Introduction and Definition
Oh gee, what kind of a topic is that? Did I get myself into trouble now, trying to tackle such a hard to define thing such as TONE?
Well, it sure would be a bit easier to write about stuff like the Japanese pentatonic or nose-tapping, but after all, I wrote a bunch of articles about playing techniques, scales and improvisation already, so I figured it might be a good idea to talk about HOW to play all that stuff for a change.
Now, first of all, many people are confused when it comes to the difference between SOUND and TONE. So let's try to define those two first, mmkay?
Sound- Is what's generated by your gear. Your guitar, the wood it's made of, the pickups, the amp, FX and all the "other stuff" in between (cords, Eqs etc.). It takes money, some ears, sometimes some counseling and time to get gear together.
Tone- The way you shape what you play. The mysterious "It's in your hands" factor. The reason why 6 different guitarists can play the exact same line through the exact same gear and still get different sounds of it. It takes years of playing, listening, experimenting etc. to work on your tone.
Now that we have defined those two, let's forget about SOUND for a while, shall we? I mean, I might write some stuff about setting up your gear, getting together a rig etc. But for now, let's talk about tone.
A common mistake a lot of people make is: they listen to their favorite players, they like what they hear, they try to play it, too... and they get different results. Most of the time, they think "Gee, it's obvious... that guy has better gear, or some hidden goodies in the back of his rack that makes him sound so good. Also, they sure added some FX etc. in the studio, so that's why he sounds so much better than I do when he plays that simple melody."
Or, they try to purchase the exact same gear that their role-model uses, thinking that it will get them closer to the sound of that player. And THAT, people, is why the endorsement / artist signature-business is so successful. I mean, most of those "signature models" are great instruments / pieces of gear, but in general, people think that buying it will make sure they can sound good. And that is a dead-end street.
Because, instead of trying to get the exact same gear as your role-model, trying to get pictures of his amp-setting etc., you should focus on how he plays, not WHAT he plays through.
And I know that that can be very frustrating. I mean, when I got serious about the electric guitar, I wanted to be able to play and sound like Joe Satriani... and for some reason (I believe that all those ads by the companies he was an endorser for were a factor here), I believed that, if I would have that signature guitar and that certain amp, I'd be able to sound like him. And subconsciously, I thought that I wouldn't only sound like him, I'd also be able to PLAY like him.
Reality check: If you wanna play like Joe Satch, using a lot of fast legato-licks etc, it sure is easier with a guitar like the Satriani-signature model strung with light gauge strings than it would be with a vintage Tele strung with a set of 012-056 strings, played through a vintage Bassman.
I had a pretty decent electric guitar though, and I (fortunately) didn't have the money to buy that signature-model, so I figured "Mmkay, let's sit down then and try to do it on this guitar".
Well, years passed, and I worked on my technique. Learned lots of legato-runs, read a lot of columns by and interviews with the Satch, and listened to his albums a lot. And I slowly started to notice a few things:
- Since my legato-technique was improving, I was able to play many of his lines now.
- Unfortunately, it still sounded different than the record.
And the gear (amp-settings) were not a factor here. I had heard that mysterious term "tone" before, and slowly it started to dawn on me that this was what I was dealing with there.
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! =))
So what to do?
Now, where's the instructional part in this article?!? I have been ranting and rambling for a while now, so let's try to find a solution:
When you play, when you practise, ask yourself: Does this SOUND good?!? I mean, don't worry about the note-choice, or the speed. Ask yourself, do the notes sound good?
Try this: Take a simple, pretty melody you know, say... "Amazing Grace". Transcribe that melody in single notes, and play it. Take your time to memorize the melody so you know it without looking at your transcription. Now, plug in your guitar, turn up the amp, dial in a sound you like and feel comfortable, and PLAY IT AGAIN.
DOES...IT...SOUND....GOOD?!?
Ok, now, play it again, trying to add some slight vibrato. Or add a bend to play certain notes. And... try to pick some notes harder, and others softer. Play the melody very slowly, close your eyes and imagine you're on stage, playing this melody as a part of your solo-spot, trying to really move the audience. Try to squeeze everything out of that melody. Try to put it a lot of heart.
