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Looper's Delight
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friends,remeber we are loopers allowed to loop;-)
I think is perfectly normal to be going back and forth
on this issues,just look at us trying to keep up with
it!so we go and buy a video camera and all of the
sudden they are absolete because they were too big and
have no USB,CD walkmans for a minidisc-what?you still
using that thing? havent you heard of mp3 players? or
our bulky analog photo cameras for pocket size
digital,or the VS Roland recorders which kept changing
sample rate quality before i even had time to learn
how to use one,not to mention
bits,RAM,usb,firewire,laptops,mobiles,rack effects,now
everybody wants them on the floor,amp simulators
replacing your horrible heavy tube amp,yeaah,lets go
sell all the heavy rubbish,maybe we can carry our
whole rack in an ipod and play it through a Bose
PAS!in fact,i dont like to play live so lets cyberjam
dude;-)God i am already runing out of energy telling
about it!
But i must admit it is such an exciting fascinating
time that it is addicting,a musicians paradise with so
many choices becoming attractively,portable etc.but us
also becoming exhausted partly victims of the heavy
marketing bombardment of such things,specially through
the comforts of the internet,busy fighting to get our
attention with their price wars giving us way more
options than we need and cheaper than never before.And
then some of us start questioning this and find out
that we were probably happier carring our amps with
our fat tone instead of an pod,or doing just as much
noise or being even more creative with less equipment
than before.Or some of us trying to convince ourselves
that we are happier carrying less instead,although we
ve accepted the commfort trade off of our sound which
has perhaps turned from real coffee to instant.All of
this is whats costing us at the end time,money and
yes-sucking energy.
But it is human nature to explore and change,and
through all the excitement trying to keep focused,we
start to loose track of who we really are musically
and what got us really excited when we first picked up
our instruments.I think for some what adds to this
syndrome is the traditional guilty feeling of sitting
and tweaking too long instead of practicing,although
the tweaking is perhaps also part of the practice.
I think some of these are just temporary phases,(or
should we call it menopause?)dependent not only on the
changes in technology and musical trends but on our
changing selves.We always want to taste different
cuisine or clothing but at then end we settle on our
favorite one, but we still like to have open
options...like the effect pedals that we didnīt use
that night.The first rush of that a stereo
multieffector gave us doesnīt do it anymore so we plug
the guitar directly through a valve amp in mono with
an analog echo box and the unmasked tone and
simplicity arouses us again and we are back to square
one.
There are players who get complex and beautiful sounds
through more hand technique with one simple volume
knob and a single pickup,and others get simple
sounding atmospheric sounds through huge racks and
complex guitar configurations(and wankers with both
huge racks and 1000notes per minute who have
completely missed the point and still canīt get a
decent tone)
I think a creative musician will always sound
interesting,regardless if he plays with one string or
10,or the latest technology in fact i read something
about Tony levin wanting to have less strings on his
bass as he gets older;-)so we shouldīt be afraid of
going back and forth.In fact sometimes we loose faith
so quickly,blame it on equiment and end up rebuying
it;-)also some of this dinasours,fripp,the edge etc.
are still using the same refigerators,others like
belew perahps got tired of it and others like Angus
Young refuse to change shorts or play anymore than 3
or 4 chords and keep the same fuckin tie!
Luis
--- Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill
<rs@moinlabs.de> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> having followed the discussion for some time now,
> I'd like to chime in with
> my (rather gear-heavy) pov:
>
> Leaving the gear-schlepping topic aside for one
> moment (which most of the
> time is actually something that matters a lot
> whether a certain setup will
> work or not), it's rather like this: more (and more
> complex) gear gives you
> more options, but also needs more time to learn (and
> sometimes to maintain)
> the thing: If you had a guitar with one string and
> five frets per string,
> this would greatly simplify learning the guitar, but
> then again limit you in
> your expression, and the same is true for our
> setups.
>
> Now there may be a difference if your use of effects
> is rather superficial
> and/or decided on in advance. If you need chorus in
> two tunes, a flanger in
> another and play all of that with your vintage Tele
> sound, then you'd most
> probably won't need Ted's rig. Then again, when you
> play punk, the bass
> guitar with one string and five frets may be
> sufficient, too...
