Nobody has told me this straight before, but as I got this idea this morning and it seems to be right I have to tell you about it:

Everything that´s not working in a context is an effect.

I think about this because I have always found it difficult to work with sounds that I can´t control or understand in a deeper meaning. But when you think about the exitement you feel when you discover something new, for instance something you have never heard before, and the emptiness you can feel when this new not automatically carries any deeper meaning, you can easily imagine that the first tones that humanity produced merely functioned as effects. Later on when two or more tones were put togheter, they started to function in a context. That context is many thousands of years later called a melody.

So if somone accuses you as a composer/creative person of using effects, it may be true, as long as they are not working in a context.