I know that all that sounds a bit weird (Hey, anyone remember "Martian Love Secrets"?!?), but this is just as important as doing mere technical exercises if you really wanna sound good.
I know it sucks to be too honest or critical, but when you play something, judge yourself: does that really sound nice. You don't have to have picking chops like PG, you can make a slow, easy melody sound nice if you simply focus on it for a sec.
Have you ever wondered why, even if you play a simple melody, a simple lick by one of your favorite players, it sometimes sounds bad?
It's fess up-time. When the "Martian Love Secrets" columns by Steve Vai first were published in the Guitar Player mag, I collected them and saved them. One day, I was looking for some different stuff to practise, and checked them out again.
And there was this column where Steve talks about a meditation-style state of mind. He says something like "Take one note, and play this note for one hour. Never deviate from that note, play it and add all different kinds of vibrato to it. At first, your attention will be used up soon, but after a while you might find yourself trying completely new things". (Quoted from memory, go to vai.com to read the "Martian Love Secret" columns...)
Guess what? I did just that. But I didn't focus on vibrato only. I started to pay attention to the way I'd pick the note, too. I noticed that you can get a bunch of different sounds when you move your "picking spot" towards the neck (softer, warmer attack) or towards the bridge (harsher, more treble).
I noticed that the tone changes quite a bit if you change the angle of your pick, or, like i.e. Eric Johnson does it, dig in the pick pretty deep into the strings and pull upwards. Also, and this is tough to describe in mere words, you can get quite a few different sounds (not DRASTICALLY different, but differences in tone often don't walk up to you and grab ya by the throat anyway... it's subtle, but you notice it when it's there) by trying different things with your fretting hand... applying more pressure or less, moving between the fretwires, and of course applying lots of different vibratos... I am not talking phrasing here, it's about the tone.
...and why to do it
I KNOW that that does not sound as exciting as a sermon about PG's newest "Terror Death Lick", but I think that, if you really are serious about your playing, if you want it to sound good, if you wonder why guys like Satch, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson and others can make even simple things sound beautiful, you should pay attention to that side of playing, too.
Even when I practise, I try to make it sound good. Does that sound weird? Well, it means that, if I i.e. work on some scale sequence, I don't only try to get the lick down, I also try to make it sound good, to have the notes ring out, to experiment with the attack etc.
Some people laugh about all the time and effort Eric Johnson invests into searching for obscure stuff like the "sweet spot", or why he uses some extremely un-economic fingerings to play a line, simply because he is convinced that that 3rd note of that melody sounds better on the G-string than on the B-string in the context of that melody.
But you cannot deny that EJ has an amazing sound and tone. And that is not only because of those killer-vintage guitars and amps he uses. It's because he went beyond mere bpm-counting and picking-tricks. He worked on his technique, and then tried to make all these cool licks sound good.
There is a limit to the tone-factor. If you play something like an extremely fast picking run, you have to make a compromise. You can still have a certain tone going there (listen to Paul Gilbert play a fast picking run, then listen to Tony MacAlpine... if you listen really hard, there IS a difference), but you can't do as many subtle things to alter the tone anymore.
But your playing should not only involve runs at the speed of light, but also melodic stuff, and those require good melodic ideas, nice phrasing and a good TONE.
Osmosis
OK, the last thing I'd like to talk about is LISTENING. I chose that subject line ("Osmosis") because Abi von Reininghaus used it to describe a certain process I wanna talk about now. One ESSENTIAL part of working on tone, getting aware of it, seeing its potential and learning about it is LISTENING.
Listening to players. Not wasting months staring at photos and videos of that player to see exactly WHERE he picks the string, but listening to hear and comprehend that players "texture", the texture of his tone.
Listen i.e. to Jeff Beck... those snappy sounds in between, used in combination with soft, fragile notes, combined with a plethora of different kinds of vibrato... that's his texture, the texture of his tone. If you listen to it a lot, you might feel tempted to try to get similar sounds out of your guitar. Or you don't even feel tempted, it just happens.
