Chasing The Tone

Everyone goes on and on about tone (1). It's in the fingers. It's in the wood, the pickups, the pots, the fretboard, and even the nut and tuning heads.(2) It's in the pedals and the settings. It's in the amp and the speakers.

John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter both played tenor sax. Tenor saxes are made to sound the same, because it's a band instrument. The player can make a slight difference with their choice of reeds, and their breath control. So you know how you know it's Wayne Shorter or John Coltrane playing?

They play different notes. They play different phrases. They structure phrases differently. They sound different not because one uses a Selmer and the other some other make: they sound different because they play different.

Tone is in the music.

Play My Favourite Things, with fuzz, blues drive, lots of reverb, chorus, slow drive, whatever... it's still My Favourite Things and it's still a showtune. At no point does it become a metal anthem. It has a mood all its own, and turns all the tone-gear into a sound effect.

There's a video of Jimi Hendrix playing an acoustic guitar. He sounds like himself, playing an acoustic. Because he's playing Hendrix phrases and chords.

Bad news for people chasing that SRV / Hendrix / Beano Album / Dave Gilmour / whoever tone: if they want to sound like Dave Gilmour, they will have to play like Dave Gilmour.

All those pedals and amps are sound effects. The sound effects are an extension of the electric guitar - and in John Martyn's Glistening Glynbourne, the acoustic guitar as well.

Ambient is all about the sound effects, not the tone. So are a lot of post-rock instrumentals. The guitarists in rock bands don't have a tone, they provide the sonic backdrop required for the song, which changes from song to song. They might have a personal style of soloing, or creating fills, or a distinctive rhythm attack, and that's how you know who it is. Not because they of the distortion setting on their RAT pedal.

Learning what sound effects are available is part of learning to play the electric guitar. Every guitarist should know how to get a Blues tone, a fat jazz tone, a biting bridge rock 'n roll tone, and so on. Even if they never use them. That's knowing your instrument. (The Katana is outstanding in making that possible at a stupid low cost compared to buying a valve amp, interface, mic, pedals, and supporting gear.)

The search for tone is partly learning your sound effects, but it's really the search for your voice.


(1) Defined as the distinctive sound of a given guitar or guitarist, that only vanishes after excessive amounts of metal distortion or ambient effects.

(2) According to John Lill, the sound of a guitar is in the scale length, the position of the pickup(s) from the bridge, the height of the pickups, the pickup wiring, and the settings on the tone and volume pots.