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Re: Loop approach: Loop as effect



At 12:28 AM 7/22/2002, Mark Sottilaro wrote:
>Ah, you see I will totally disagree with you there.  When you apply 
>distortion to your guitar, you immediately change things like tone and 
>sustain.

yes of course, that's what I said. It changes the way your instrument 
sounds, but it does it passively.

>Minor thirds sound more nasty, notes ring out longer.  Unless you're 
>applying distortion post performance, it's going to (should) change the 
>way you play, and therefore can't be thought of as passive.

The key point is it changes the way you play your *guitar*, which remains 
the instrument. You are not actively putting your hands/feet/lips on the 
distortion pedal itself and playing that. You are playing and interacting 
with the guitar, and the distortion pedal just sits there, passively. It 
might affect how you play the guitar and how the guitar sounds, but that's 
what an effect does. It affects things.

>Many effects devices have lot's of realtime parameter options, and can be 
>very similar in nature to rocking your finger on a string to produce 
>vibrato or any other more finger oriented effect.

exactly my point. When you start interacting with the parameters of a 
device to the point where that interaction is a constant musical 
manipulation, in my mind the device has become the instrument. It is no 
longer a passive effect. Very few people treat their effects processors 
this way. Most just set a patch and play their instrument through it, 
leaving the processor to be passive rather than interactive.

kim


>On Monday, July 22, 2002, at 12:00  AM, Kim Flint wrote:
>
>>To me an effect is something that just sits there and does it's thing 
>>with little or no interaction from the user. Like a reverb, or a chorus 
>>or distortion pedal, at least the way most people use such things. Sound 
>>goes in, gets changed in some consistent way, comes out again. Once 
>>you've turned the effect on you otherwise go about playing your 
>>instrument, which is the thing you interact with in order to convert 
>>whatever is inside you into audible music outside of you. The effect 
>>simply affects the way it sounds. So to me the instrument is 
>interactive, 
>>the effect passive.
>>
>> From that perspective, a loop that is simply recorded and left to 
>repeat 
>> indefinitely would fall more in the "effect" category. When you make 
>> looping an interactive effort where various techniques are used to 
>> change the resulting sound according to your musical directive, then 
>> looping becomes more of an instrument.
>>
>>kim
>>
>>At 10:44 PM 7/21/2002, Tom Dauria wrote:
>>>what constitutes an "effect"?  ayaya poopoo?  this dialogue lacks
>>>precision/syntactical cohesion *harshbud*
>>>     I guess "loop as effect" means "alterating ; ) a loop in some way 
>from
>>>its original form" or some such gist.
>>>-Tom the Tonal Transmuter
>>
>>______________________________________________________________________
>>Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
>>kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com