It's the language-comparison thing again... if you spend a lot of time listening to just one person talk, you might pick up certain elements of that person's way of speaking. Certain terms that person uses a lot, certain ways of i.e. raising the voice on certain words. Subconciously, you might start to use those same elements, say words the same way that person did.
Or you do it "half-subconciously". Imagine you watch a bunch of Schwarzenegger-movies. You know, the guy with that weird Austrian accent. Now, imagine you think that is funny, and you start copying it, just for the laughs. ("I'll be backkk...")
If you do that for a long period of time, if you don't even think about it anymore, you might just find yourself using that accent subconciously all the time. It has become a part of your way of speaking. You intended to copy it, and it, in a natural way because you used it a lot, became a part of your way of speaking.
And it's the same with playing the guitar. Example: I am a huge fan of Jeff Beck. And I always liked all these weird sounds he uses, like the pre-bends, whammy bar-phrasing, snapping notes. (And this actually is more phrasing than tone, but bear with me). So I tried to get those sounds, and after a while, I noticed that, without planning on it, or even thinking about it, I was using those things in my own style of playing. And it can be the same with tone.
So... I did an experiment Abi von Reininghaus had done before. Before I tell you about it, you should know that I hardly ever watch TV. I don't even have one, I watch TV when I am over at some friends house. If I wanna watch a movie, I rent one or go to the movie theatre, if I want news, I go online or buy a newspaper. I don't listen to the radio a lot either. I sure do so when I am driving around with a friend and he has got the radio running. But most of the time, I only listen to the music I wanna listen to (CD's). So it was kinda easy to set up this experiment.
I made myself two tapes. Tape 1 was a 120 minutes, Tape 2 had 90 minutes of music on it. Tape 1 had a bunch of ballads and slower pieces by Steve Vai on Side A and a lot of ballads and slower songs by Joe Satriani on the other side. Tape 2 featured a collection of my favorite guitar ballads by players like Jeff Beck, Andy Timmons, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson...
And I listened to nothing else but these tapes for 3 weeks. Really. I mean, of course in between I put in another CD, i.e. to transcribe a song for a lesson or whatever. But other than that and those rare occasions where I i.e. was in a club, a bar, a diner or in someone's car, I listened to those two tapes only, over and over again. Not always paying attention... I was reading, eating, doing all kinds of stuff, and those tapes were running in the background.
I didn't play along to them. When I practised I turned them off. And guess what? After three weeks, I invited three friends of mine for a jam-session. And guess what? My playing had changed a little bit. Listening to those tapes had gotten me used to the phrasing of those guys. I had that Satriani-texture, or that Vai-vibe in my mind, it had become an essential part of my life because it was my soundtrack for three weeks straight. It was a rather subconcious process (have you ever read about Steve Vai listening to Zappa-songs while he was sleeping, which helped him to learn and memorize them? Or him listening to a 440 hz tone through headphones while being asleep?)
But it was obvious. And it kinda showed to me that developing tone requires a lot of listening, a lot of time, and a lot of "not thinking about it".
If I may use my comparison to learning a language once more: You can sit down and focus on learning that language with a dictionary or reading books. You can use phonetics to learn how to pronounce a word or phrase something. You can remember the way the waiter at the diner said a sentence this morning, and try to emulate it from memory.
But an essential part of learning a language, learning to speak and phrase is listening to other people speak. And you don't notice that a lot, cuz it's a normal part of your everyday-life. You can't avoid hearing people talk.
Conclusion
And one other essential part about learning a language, learning how to be a "good speaker", learning how to phrase and pronounce stuff is USING IT.
You cannot start playing guitar tomorrow and focus on tone exclusively... you won't be able to develop a good tone in no-time. A lot of it happens because you play a lot. The guitar becomes a part of yourself (Ewwwwww... here comes the really esoteric stuff), you get so used to it and feel so secure playing on it that you actually start to put in more little details like phrasing and tone.
THAT is what that Vai-"vibrate a note for one hour" thing is all about. You play that note, it's easy enough, and since it takes hardly any effort, you feel so secure that you start to put in more things, to make it sound nicer or simply, to keep it interesting.
