Creative impact on your work?, technological research

You seem to be getting crickets on this one. None too many on this site would consider themselves "industry pros." If you ask for the opinions and experiences of performing amateurs and serious hobbiests, you might get a nibble.

FWIW, I'm a hack and a hobbiest with a serious day job:

What recent technological advancement has had the biggest impact on you performing live?

If this is only about live music, then what first comes to mind is reasonably priced digital signal processing (DSP), as that has lead to the creation of a wide variety of reasonably-priced effects in a small number of "boxes." I'm partial to only a few of these, such as Line6's delay modelers, and for convenience the DSP-based effects in my very portable Roland Cube amplifer.

What advantages/disadvantages has this brought to you?

Pro: Portability and flexibility: More EFX in a single device (pedal, amp). Lower cost per effect.

Con: While some DSP effects sound good, some definitely sound not-so-good. Live playing is a bit less critical to quality, but has its own demands. Modeled effects can be cheesy. The player must choose carefully. New players tend to be overly impressed by the plethora of available DSP-based effects and multi-effects, and as a result over use them.

How has the development of any recent technology enabled you to become more creative in a live situation?

As I tend to be a lead and fill player, additional effects allow me to provide a wider palatte of sonic enhancements to the tunes on which I play.

Has the development of any recent technology strengthened the link with your engineer/mixer?

The recent development that has affected that relationship the most is probably the ability to duplicate and transfer music digitally. The studio engineer/mixer can more easily send me mixes and masters for quick turn-around review. That same capability has enabled everyone with a PC, digital audio interface, internet connection and multitrack digital audio reecoding SW to become a recording engineer in his/her own fashion. While this may lead to less use of commercial studios, home and amateur recording HW and SW has enabled to amateur to better understand the recording process and thereby work better with the recording professional when that time comes.

Hi gnease, thanks for your very modest reply, it's intreating what you say about the cube amps. The guitar player for a band I was mixing a while back had one and i was pleasantly surprised by the results just using the direct out (no mic).

What are your views on the shift towards self producing artists and the rise of the internet?
Ultimately do you think the outcome will be a good thing?

What recent technological advancement has had the biggest impact on you performing live?

Electric amplifiers. What can I say, I play acoustic jazz!
What advantages/disadvantages has this brought to you?

People can hear me play -- which, depending on the night, could be either and advantage or a disadvantage.
How has the development of any recent technology enabled you to become more creative in a live situation?

How does one define recent? Midi software synths and electric keyboards have helped my composing, as I can listen to a piece without having to record it and play it back. But that makes me more efficient, not more creative.
Has the development of any recent technology strengthened the link with your engineer/mixer?

I'm my engineer.

What are your views on the shift towards self producing artists and the rise of the internet?
Ultimately do you think the outcome will be a good thing?

Ooooh, me first.

These days everybody can produce their own work, the 24-track digital recorder for less than a grand and accessible software like Pro-tools or Sonar has made that so much more possible than it used to be when having a home studio was really something. The downside is that whilst any one of us here might be a great musician turning out great product, we're not necessarily businessmen used to setting out marketing strategies or keeping a tight hand on the cashflows, and if you're trying to do all that as well as keep the creative side of the work flowing and the band on the road then something's gotta give and you stuff up one or the other; probably all of them.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Musicians have long complained about the lousy returns they get from their major label deals and producing your own material means that once you've paid the duplicating costs, commissioned and paid for the artwork from the psycho student chap next door, got it all packaged up and out there all the profits go to the right place instead of the labels' shareholders. On top of that, you can get a rejection from a major label even if you've got good material, so self production gives you the opportunity to get heard

The internet has to be the best marketing tool developed ever. It took me a couple of hours to set up a myspace page, another to set up at Reverb Nation, and I'm going shopping this arvo cos I need some user-friendly software to give the Rollmop Music website a makeover. That'll only take a couple of hours too. I'm not an IT geek, I'm an Investment Banker; there are so many ways now to make things easy.

Best gadget for my live work? The Multi-FX pedal. I have loads.

Best gadget for live work with my classical guitar? The microphone.

A :-)

It was Soundclick.com through which I was able to make my recordings heard to people here at GN and others.

Hence, the internet should be the biggest influence, imo.