A couple of months ago, I wrote an article entitled, “Where DOES TONE Really Reside?” where I discussed the equipment vs. fingers religious debate that seems to rage on the forums now and again. I meant to follow up on that article much earlier, but well, life happens and it’s easy to get sidetracked, so here’s my follow-up:
Tone is NOTHING without music.
Music gives tone a context. Here’s a good test of this statement:
- Set your rig up to your sweet spot; that is, where you think it just sings to you, no matter what you play.
- Start plucking out random notes, not trying to be musical at all. Could be some dissonant scale of some sort, or just randomly plucked notes. Do some bends and such. Ugly, right?
- Now, without changing your settings, make music with that tone. You could comp some chords, or do some melodic lead.
For example, here’s a clip I quickly recorded that demonstrates the steps. In the clip, I’m playing my Strat through a Hardwire reverb, into a Reason Bambino on the Normal channel, at just the edge of breakup. The tone that this produces is silky smooth, but responds to attack and volume increases with just bit of grind. I’ve been using this setting quite a bit lately. It creates a very three-dimensional sound.
The first part – thankfully – is very short, and is just random plucking of notes. Without touching anything on my guitar or amp, in the second part, I do a little chord comping and create some music.
The point to that little exercise is that in both parts, the tone I’m producing – at least to my ears – is gorgeous. But flat-out tone with no context well… it just plain sucks!
So put everything together, where does tone reside? As I stated in the first article, it’s in both your gear and your fingers, but ultimately, you have to give it context, and that’s applying that tone to music. But keep in mind that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What is considered “great tone” is a purely subjective thing.
Cheers!
Guitar Gear 
Great simple, to-the-point, post that illustrates a concept that a lot of gearheads miss. Nice playing by the way.
Sorry, but the guitar sounds a bit thin to me.
The moral of this comment – there is no “great tone”.
Assuming that there is any particular place where a “great” tone lives/comes from – other than from within your own mind – is starting from a false premise.
Sounds good to me, and that’s why I EXPLICITLY said “at least to my ears” when describing the tone. I respectfully but totally disagree with you that there is no great tone. There is, but it’s purely subjective. I never meant to suggest that what I might like will please everyone….
But I can see where people might make that assumption, so I’ll make an addendum to my post.
GoofyDawg wrote: “Tone is NOTHING without music.”
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With all due respect, I could not disagree more.
Listen to the sound of a single note played on a good classical guitar. If you have a musical soul, the beautiful singing tone of that single note will move you, and the memory of it will stay with you for hours.
Or how about wind-chimes? They often produce rather unmusical sequences of notes, but many people love the sound they make, regardless.
If you reverse your original statement, however you arrive at something for which you can make a good case: “music is NOTHING without tone”. A simple example: a live band that uses a truly horrible P.A. system that is loud, shrieky, shrill, and ear-stabbing. The band may be good, may be playing well, but nobody is going to enjoy what they hear; they’re too busy sticking their fingers in their ears and looking around for earplugs!
Another example is a lot of those tasteless metal bands that choose to use a tone similar to the sound of wire-brushing rust off a tin roof with a power tool. Normal human ears respond with pain, not pleasure, to this sort of thing. That’s why this sort of music only appeals to a small subset of humanity, metalheads, who have trained their ears to survive the assault. The musicians might be skilled and the lyrics emotional, but the sound is so nasty that most people cannot stand to listen to it.
I agree with you that it is possible to make boring music with great tone (a lot of country music falls into that category!). However it is equally impossible to make beautiful music with horrid tone; you may be able to convey anger or hatred with nasty tone, perhaps, but you won’t succeed in conveying the other emotional colors in the palette of human experience.
-Nemo