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Re: laptop-loopers (guitar)
You just found the gray area, Rainer. I knew you would. :) Okay, here we
go....
I admit, it's not black and white, and when it comes to some effects,
there
is a lot of "fuzziness". As you say, there are effects where some
parameters will just start taking a life of their own, independent of the
guitar. Another example in addition to yours is that when you play one
note
on the guitar, and the effects takes over from that point, allowing you to
tweak parameters, manipulate the tone, and so on. So you play one note on
the guitar, and add some infinite delay...then you take the output of that
delay and start adding pitch, filtering, feedback, modulation and until
you
are basically creating your sound with nothing but effects....and in fact,
at that point you may very well have set the guitar down after you used
it
to play its single contributing note. Yes, I would consider the effect
the
instrument at that point, because you are actually tweaking the effect to
generate new sounds. The guitar becomes secondary.
Now let' take that sound clip I provided a while back, which was a sample
of
all the VST effects in my laptop system. For that clip, I did no effect
parameter tweaking. I played the guitar the entire time and just switched
from one VST effect to another. I let the effect do its thing to my
guitar,
but the whole time I was in control of my guitar and providing 100% of the
raw input to be mangled by the effects. In that case, I do not consider
the
effects as an instrument. I was not touching or manipulating anything on
my
notebook. I was not using the effects, as in hands on manipulation to
produce new sounds, which is what we typically do with instruments, right?
Rather, the effects were window dressing around my initial guitar tone.
Maybe some would call pressing a button to switch from one VST to another,
using the laptop as an instrument. I dont'. That's just button pushing
for
the sake of colorizing my guitar.
I do not regret using this window dressing, but as an artist, I do have to
admit that I feel that window dressing diminishes the creative purity of
my
work. Again, this is a value statement of my own subjective perspective
here, but it's authentic nonetheless. I am not going to take artistic
credit for all the cool sounds my VST effects produce (this goes to the
developers), rather I will only take credit for the playing behind those
effects, the actual notes, articulation, dynamics, creative note placement
and choice, etc These things come from me, not the VST effects. If I strip
away all the effects, what I end up with is pure "me" and guitar. There is
no hiding at that point. Hypothetically, if I cam a crappy guitarist who
has only played my instrument for a year, I can no doubt use VST effects
and
looping to produce some seemingly professional ambient sounds and tones,
and I have seen this done. But it doesn't change the fact that I am an
amateur guitarist with a limited grasp of my instrument as a creative
tool.
Nothing can change this but hard work and time.
Out of desperation as an artist and someone who has been reading,
teaching,
writing, and playing music for almost 30 years, I cling to the idea that
talent and hard work at learning a traditional instrument still has value
and worth amidst this world of technology and gadgetry. Call me a
traditionalist, but I still hold (based on feeling) the traditional
instrument and chops in high regard. That example above, where I could
play
one note and then let the effects and my parameter tweaking do the rest.
That is interesting and impressive to me, but it does not gain my respect
as
an artist, nor does add to my own integrity as an artist. That's just my
opinion.
Kris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 10:08 AM
Subject: laptop-loopers (guitar)
>
>> not....I am somewhat neutral on this for now, but one part of
>> in me wants to reduce effects to non-instruments when a
>> traditional instrument is the primary sound generator, but
>> consider effects (laptops included) inststruments when they
>> are stand-alone music/tone generators. This is just a
>
> Ok, let's see where this will lead us...let's say you got a DL4 with a
> sweep
> delay, or a laptop with OhmBoyz. There is a setting on the depth/feedback
> (vs. resonance/feedback) knobs where the effect will do nothing on its
> own,
> just react to your guitar (or whatever). Then there is a setting where
>the
> effect will start to generate huge washes of noise all by itself. And
> there
> is the range in between where by the tick of a knob it will turn from a
> "tame" effect into something which will start to self-oscillate by just a
> tiny increase in brownian motion. And you're telling me this tick of the
> knob removes the "non-" from "non-instrument"?
>
> ;-),
>
> Rainer
>
>