The same thing happens when you keep playing "Amazing Grace" over and over. At first, you have to memorize it. But once you don't even have to think anymore when you play it, you sub-consciously start to phrase different, to pay more attention to your attack or whatever... it will sound different.
To sum this up: You first have to get used to mere mechanics, you have to tackle the pure technical side, and you have to learn WHAT to play... licks, chords, melodies, songs. Once you feel comfortable with that, you start to add little things and try to make it YOUR OWN, to make it sound "puhrdy".
Last experiment: Memorize this sentence: "This article is way too long and way too boring, I wish Eric would stick to technical stuff and actual instructional advice I can use".
Say it a few times till you know the sentence inside out. Then, try to say it like you say anything else in your everyday life, like i.e. saying "Hey, how're ya doing" to a friend of yours. Or try to phrase, pronounce, accent different parts of it. Try to put in some emotion or phrasing, to bring over the message not only with the content of the sentence, but also by the way you say it.
Conclusion
I'm sure you're glad to see that I am done! If you made it this far: WOW! Congrats.
See, this one was a tough one to write for me. It definitely was harder than writing an article about, say, modal pentatonics or whatever.
But I hope you can see now (maybe you knew it before already) that the TONE, YOUR tone, is just as important as the licks you know. It's YOUR trademark, it's what sets you apart from other players.
Even if you still wish nothing else as much as being able to sound exactly like Yngwie or Petrucci or Jimi or George Lynch, remember how cool it is to have someone say "Man, that sounds like YOU. I can tell when it's you playing!"... or how cool it is to play any melody with your own tone, not even thinking about it too much. To be able to take some simple melody which might sound stale and boring when you play it, and all of a sudden it starts to "breathe" and sound like something from YOU, from your heart.
Developing a good tone is nothing that is done entirely by sitting in your room with your axe and your amp. You don't need a metronome to do it. A lot of it happens while you do other stuff, while you focus on other aspects of playing. Remember that, every time you sit down to play, you get a bit more secure as a player, and the more secure and confident you get, the easier it is to get away from playing simple notes and melodies and to get into playing them your own way, with your own tone, putting some part of you into them, making them a part of you.
It takes years, and it sometimes is necessary to pay a lot of attention to it, but it's well worth the effort. Remember that the guys you admire are not only good, unique players because of chops, performance or songwriting abilities... nope, they also have their own, distinctive tone which sets them apart, and that is something you pick up on every time you listen to them, if you notice it or not.
And... this article is most likely not one of the articles that makes you go "K, I'll print this, grab my guitar and start working on something". Maybe it's not interesting for you at all. (Actually, I am well aware that this one might get the worst rating I ever got for an article). But maybe, next time you practise or play a show, you might pay a bit more attention to your tone, the reason why, even if you play someone else's licks, it sounds more like you.
Maybe it'll help you to understand that that is something to look forward to, something to embrace. And, in most cases, something you can't even fight. (Steve Lukather sure did try to sound like Jeff Beck 100% in his youth, but these days, he has got his own distinctive tone, he likes it and is aware of it, and a lot of people are trying to sound like him... and hopefully and MOST LIKELY, will have their own distinctive sound soon...)
Keep that in mind, have mercy with me and forgive that huge amount of rambling and ranting... I really felt it was necessary to write all this down, cuz I know how important and cool the tone is... and it's just as important as knowing the fretboard or having killer-chops.
Let's put it this way (and allow me to exaggerate a lil bit): Don't focus entirely on simply learning bunches of licks, scales and arps. Otherwise, you'll be nothing but some computer playing back those licks without any expression. Try to always put in some of yourself, try to give each lick a meaning by playing it with your tone and phrasing. Be aware that you have a distinctive tone, observe and analyzse it a bit (a bit!) and try to improve whatever you're not happy with...
So... use your ears, remember that you're an individual and that you're playing one of the most expressive instruments ever invented. So use that to its full effect, be expressive and use all the different things that are possible on the guitar... it's not quite as easy to develop a distinctive sound playing the dulcimer...