the Canadian-born singer-songwriter says about his almost irrational fear of creative ennui. āI donāt even have a tuner. I like to make my entire set in the same tuningāthatāll be an alternate tuning, itāll be something random. I force myself to find a way to reinterpret all my songs in the same tuning.ā
In fact, Jarvis chooses one tuning for an entire tour. He does that although each of his songs first comes to lifeāas it is being written and recordedāin an original song-specific tuning. But tunings, at that early stage, are just compositional devices. Once a song is recorded, its tuning is forgotten, and when itās time to hit the road, he relearns each song in the new tuning chosen for that tour. If he decides to reprise an older song, he learns it up yet again in that new tuning as well.
All that learning and tuning keeps Jarvis on his toes, which he finds exciting. āI get stuck in too many patterns, too many shapes, so I throw myself off,ā he says. āI love being thrown off.ā
Yves Jarvis - "Bootstrap Jubilee"
What was the tuning Jarvis used on his recent summer tour? Good question.
āIām in DāAāD-something, thatās for sure,ā he says. To figure out the rest, he brought his laptopāwe spoke via Zoomāinto another room with a piano. āSomeone once asked me about my tuning at a show, and people think Iām being coy, but I actually donāt know what it is. I know how to get there with a guitar, but I donāt know what the notes are.ā
He tuned up his guitar by ear, sat at the piano, and figured it out. It didnāt take long. His summer 2022 tuning was DāAāDāEāAāC#. It wonāt be that again.
That type of unpredictable spontaneity is how Jarvis does everything. That explains his addiction to cheap gear, his aversion to pedalsāwhich he never usesāand why he didnāt even bother with an amp on The Zug, his latest release, which he recorded at ArtScape, the artist-friendly place he was living in at the time. āItās a subsidized-for-artists condo in Toronto [where rents are sky high] and the building is full of artists,ā he says.
Yves Jarvis recorded his fourth album, The Zug, at Torontoās ArtScape, a subsidized living space for artists. The Zug is a masterclass in lo-fi guitar orchestration on a limited budget.
The Zug is Jarvisā fourth release since 2016 under the moniker Yves Jarvis (Jarvis is his motherās maiden name), and prior to that he released the critically acclaimed Tenet under the name Un Blonde. In 2019, he was longlisted for a Polaris Music Prize. The Zug is an intimate collection of songs, and that means intimate, as in up close and personal. The vocals sound as if heās whispering in your ear and letting you in on a joke. Jarvis plays all the instruments himself, and that includes an array of alternative timbres and sounds. āNoise was an issue,ā he says about the challenges of recording in a condominium. āNevertheless, I was playing the drums with chopsticks, but that was for feel, not for noise suppression.ā
Chopsticks aside, most of the effects on The Zug were done with guitar. On songs like āAt the Whimsā and āEnemy,ā Jarvis employs dramatic swells and backwards-sounding leads, which complement the more subtle fingerpicking and gentle warbles on āPrism Through Which I Perceiveā and āYou Offer a Mile.ā The album is also a masterclass in lo-fi orchestration. Check out āWhyā and, especially, āStitchwork,ā with its string-sounding pulses and layered effects that are, in a simple way, almost Beatle-esque. All done with guitar, and on a very limited budget.
But lo-fi also has its share of challenges. āI need to invest in a vocal mic because it would be nice to not have to do 100 takes of the same thing,ā Jarvis says about his idiosyncratic multi-layered vocal sound. āIt started out as an aesthetic thing, being that I wanted to create this texture that was inspired by DāAngeloāmany voices at once, perfectly stacked. But then, layering became a necessity because I was not pleased with the single takes. In order for all the nuances of my voice to translate to the recording, I have to have multiple layers.ā
āBut Iām not averse, at all, to effects. I have just always gotten off on forcing myself to simulate my own effects.ā
That labor-intensive effort is how Jarvis gets his guitar tones as well. As mentioned, he doesnāt use pedals. āI canāt imagine looking down at a pedalboard, frankly,ā he says. āI think Iām getting there in my growth as an artist where I see the potential of using pedals. But thatās precisely the problemātoo much potential. Although I see where I could benefit with experimenting with new tech.ā
The distortion sounds were created by running his guitar into an old TEAC reel-to-reel machineāand a single, loved, beaten reel of tapeāand then into the open-source DAW Audacity, which is ultimately where everything ends up. āItās nice to manipulate sound with such an analog piece,ā he says about his tape machine. āI also like stretching and distorting the tape. Iāve never really used a different reel of tape. Itās been the same reel on there for years and years and years, and the degradation of that reel has really played into the sound of the guitar. I think the best example of it on the record is at the end of āWhat?ā That electric guitar solo is the most quintessential sound of my TEAC, for sure.ā
But Jarvisā aversion to pedals doesnāt come from some purist notion of tone craft. Rather, similar to choosing a new tuning for each tour, he sees limitations as a creative tool, albeit with ideological strings attached. āConstraints are very helpful for me,ā he says. āI donāt like optionsāespecially in our culture today where everything is custom. You go into a restaurant, and you can customize your order, I hate that. Tell me what to get, or donāt tell me what to get, but constrain me. Two options are all I need. Thatās where the experimentation comes fromāfrom some sort of physical parameter like playing percussion backwards, for example, so that the feel is differentājust little things like that. But Iām not averse, at all, to effects. I have just always gotten off on forcing myself to simulate my own effects.ā
Yves Jarvisā Gear
Yves Jarvis plays solo acoustic at the Colony in Woodstock, New York, in February 2022. His acoustic is a Fender he bought for $50 in Gravenhurst, Ontario.
