Technique/style/sound question

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famous beagle

famous beagle

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I'm a fan of many styles, and therefore I'm influenced by many different players and try to play a lot of different things. I find that certain things come more naturally to me, and others I struggle with more. And so I was wondering...

Do you think that if you had some mega-shredder (which I'm not) wailing away on three-note-per-string scales and you suddenly changed his sound to like a bright, twangy chicken-pickin' tone (for example), that he'd still sound just as clean and/or as solid? In other words, do you think that, without the mega-distorted/compressed tone, all of the notes would still speak clearly?

And should it even be that way? Would you think less of the shredder if he didn't sound as good (or as "clean" I guess I should say) on a clean tone playing those licks?

Or is technique and style always dependant on guitar setup and tone?
 
famous beagle said:
Or is technique and style always dependant on guitar setup and tone?
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It's the other way around. The type of style dictates the type of rig needed. Various licks require a particular amount of attack, distortion, sustain, and volume.
 
famous beagle said:
I'm a fan of many styles, and therefore I'm influenced by many different players and try to play a lot of different things. I find that certain things come more naturally to me, and others I struggle with more. And so I was wondering...

Do you think that if you had some mega-shredder (which I'm not) wailing away on three-note-per-string scales and you suddenly changed his sound to like a bright, twangy chicken-pickin' tone (for example), that he'd still sound just as clean and/or as solid? In other words, do you think that, without the mega-distorted/compressed tone, all of the notes would still speak clearly?

And should it even be that way? Would you think less of the shredder if he didn't sound as good (or as "clean" I guess I should say) on a clean tone playing those licks?

Or is technique and style always dependant on guitar setup and tone?
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Don't know. ..But I've always thought it made for a rather hilarious mental/picture/auditory image- Thrashing around, tattoos/pecs' ..tink-ity tink' sound coming out.
:D
 
I think he'd sound like crap because the loss of sensitivity would shoot his confidence to hell. When you feel comfortable, you relax and let it flow. But when you're self-conscious you tense up. When you're playing with your own tone, you're comfortable. But when you're playing with tone outside of your comfort zone, sometimes its like playing a different instrument.
 
It's totally down to the player. I'd wager that if Chet Atkins wanted to play shred tones we'd all be blown away.


lou
 
Yeh, I think they kind of have to go together. If I set my Peavey Classic 30 up for some SRV tones, it's gonna suck a little if I play Metallica on it. Now, my technique obviously changes and that dictates a ton of your tone. But, I wouldn't do that in a situation where I was live/recording. If I'm noodling around, I wouldn't worry about "tone" as much...but if I'm doing covers...I like to take a Line6 modeler type amp because the tone changes from tune to tune. I hope the rambling made a little sense.
 
Using a high gain amp as most shredders do compresses the guitar's sound so much that dynamics are essentially lost. This relieves the guitarist of the need to sound notes with a consistent amount of energy, as the gain of the amp levels everything out.

So if you take that shredder and put him on a low-output Telecaster running through a Twin Reverb, you will hear a lot of unintentional dynamics!

Likewise, players that use a lot of dynamics in the use of picks, flesh, attack intensity, etc, who normally play through a dynamically responsive amp, will find the nuances of their technique largely disappear when using a "modern" high-gain amp.

It's all about picking the right tool and technique for the job.
 
....another thought....

Seems like a lot of the shitty Youtube videos I see of guitarists "demonstrating" how to play this or that are almost always playing through some kind of high-gain amp, modeler, or software plugin. This, to me, seems a very bad practice to get into, unless all you are ever going to do is speed work. It's easy to get addicted to gain because of its tendency to level out your dynamics.

I like to learn new stuff at lower gain settings and get my notes, picking, and timing consistent. Then, if the tune calls for some guts, I'll crank it up to get the tone correct.
 
A good shred guitarist will be able to do most of that stuff without an amp and still sound clean. In fact, if I'm actually practicing that kind of thing, I do it without an amp for that reason. If I'm shredding with an amp, generally I'm just noodling for fun, not really practicing as such. I don't like to rely on the distortion to be able to play well.
 
legionserial said:
A good shred guitarist will be able to do most of that stuff without an amp and still sound clean. In fact, if I'm actually practicing that kind of thing, I do it without an amp for that reason. If I'm shredding with an amp, generally I'm just noodling for fun, not really practicing as such. I don't like to rely on the distortion to be able to play well.
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I can see this, but I would add that playing unamplified is still much different than playing amplified with a clean tone. The differences in dynamics in pick attacks aren't all that noticable when playing unamplified (I mean, they're noticable, but the whole level is so quiet that it's not that apparent), but playing a clean amp tone uncompressed is another story.
 
famous beagle said:
I can see this, but I would add that playing unamplified is still much different than playing amplified with a clean tone. The differences in dynamics in pick attacks aren't all that noticable when playing unamplified (I mean, they're noticable, but the whole level is so quiet that it's not that apparent), but playing a clean amp tone uncompressed is another story.
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Yeah, it's different, but if someone had practiced with no amp, they'd still come out clear and defined. They might not be as used to exploiting the dynamic nuances of amplified clean tone, but I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be so many clarity issues.

It all depends on the individual guitarist really. How good they are at adapting to their 'environment'. For example, with a shitload of distortion, they might be able to take more advantage of using extensive legato runs than a clean tone would neccesarily allow. With a clean tone, you've got the dynamics. With some overdrive, it's the way the sound breaks up. Of course, these are just very, very basic examples, but such things are worthwhile things for a decent guitarist to learn to exploit for the sake of versatility. But if we're talking about whether some of the shit people do with a lot of distortion would neccessarily sound good with a clean tone, then the answer in many cases is 'possibly not'.
 
Here's John 5, in my book a mega-shredder, playing with a cleanish tone. I'm sure there's a hell of a lot of shredders who couldn't play like this with the distortion off.

 
If the guitarist in question is truly well-rounded, they won't be relying on gain to cover up for inconsistencies.
 
Distortion and effects can hide mistakes, but doesn't make the mistakes completely inaudible
 
legionserial said:
A good shred guitarist will be able to do most of that stuff without an amp and still sound clean.
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Like Paul Gilbert......in some of his demo clips he turns the pedals off or the volume down and picks the same licks clean and soft, and he still sounds just as good, almost like he switches to Brad Paisley until he turns the pedals back on.
 
soundchaser59 said:
Like Paul Gilbert......in some of his demo clips he turns the pedals off or the volume down and picks the same licks clean and soft, and he still sounds just as good, almost like he switches to Brad Paisley until he turns the pedals back on.
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I thought that we were talking about human guitarists. Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, and Doug Aldrich were all cloned from alien DNA recovered at the Roswell crash site. They have tiny anti-gravity generator chips embedded in their hands. These chips distort space and time allowing them to play riffs that mere humans could never dream of playing.
 
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