HeavyXIII wrote:Some of it comes from working with multiple media. I started as a painter and visual artist before I even became interested in guitar, but essentially all of our devices are tools, like brushes or pens or paints or what have you.
More so for me, I had a similar realization with musical arrangements than the nitty gritty of effects (for better or worse): mixing and matching riffs intermittently, to play with contrast. How changing the beat behind a riff or melody influences how you perceive it. Some of these were initially apparent when I discovered how musical modes work, I didn't have to learn MORE scales and keys, I could learn new ways to apply what I already knew.
Perhaps some of us are those douches that intellectualize art (although I think the intellectual bits strengthen us in some way or another), but I also like appreciating music and art for what it is (some guilty and not so guilty pleasures).
Multimedia is super important. People are starting to call this "idea sex," which is strange. It just sounds like having influences outside the range of the stuff that you're producing. People say my music sounds like Battles, for example, but I don't really listen to a lot of Battles (I do love them, though). I get ideas from places that are pretty far away from the noise I make, and usually pretty far away from "music" altogether.
Changing the underlay is my jam. That's a huge part of making music interesting (at least to me). Shift the riff 1/16 note forward, or something. We talk about modulation in terms of swirly effects, but you can also use that idea to modulate keys, tempos, rhythms, harmonies, stressed notes, whatever.
And, I'll say again: it is inevitable, I think, that people will think this whole idea is overwrought. Just wanted to float this out there. Also, this is what I do for a living (at some level), so I feel a little justified in doing it. I think that talking about music or art in a way beyond the surface-level of "rad fuzz pedal" is always viewed with suspicion, probably because so many assholes have come before with their scarves and thick-rimmed glasses and looked down their nose at others for not "getting it." That's definitely not me...I won't apologize for where I come from, but, despite my current station in life, I grew up with jack shit on 8 Mile road in Detroit. I come by this shit as honestly as anyone, and had to pull myself out of some gaping holes to get where I am now. So I'm with you: we can have our cake (intellectual bullshitting) and eat it, too (guilty pleasure/radcore/"rad fuzz pedal").
). As some of you might have noticed, I have an obsession with oscillating fuzzes. The way they respond to my playing, how I with some effort can get the oscillations to do melodies, well, basically how they open a world of possibilities where you'll have to fight your way to the sounds you want. Yeah. Something like that.
