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Looper's Delight
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Nice Anecdote, Mark. My own experience with the whole gear vs. proficiency thread came into vivid focus upon purchasing a Stick. I removed my technical foundation (guitar) by switching instruments, and the processing that I still owned seemed unnecessary or even "dangerous" because it could interfere with the establishment of a new foundation, or voice if you will - on a different instrument. Now that I've begun to discover/formulate a voice/approach on the instrument, my thoughts are drifting back toward processing options and issues again, including looping. Once my confidence level improves to a point where I consider myself fairly reliable on the Stick, I'll try to throw looping into the mix and see what comes out. I dink around with all of the blinkenlichten aglow - sure, but I try to limit my discovery fronts to one area. *For me*, significant improvements in one area provide more momentum than many smaller improvements. The sustaining of momentum and focus are major issues in my musical life. So my advice for anyone who wishes a direct experience with this issue is to buy a Stick ;) -K >>> sine@zerocrossing.net 05/13/02 01:45PM >>> On the other hand, sometimes you have gear that doesn't quite do what you want it to. For instance, I've always been very into synthesis, but not keyboard playing. I've always just liked the guitar as my main sound making interface. Get a guitar synth, right? Sure. Money being an issue, I ended up with a GR-30. At the time they were being blown out due to the GR-33. For a long time I thought, "Huh, this think kind of sucks in the sound dept." I blamed myself for not spending enough time getting into it and tweaking the sounds. I resisted getting another sounds source because I thought I had to "learn to use the gear I have." Well, I finally learned that the GR-30's sounds (IMO) SUCK. No amount of knowledge about how to tweak that box is going to make it what I wanted. This seems to be a pitfall of modern gear. It comes with presets. They can be good or bad. Sometimes, bad, but with great potential. Sometimes bad with no potential. How do you know? My knee jerk reaction is to blame myself, as how could an old and respected manufacturer put out anything less than stellar? Most synth manufacturers are making "ROMplers" where there isn't very much tweakability in the sound, not compared with analog (or analog modeled) synths. My advise is that with modern gear, if the presets aren't doing it for you, don't waste your time with a piece of gear. Anyway, the end of the story is, I did some more shopping and ended up purchasing a dedicated synth module. Ironically, I went with another Roland product, the VX-5050. Straight out of the box, I found a ton of very usable sounds, and most of my tweaking involved setting the pitch bend of each patch I liked to match the pitch bend of the GR-30 and getting the effects synched to my midi clock (having no way to globally do this sure did suck!) The end result of all this is that I'm SO much happier with my setup. My wife instantly remarked at how much better the overall sound was, and she tend to be very critical in this department. So the lesson learned? I'm not sure there is one, but beware for poorly designed gear. Since quality of sounds is totally subjective, be prepared to hunt for your tools. Be prepared to make some mistakes. Be prepared to evolve. Most importantly, be prepared to give up on a piece of gear that's too complex to do what you want easily. If a piece of gear is so hard to figure out, maybe it's not worth it. Someone once gave me a Brother (right, the word processor company) MIDI sequencer. It had tons of features, but was a disaster in UI design. I spent HOURS and HOURS trying to make what should have taken minutes. Again, I blamed myself. When I purchased my Ensoniq TS-10, I realized that it wasn't me, it was the gear. Even though it had the features I wanted, it was unusable. The TS-10 was a dream to use. I was very quickly doing exactly what I wanted. Sometimes a design flaw can be exploited to make great music. Sometimes, it's just a pain in the ass. Mark Sottilaro Pedro Felix wrote: > snips > --- Evan Meyers <evanmeyers@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > agreed, and not only that, but a concept i've posed > > to> the group in the past. be careful though, some > > folks> are touchy about what the gear is used for > whether> it> be for show or actually for making music > or better> yet, sounds (i don't think that the word > sound can> be> interpretted nearly as much as the word > music, so i> think it is safe to write it)...i'm still > impressed> by > > the lights and nobs though, and don't forget > > switches, > > gotta have switches! > > > > Evan, et al. - > > most of us (all of us?) don't like to think we're on > the wrong road, thus the touchiness. > but ya know I agree with you. > If someone has talent then their gear will not get in > the way, and if they are lacking in that regard, well > their gear won't hide it either. > > best, Pedro > > hey, did you get to Chama on Sat.? > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience > http://launch.yahoo.com