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Looper's Delight
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Some interesting discussion in this thread! I didn't read them first, deleting them en masse by the subject line, but then I happened to see Richard Sales post and I started to crawl backwards along the time line, into the the archives... I've have a japanese acoustic guitar for twenty years and it's gaining better sound and personality by each year. But I don't think it's all age, I once picked it in the store because I thought it was the one that "sounded best" (which is very subjective) and by then no one even knew what these K Yairi brand was, I simply bought it because it was talking to me. But I'm starting to think that this mysterious "mojo of the instrument" maybe doesn't live that much in the instrument as in the preferences within the user? I have been fooling around with many different instruments, playing not only guitars, and over the years I have grown to learn that there are certain frequency response dynamics that simply work very well with me. Some instruments I just can't play because they don't response much over those frequencies, no matter how good they are known to be (in the eyes and ears of others). My tenor sax was made in 1914 but I think the sound I like with it is also due to the certain moth piece, an Otto Link nine star. I once sold that mouth piece with an earlier - and utterly lousy - sax in the eighties. I bought new stuff but never got the same sound, some frequencies "were missing" in everything new I tried, although I was talking to all the pro's and checking out their brands. Then one day, after two years, I found my own old mouth piece in a second hand shop. Bought it of course! It just sounds better than anything. Not long a go, back in july, a Swedish wind and reed shop was visited by a guy from LA that manufactures his own brand of mouth pieces and when I went to his free class I brought my own old Otto Link, just to have some reference. This guy is a very good sax player and sounded fantastic when demonstrating his own products in the store - but the funny thing was that when he asked to try my mouth piece he really sounded a lot better!!! I just couldn't believe my ears (or my emotions, because that mojo was working in there...) because he sounded like me, just a lot more technically skilled and still a little different. A strange experience, really. And this autumn while I'm mostly playing an electronic breath controller I am experiencing that the same "musical mojo" - or whatever you call it - is also present in pure electronics! THE ONES AND ZEROES CAN GET ANIMATED! How about that! Yesterday I was reminded on this when working out a multi sampled and multi layered sampler patch based on recordings I did with the 1914's sax and that huge opening Otto Link. Playing that so familiar sound from an electronic controller that is so much more sensitive and expressive (in some ways) than the original acoustic instrument, is both strange and inspiring. But no doubt it's the same angel tossing around behind my back, no matter if I'm blowing into the old metal thing or the wired up plastic sci-fi thing. The bottom line is that I have learned to adjust digital parameters to deliver the same mojo quality that seems to come built-in with the '62 Telecaster I use to borrow (from my bro) to play on rec sessions. So, I'm thinking the mojo is in the eye of the beholder. IF there was a method to measure all those delicate factors that are at work when the angels pop by, you would be able to scientifically detect "an instrument's soul"... but there isn't such a method and will probably never be. Since humans are part of the happening system it becomes too complex for measuring ;-) Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international) http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast) http://www.myspace.com/looproom