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IMO The only fundamental skill that is relevant to music is the ability to express a particular feeling, and effects can "completely change" one's ability to do

IMO The only fundamental skill that is relevant to music is the ability to express a particular feeling, and effects can "completely change" one's ability to do that. The only way you could quantify the type of skill you seem to be referring to is to entirely remove any degree of expression or improvisation (or effects) and boil it down to the raw performance data. You may then succeed in determining who is objectively a "better" musician but you've lost all the aspects that make a Beatles song based on a I IV V chord progression sound different than one by the Velvet Underground, or anyone else. EDIT: also, yes to some degree that is how harmonic distortion works, though the particular harmonics and amplitudes of those harmonics vary widely and there is often some filtering added to reign in those harmonics in a particular way. Distortion also effectively compresses the signal. Sometimes it starts oscillating and generating notes that aren't even being played. The point is that if you're playing with the distortion (not just laying it on top) then it is changing how you play.

tacos 11y ago
You're basically arguing "it's the gear" whereas any musician over a certain age and skill level will tell you "hell no it isn't." Instagram filters don't make people better photographers; AutoTune doesn't make people better singers. Hell, the Abbey Road mic collection didn't make John and Paul better singers. By your logic you can flip anything around and make the author's argument: Shitty British industrial towns modified their users. Beer and the tiny stage at CBGB modified their users. Cheap Seattle heroin and terrible weather modified their users. Is any artistic pursuit highly dependent on the mood of the performer and her implicit capacity to make you feel? Of course. But the author did not say "playing a guitar through a stomp box changes the way you play it" or "the Edge's signature delay effect created a new sound that nobody had heard -- or felt -- before." He said "guitar effects have modified their users" and "new effects can change a guitarist's playing ability completely." If you read the entire article you'll see the author suffers from an bad case of "word salad" and these are not meant as debatable nuances. He's suffering from dysgraphia, ignorance of the subject matter as a whole, and a really bad editor. Which is why he defines "clipping" with a phrase lifted from the Wikipedia article for digital clipping, applies it to slicing a speaker with a razor blade, then claims rotating motors were picked up by speakers in a Leslie after being picked up by "coiled magnets" in a guitar pickup.

tacos 11y ago

You're basically arguing "it's the gear" whereas any musician over a certain age and skill level will tell you "hell no it isn't." Instagram filters don't make people better photographers; AutoTune doesn't make people better singers. Hell, the Abbey Road mic collection didn't make John and Paul better singers. By your logic you can flip anything around and make the author's argument: Shitty British industrial towns modified their users. Beer and the tiny stage at CBGB modified their users. Cheap Seattle heroin and terrible weather modified their users. Is any artistic pursuit highly dependent on the mood of the performer and her implicit capacity to make you feel? Of course. But the author did not say "playing a guitar through a stomp box changes the way you play it" or "the Edge's signature delay effect created a new sound that nobody had heard -- or felt -- before." He said "guitar effects have modified their users" and "new effects can change a guitarist's playing ability completely." If you read the entire article you'll see the author suffers from an bad case of "word salad" and these are not meant as debatable nuances. He's suffering from dysgraphia, ignorance of the subject matter as a whole, and a really bad editor. Which is why he defines "clipping" with a phrase lifted from the Wikipedia article for digital clipping, applies it to slicing a speaker with a razor blade, then claims rotating motors were picked up by speakers in a Leslie after being picked up by "coiled magnets" in a guitar pickup.