>
> So how much do the things suck creative energy? I
> believe the do hinder the
> creative process if using your effects will require
> some very conscious
> interaction with your setup, as opposed to doing it
> inutively. To take again
> the example of the guitarist, I guess for a
> guitarist (which I am not,
> although I do play the guitar), the way from a chord
> progression or melody
> appearing in your mind to your fingers playing that
> very idea is an almost
> unconscious one. The same need be true for the way
> from that "swirling
> effect on that stuttering loop" idea to the
> necessary button/pedal presses
> and fader moves. If that is not the case you need to
> a) improve the user
> interface of your setup and/or b) learn to play your
> electronic things
> better.
>
> Improving the user interface is that one are where
> for me the use of
> computers has brought a huge advantage over
> traditional hardware boxes. For
> most of the hardware effects I have, controlling
> more than eight parameters
> with assignable controllers is a real hassle, and
> that's something that is
> not true for nearly all VST/VSTi things in a proper
> host. Even programming
> the controller mapping is easier here most of the
> time. And with the
> computer, you really have a great degree of freedom
> if not for the display
> of information, but for the user commands, and it's
> really all in one place.
>
> The process for my computer setup (where I use a
> BCR2000 fader box and
> FCB1010 foot controller) was (in a simplified way)
> something like this:
> 1) Identify some "emergency"/always-needed-quickly
> operations - they need a
> dedicated control (e.g. footswitch).
> 2) identify continuous controllers that need to be
> accessed while playing an
> instrument with both hands - these need to be
> accessed with an expression
> pedal.
> 3) identify button pushes that need to be accessed
> while playing an
> instrument with both hands - these will be accessed
> with footswitches.
> 4) identify the complete number of controllers (not
> belonging to group 1 and
> 2) you need to access.
> 5) define how they need to be grouped (in preset
> settings or banks), and how
> they can be made similair to each other (e.g. the
> bottom left knob is always
> filter cutoff or something).
> 6) identify "most-used" functions and group them
> together in a preset/bank
> in addition to them residing in dedicated
> banks/presets.
> 7) find the most-used "paths" between banks/presets
> and organize
> banks/presets so these paths can be travelled with
> the minimum amount of
> button presses.
>
> After implementing that, it's time to learn the
> assingment and test-drive
> it, and all the while looking at the following:
> * are there functions you miss?
> * are there functions you don't access at all?
> * are the "paths" laid out in a good way?
> * do the "most-used" and "accessing-while-playing"
> assignments make sense?
>
> And apart from that, it's really a lot of learning -
> a big part of it being
> sitting down with the sheets of controller
> assignment you printed out and
> learning them.
>
> (As a sidenote for those who'd seen me play Y2K6,
> the setup here included 10
> banks of FCB1010 assignments (10 buttons and 20 exp
> pedal assignment each) =
> 300, plus 16 presets on the BCR2000 (whis is I
> believe 106 assignments per
> preset), plus some buttons on the computer keyboard,
> plus a dedicated
> footswitch as a "panic" switch, plus an exp pedal
> and a sustain pedal for
> the keyboard. A guessed percentage of more than 90%
> of the controller
> actions was done using 2 presets and 2 banks,
> respectively, but if I
> accessed some of the remaining ~1600 controllers, I
> was really happy I had
> them (and had learned them) - and was also happy
> that it is by far easier to
> access them that way than by delving into the menu
> structure of a Eclipse or
> FireworX (let alone a Wavestation...).
>
> So what do I do when I just want to play a simple
> loop with some effects
> added to it? Use the G2.1u and the DD20 (currently,
> a SMM w/Hazari and a KP3
> sits in that minisetup, but I really rarely use any
> of these two - yes, for
> that specific performance approach, less is perhaps
> not more but it's all
> that is needed).
>
>
> And with that said, I'd like to encourage Greg to
> construct his planned big
> setup (perhaps only to find out which stuff you
> don't use that much after
> all), and like to thank Ted for the VG-99
> recommendation - after being
> somewhat disappointed with what the V-Bass does,
> this may be something
> better after all (and then I'd need a GK pickup on
> my guitar...).
>
> All the best,
>
> Rainer
>
>
www.myspace.com/luisangulocom
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