The McGurk Effect

Jack-Flash-Jr

Dunno if this has been posted before but I was wondering about McGurk. It has more to do with speech but I think it's relevant here as well? Basically states hearing and vision combine to make up a third perception... let's say a band is playing to a backtrack... the guitar parts were recorded on a tele but the audience sees the guitarist playing a LP. What they "hear" is a LP sound or a combo of the two. Same applies to amp sizes - all hardware things being equal people will perceive a slightly louder performance when a fake set of Marshall stacks is set up.
Obviously most of us can tell the difference between good tone and bad tone but I'm sure at least a small part of that comes from what we see when we're listening to it... Does the tone quality suddenly drop when we notice Tokai on the headstock instead of Gibson? It shouldn't!

Bob-Dubery

Jack Flash Jr wrote: Dunno if this has been posted before but I was wondering about McGurk. It has more to do with speech but I think it's relevant here as well? Basically states hearing and vision combine to make up a third perception... let's say a band is playing to a backtrack... the guitar parts were recorded on a tele but the audience sees the guitarist playing a LP. What they "hear" is a LP sound or a combo of the two. Same applies to amp sizes - all hardware things being equal people will perceive a slightly louder performance when a fake set of Marshall stacks is set up.
Obviously most of us can tell the difference between good tone and bad tone but I'm sure at least a small part of that comes from what we see when we're listening to it... Does the tone quality suddenly drop when we notice Tokai on the headstock instead of Gibson? It shouldn't!

That would surely depend on what the perceiving party knows about guitars.

Some folks don't know the difference between a Telecaster and a Les Paul, and it hasn't even occured to them that different types of guitars might sound different.

In my school days there were a clique of us who fancied that we LISTENED to the music and listened inquiringly and rigorously. We started to notice differences in guitar tones, but didn't put the whole thing together. A friend of mine liked the tone of one of the guitarists in BTO but not the other. The only information we had was what we could hear and whatever was on the record sleeves. Clues were few and far between. Until Muggins here started buying some music magazine or other (can't remember, it was a British one, it's not in print any more) and found out that there single coil pickups and humbucking pickups and that Telecasters had different PUPs than Stratocasters and... and... This was a revelation to us and we started looking at every picture we could find (and reading magazines in the CNA that we had no intention of buying) and trying to match the sounds that we heard to the guitars that were shown. We noticed that one of the guys in BTO played a strat and the other an SG. Aha! THEN we started figuring out that some pesky players had more than one guitar or had changed guitars at some point in their career! This explained why Clapton's tone had changed so fundamentally from his days with Cream.

NOW, possibly, those visual cues that you're talking about would have existed for us.

AlanRatcliffe

I've come to realize that most people don't listen to the individual tones, they listen to the overall combined sound of the music and not the individual instruments or notes. Musicians often hear the notes but not the individual tones - the exception being orchestra musicians, who are alert to the orchestration. A sound engineer often hears the tones but not the individual notes.

I know 99.9% of my audience don't pick up on any detail unless I smack them in the face with it (i.e. play a solo guitar piece with an obvious guitarsynth sound) - even then I know a lot of people assume there are backtracks involved.

Warren

The vast majority of people who listen to music know absolutely nothing about the intricacies of different guitar, amp or effects tones. Even the really obvious stuff: U2 enthusiasts don't know that The Edge uses "delay effects"; they just like the sound of the guitar on various U2 records.

It's only really in guitar circles that brand snobbery and stuff comes into play. My ~~girlfriend~~ fiance still thinks that having so many different guitars is a bit daft. ?

Banditman

Warren wrote: The vast majority of people who listen to music know absolutely nothing about the intricacies of different guitar, amp or effects tones. Even the really obvious stuff: U2 enthusiasts don't know that The Edge uses "delay effects"; they just like the sound of the guitar on various U2 records.

It's only really in guitar circles that brand snobbery and stuff comes into play. My ~~girlfriend~~ fiance still thinks that having so many different guitars is a bit daft. ?

Absolutely. It's really the musicians & cognoscenti who pick up on the finer details. Perhaps brand snobbery's more the province of us enthusiastic amateurs, though I don't doubt some of the pros are so inclined too. Maybe the clued-in ones have a better sense of perspective: they have a go-to favourite (like your favourite pair of jeans), but will play whatever gives them the voice they're looking for at the time / in an arrangement.

And congratulations on your engagement.

Keira-WitherKay

Very interesting , and i so buy that people are influenced by what they see , and i know even myself if i see a band and it's all usa fender guitars and a deluxe reverb on stage i assume they good muso's and prob a blues band or soft rock and when i see the les paul's and marshall 's i again assume a good band but heavier rocking than the fender band then when i see mesa's and pointy head stocks i know whats coming is metal . So visually what you wear and what you play can influence how people see you and what they expect before you even play a note . And the public are more knowledgable about some guitars than you think . But a little knowledge can be dangerous . I get asked all the time about my guitars from non musicians . ore you even play a note . And the public are more knowledgable about some guitars than you think . But a little knowledge can be dangerous . I get asked all the time about my guitars from non musicians .

MIKA-the-better-one

If I see a band with decent gear that I appreciate, I get hopeful that they are going to be decent. But on many an occasion I am let down by the band, and sometimes there tone.