Photo by Michael OāNeal
Guitars
- Fender acoustic
- Hondo Formula I
- Yellow S-style
Recording/Sound Manipulation
- Tascam Portastudio 424 MkIII
- TEAC Reel to Reel
Strings
- Any brand, heavy gauge, usually starting with a .012 for the high E
Jarvisā methods for simulating effects arenāt completely outlandish. His reversed guitar soundsāwhich you can hear on The Zugās āEnemyāāare done with a whammy bar and riding his guitarās volume knob. Some of his delay-like effects are done the old-fashioned way: manipulating tape as it passes from one head to another.
Yet despite his embrace of the reel-to-reel, his first love is a Tascam Portastudio 424 MkIII multitrack cassette recorder. āIāve gone through maybe a dozen Tascam 424 MkIIIs,ā he says. āThatās the only piece of gear that I know about, which is crazy. Ten years ago, I got them for $100 bucks a pop every time. Now theyāre $1,000 bucks.ā
Another outgrowth of his quest for unpredictability is how Jarvis uses a capo, which he often places high up on the neck at around the 8th or 10th fret. He prefers it like that, with the strings taut, similar to a smaller-scale instrument like a ukulele or mandolin. It opens up a very different world of harmonics and other sonic possibilities, although he has more pedestrian reasons for using a capo, too, which is the difference in how he sings live versus the studio.
Once Jarvis records a song, its tuning is forgotten. When itās time to hit the road, he relearns each song in a new tuning chosen for that tour. His 2022 tuning was DāAāDāEāAāC#.
Photo by Michael OāNeal
āI like my voice to be like a whisper on recordings, but live I like to really sing,ā he says. āThatās the thing: The textural qualities that Iām looking to lay down on the record are not at all similar to what Iām trying to do live. Live, I like to be clear-eyed vocally, and with recordings I want it to be more of a whisper. Thatās the main impetus for the capo, too. I usually perform the song much higher than the recordingāalthough I also use a capo because I usually use pretty shitty gearāand I like the guitar to have that twang, that sharpness of a mandolin or something very taut.ā
In Jarvisā telling, that sharpness can take on a somewhat mystical feel as well. Heās searching for a certain synchronized resonance between his voice and the instrumentās natural vibrations. āIām definitely making an effort to match those resonances,ā he says. āThe guitar on the chest, the guitar on the belly, and amplifying that, and amplifying each other. I feel that is a very deconstructive process in the studio, and then live itās something that Iām trying to have as a unit, a package of songwriting.ā
And just in case you think Jarvis doesnāt do enough to avoid becoming complacent, his instruments of choice are usually low-budget starter guitars, which, obviously, come with their own issues and quirks.
āIām excited to plug in a cool guitar that I just got back. Itās a guitar Iāve had since I was a little kid: an electric Hondo. Itās an Explorer shape. Itās red and itās got all these stripes on it.ā
And his electric?
āIām excited to plug in a cool guitar that I just got back,ā he says. āItās a guitar Iāve had since I was a little kid: an electric Hondo. Itās an Explorer shape. Itās red and itās got all these stripes on it. I left it at my buddyās when I lived in Calgary as a kid, and then he had it for 10-plus years. He fixed it up for me. He just gave it back and it sounds amazing. Thatās a guitar that Iām really excited to have back because itās just so dirty and gritty and sounds just straight off Neil Youngās Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which is a beacon for me in terms of electric guitar tone.ā
Itās not a gimmick. Jarvis is a unique, forward-thinking artist, and, ultimately, the tricks he employs make for engaging, compelling musicāmusic that takes on new life with every retelling. āBecause of the improvisational nature of the production, relearning my music and restructuring it in a more traditional format is really an exciting thing for me,ā he says.
Itās exciting for his listeners, too.
Yves Jarvis - Full Performance (Live on KEXP at Home)
In this intimate acoustic performance recorded for Seattleās KEXP radio, Yves Jarvis plays five songs with assistance from his faithful capo.