Guitar Gear

Try this: No effects. Not even reverb. Just you, your guitar, and your amp. No cheating. Plug your guitar directly into your amp, and if it has built-in reverb, turn it off. Another thing: No cranking up your gain to get into full overdrive. Set your amp such that you have to hit it hard to break it up.

Play.

So what’s the point? The point is that you will see just how much you depend on your effects. But even after this “test.” Try playing and doing leads without any effects. For some, this isn’t an issue, as they normally play plugged straight in. But for others like me, we use effects and doing leads without them might just surface issues with technique.

Mind you, I’m not advocating for doing away with effects altogether. That would just be silly; especially if what you hear as your “sound” is from effects. But if you can be expressive without effects, imagine how much more expressive you will be when you have effects.

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At my last band rehearsal, I totally flaked and forgot to bring my pedal board, and it was too far to go back home to fetch it. So I said oh well, wtf… I’ll just deal with it. What the hell was I going to do? Call off practice? No way. That rehearsal turned out to be one of – if not – the best rehearsals we’ve had as a band since I joined. Our frontman came to the restaurant where I solo last night and we talked about how great that rehearsal was. So organic, and every song – even ones we were learning – felt tight.

For me, playing without effects forced me to work my guitar and get all my sustain with my fingers; not pressing hard and digging in, but making sure I fully sound out notes.

Might seem obvious to some players, but what I realized right away was that I was depending a lot on my effects to give me sustain and frankly, I got lazy. The net effect was that I slowed down my solos, and made sure that I was really taking my time expressing whatever message I had in a song.

Mind you, it wasn’t necessarily a conscious thing. I could hear that I was cutting off my notes a bit so I simply slowed down just a tad and let my guitar sing in its natural voice.

At the end of practice, I was so satisfied. Combine that with just having a great time with my bandmates, and that was simply an inspirational rehearsal.

Update

Some guy on Facebook accused me of pulling the “guitar machismo” card with this post. I guess he responded to me using the word “cheating” above within the context of turning your reverb off. Oh well, I actually found that to be quite amusing. But he did have a point just the same.

I guess we’ve all come across players who look down on others for using effects. They plug straight into the amp and that’s it and they look upon others using effects as somehow less of a player. Let’s just call it what it is: Bullshit.

It’s the same thing as people calling a capo a “cheater.” My feeling is that however you need to get your sound, use it. There are no rules. Just as I responded to someone saying I was cheating by using a capo that he should tell that to James Taylor, anyone who looks down on people using effect pedals should tell that to Satch, or Eric Johnson, or The Edge.

In any case, my post was about how my effects were masking deficiencies in my technique. Not having my effects on hand made me go back to basics and use my fingers to get my tone and sustain. It was a great exercise that will just enhance my sound when I have effects.

For instance, at my solo acoustic gigs this weekend, I took what I learned to heart, and though I played using my effects, I felt my sound was so much better because I was eeking out as much tone and sustain with my fingers and NOT relying on my effects.

So I apologize to the person who read this who may have been offended. Hopefully, with this explanation, he can see what I was getting at… Or not. 🙂