Creative doldrums and compressors

[KRosser414@aol.com]

Re: Creative doldrums

I've read a lot of these entries with a great deal of interest.  
Personally,
I'm not sure why a lover of music would want to be 'influence-less'.  It
seems to me that that would create more doldrums than it would remedy.  I
play professionally so giving it up for a year ain't an option, but as far 
as
listening I think there can be too much emphasis placed on 1) why you 
listen
to certain things and 2) what, specifically, you are to take from them for
your own music. I thinks it's important to think of other music as 
something
you love to hear and make no other demands on it.  Let it work its magic on
you.  If it starts coming out heavily in your own work, let it.  I think 
it's
healthier to work through it than deny it.   If you obsess about not 
sounding
like Fripp, he's still got the grip on you, see?  The key is to love but 
not
yearn to possess.  In music as in life, an important thing to try to 
learn...

Personally, I would much rather hear someone play the 12-bar blues on
acoustic guitar that really loves it rather than some guy with an arsenal 
of
gear and all the looping savvy in the world who sounds like he doesn't love
anything but himself.

I think self-examination s very important for anyone, but it's very easy to
fall into a trap of self-obsession.   In many ways, I think it's a fallacy 
to
"look" for your individuality.  You already have it, just as you have a 
sense
of community also.  I think the key is to get out of the way and allow them
both to do what they need to do.  And what do we "do" in the meantime?  I
dunno...maybe, try to appreciate what we love and forgive what we don't.

Just MHO, of course.  There are as many answers to this as there are
individuals.

On a completely unrelated technical note, for seekers of the oft-sought TC
Electronics Sustain/Para EQ pedal that have been unable to find one, I have
some potentially encouraging news.  I visited the TC booth at NAMM over the
weekend and was introduced to another Danish company they've become
affiliated with (exactly how the affiliation extends, I'm not sure, i.e., 
it
might be just for marketing purposes) called Carl Martin.  CM makes a
compressor/Limiter pedal that is apparently modeled *somewhat* upon the old
TC pedal.  I didn't get to play it myself, so I don't want it to sound like
too informed an endorsement, but I did listen to them demo it and I think
it's definitely worth trying out when they start appearing at retailers 
(NAMM
was their American debut - they said they should be out and around "very
soon").

Cheers,
Ken R