Simplicity

So, I’ve been doing some Spring cleaning, it took me until late Summer to get started but I’ve been going through a bunch of my old stuff: old clothes that I’m giving to Goodwill, ancient computer parts that I’ll give away or recycle, etc. I came across a box of my old Boss guitar pedals & thought, “maybe I should use these…” so I found an old pallet, cut it down, sanded it and arranged my pedals, secured them to it, hooked everything up and was ready to go. 

It consisted of the following:

- tuner

- noise suppressor (to get rid of line noise)

- compression (to even out highs & lows)

- wah (for funk)

- pitch shifter (for harmonies)

- overdrive (for grit)

- eq (for overall shaping of sound)

- phase shifter (for step delay)

- delay (for texture)

- reverb (for ambiance)

After playing around with it for a while I took it to Worship Team Practice, swapped out my simple secondary rig I had been using (which consisted of three pedals: noise suppressor, overdrive, delay) and plugged in, halfheartedly interested in the sonic possibilities. 

I was disappointed. The entire practice I was hitting pedals, exploring different combinations and at the end of the night, I was rather disillusioned with the whole thing… I had missed the simplicity of my secondary rig: overdrive on/off, delay on/off; that’s it. My 12 string acoustic is simply plug & play, my 6 string acoustic rig has a couple of effects but it’s basically clean.

I know people who own keyboards that have hundreds, if not thousands of sounds/patches/pads that can be called up in a second but they only use the piano patch (well, sometimes strings & organ but that’s it). 

The older I get the more I’m into simplicity: Bible studies, devotionals, prayer, faith, worship, songs, songwriting, politics, relationships, life, love, etc…

Perhaps I was trying to recapture something from my youth with this pedal board but I’m in a much different place right now. I’ll use it for a month but I’m leaning toward going back to my secondary rig & using this new/old setup for recording, where everything can really shine, I can take my time with each effect on each track & go back to the simplicity of the “heart of worship” when playing live.

Spring cleaning has its benefits in more ways than one...