Re: what a loop has to say

["Kris Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

> Yep, to me a loop says, "Freedom."
> G

Speaking of which, does anyone find it easier to freely improvise when you 
aren't using layers and layers of effects, tone mangling devices, etc?  
I've 
found this to be the case with me. I love all the cool effects at my 
disposal - the Boss VF-1, hundreds of VST effects, LXP5, etc - but they 
sometimes produce artificial restrictions or boundaries on my creativity. 
I 
tend to be more intentionally and genuinely creative, and less enamored 
and 
influenced by technology, when I just play with a clean guitar sound with 
just a touch of reverb and delay for ambiance.  You have nothing but the 
notes, basically, no window dressing to distract the creative process. I'm 
sure this is quite subjective and relative, but I'd be curious what others 
think of this.  I guess just the simple sound of the guitar forces me to 
think more out of the box, rather than relying on the box.  For example, 
you 
have a effect patch that has two octaves and panning delays that go on 
forrrrrrrever....you play one "note"...just one human data-point of 
interaction, and the gear takes credit for the rest of the interesting 
sound 
for the next minute. And I start to think to myself, what is really 
creative 
about that? I could play 10 notes in 3 minutes and produce a song that 
requires very little creative energy.  It would be interesting to take all 
of our looping songs and strip every single cool effect from them, 
resulting 
in just the initially, humanly generated notes and natural sound of the 
instrument...what might we discover? How much of the intrigue of the song 
is 
generated by the gear vs. human creative energy?   These are just open 
questions for discussion. I'm not necessarily making any categorical point 
here.

And in this regard, I really respect a lot of the work of Derek Bailey, 
where its just him and his hollowbody guitar...quite amazing what a guy 
can 
do with just a guitar and amp.

...I'm off to bed now.  It's been a long day.

Kris