The Quest For Tone
(17 Jul 03)
Discoveries
Talking to Abi von Reininghaus (someone who spent a lot of time and effort on learning about tone and phrasing), and reading his columns helped me a lot. It made me focus on aspects of a player's personal tone: Where does he pick the string? How hard does he attack the string? How does he fret a note? This is all very detailed, subtle stuff, and it's impossible to explain the way Steve Vai (as an example) gets that certain tone when he plays a simple melody. But at the same time, it's an integral factor of a player's sound.
I mean, get it out of your system: Go visit a big guitar-store... grab a JEM... plug it into a Carvin Legacy amp, and ask whether you can try out that DigiTech Whammy Pedal and the Harmonizer, too. Then, play some typical Steve Vai Line (i.e. the first few lines of "For The Love Of God" or "Windows To The Soul" or WHATEVER). I can guarantee you that, even though you might come close, you won't make it sound like it does on the record, or when Steve plays it live.
Not because Steve has some hidden gadgets in the back of his rack, or because his amp maybe is voiced slightly different... nope, it's the damn tone. The vibrato, the way he touches and frets the string, the way he picks it.
When I jam with Thorsten Koehne, we occasionally quote some of our favorite players lines. And when I ask him to i.e. play "Frenzy" by Racer X, he can come extremely close to Paul Gilbert's tone. And he does so playing a cheap-o Danelectro guitar with stock pickups, plugged into some virtual amp.
Why is that? Well, because he didn't give a dang about what guitar, pickups, picks, cables, amps or whatever Paul uses, and instead he paid attention to Paul's tone. At least sub-conciously. And when he learned those licks, he tried to make them sound a bit more "Paul-ish" by trying to emulate the way Paul plays.
That is something Thorsten can "dip into". He has his own style of playing, his own tone, but since Paul was an influence, he can dip into the "Paul-mode" and emulate that sound, which is a part of his own style.
The same happened to me. Years ago, I all of a sudden noticed (Thanks, Patrick!) that I have my own sound. I was trying to sound like that and that guy, and all of a sudden, a friend of mine listened to some recording of a jam-session I was involved in. And when my solo came up, my friend (who's not a guitarist or musician at all) said after the first two notes "Hey, that's you!".
And nope, he hadn't heard me play one of my standard licks, and I wasn't even playing through my own gear at that session. Actually, I was playing someone else's guitar through a borrowed amp, and I was playing the solo of "Little Wing".
And you know what? It was a really cool feel when my friend said that. All of a sudden, I thought "Hey... that IS cool". And I suddenly noticed that he was right, that I had a certain tone going on... I could still hear the influences I had tried to emulate (Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Jeff Beck, Morse, Gilbert, Vai etc.) but it was my own tone (same goes for the solos I played... there was nothing like a "Satch-like passage" in there... I could hear certain elements which definitely were inspired by the guys I mentioned, but at the same time, it was my own solo).
And that is the point: It's ok if you really really wanna be able to play that John Petrucci-solo, but why not play the solo with your own sound and gear?!?
It's an extremely tough task to be able to copy someone's tone, and I think there's not a real purpose in there. I learned that it is an extremely liberating feeling to work on learning that and that solo, but play it with my own tone. I can still dip into the "Satch-tone" or the "Jeff Beck-tone" a bit if I want to (although I don't think I can emulate those sounds 100%)... Listen to my leads on "People Get Ready", or my take on "Into The Light". I came close there, but it was meant as a tribute. I didn't even think about it, I just played those lines and in my mind, I was thinking of those guys sounds.
It's really tough to get there, but it's a very satisfying feel to realize that you have your own tone, something that's always there, even when ya play through borrowed gear, something that's an essential part of your music and playing. I really am happy when I listen to music with friends and when some older or brand new tune of mine comes up, they pretty soon go "Hey, that's you!" (Minky, are ya reading this? Thanks! =))
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