Attila
By Eric Din
You do not need reverb. You are in a room. Rooms have reverb. Only use reverb or echo if it’s essential to your statement. It often is not. If you play electric guitar, with just a pickup and an amp and a cable, you’ll pull things out of your hands that are different, not unlike a piano player staying away from the sustain pedal. Joe Satriani told me, when I showed up for a lesson in my early teens when he was still teaching regularly in Berkeley, to lose the pedals.
I was dismayed because I was all excited about my new MXR Flanger and Roland tape echo and distortion pedal. But strangely, when I finally stopped using all that stuff, I found I could make anything I heard in my head come out of the guitar, without any effects. Just by imagining it and reaching for it. I use a single coil treble pickup and an amp, exclusively. Have done for years. This wont do if your music is built with effects as part of the core statement, like Radiohead or U2. But if you’re not doing stuff that depends on effects, lose them. They can distract from your real potential as a guitar player.
The electric guitar, unlike recording technology and other wonderful toys, has not been improved upon, in decades. You can do so much more with just a guitar and an amp than you might think. You just have to grab the thing, take your musical image, and put it in your fingers. The vibrato, timing, dynamics, and raw power you have to put down, you might not discover if your sound is expanded by circuits, rather than by your imagination and your hands.
So I have found. Give it a try! And thanks Joe, for asking.
Eric Din is a founding member of famed ska band the Uptones. He studied with Joe Satriani.
Squonk
This is good stuff
singemonkey
As an illustration - although I'm not within sniffing distance of Satriani's league - with my one band I send my guitar through a tuner. The small wattage amp allows me to get tons of drive from the guitar control.
In the other band, I go through a fat host of effects - fuzz, tubescreamer (and possibly a second unit for boosts), delay, tremolo, reverb - into a big clean amp. Because the music demands it.
So I agree. He's not saying "give up your effects." He's saying, ask yourself whether effects are important to what you're doing and lose them if they're not. I saw Johnny Winter's rig and saw that he used just one unit - a boss chorus. I found myself thinking, "So that's why he lost his popularity since the early '80s." ?
Shibbibilybob
Agreed. Although I do the same with an acoustic rather than a clean electric.
It's amazing how expressive it can be.
You can build such intensity and dynamic using nothing but attention to detail.
It's figuratively akin to the difference between seeing a suburb on google maps, and then zooming in to street view.
Squonk
I think the place to start is with no effects!
Work on your playing first and how the guitar responds to the amp and vice versa. Then add effects
I started off on the wrong foot, bought a cheap multiFX unit and everything was cushty, I think all the delays etc were covering up my crap playing.
Eventually I would just switch on the dirtiest distortion and let it rip.
I soon realized that I couldn't actually play the thing at all, especially after watching a David Gilmour DVD, I am not saying he is the 'Tone Master' or that he doesn't use effects, but I noticed all the little things he does that I couldn't do, Bending, hammerons and pulloffs etc etc.
I started playing 'Clean' and adding effects when needed/if needed. A long way to go but not hiding behind the effects.
Guitarist did a DVD a couple of years ago on tone and started at roots level explaining about the tone in your fingers, using the volume control, where you pick( near pickup or close to the bridge) and then adding effects slowly.
Still frustrates me though ? One day I will get there
charleshaupt
Ultimately the tone is in our hands...
AlanRatcliffe
Ag. If you're going to be luddite about the whole thing, then go buy yourself an acoustic and have done with it. ?
But seriously... effects are part of the lexicon of the modern player, but you should make sure you can play both with and without them. Each requires different things from the player. Effects require added skill sets and specialised knowledge beyond the plug in and play mindset, but all the effects in the world only go so far to make up for bad playing.
Seventhson
I must admit I am not one for effects. :-[
Only use delay when I am doing some funky space sounds ?
Psean
Squonk wrote:
I think the place to start is with no effects!
Work on your playing first and how the guitar responds to the amp and vice versa. Then add effects
I started off on the wrong foot, bought a cheap multiFX unit and everything was cushty, I think all the delays etc were covering up my crap playing.
Eventually I would just switch on the dirtiest distortion and let it rip.
I soon realized that I couldn't actually play the thing at all, especially after watching a David Gilmour DVD, I am not saying he is the 'Tone Master' or that he doesn't use effects, but I noticed all the little things he does that I couldn't do, Bending, hammerons and pulloffs etc etc.
I started playing 'Clean' and adding effects when needed/if needed. A long way to go but not hiding behind the effects.
Guitarist did a DVD a couple of years ago on tone and started at roots level explaining about the tone in your fingers, using the volume control, where you pick( near pickup or close to the bridge) and then adding effects slowly.
Still frustrates me though ? One day I will get there
I agree. GAS makes it hard though. When I bought my first amp, I specifically chose one that only had clean, drive, and reverb rather than all sorts of effects modelling because I new I'd get distracted with anything more.
I'm still trying to keep focused on my playing (which is quite a way from where I want it to be) and am really enjoying using my guitar's volume control to adjust the gain. It's tricky but so much more rewarding than changing channels with a switch. It's also resulted in me backing the amp's gain off a bit which I think actually sounds better and lets the guitar's tone come through better. I do have a little pedalboard now and am trying to get the balance right - focus on being a better player and use the effects sparingly.
Psean
Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
Ag. If you're going to be luddite about the whole thing, then go buy yourself an acoustic and have done with it. ?
But seriously... effects are part of the lexicon of the modern player, but you should make sure you can play both with and without them. Each requires different things from the player. Effects require added skill sets and specialised knowledge beyond the plug in and play mindset, but all the effects in the world only go so far to make up for bad playing.
+1
I think being able to play well without them
first is important. I'm not the most accomplished guitarist around and I find it takes quite some discipline to focus on improving my playing and basic amp and guitar tone and not hiding behind gain and delay. Tweaking the actual effects to get them right is another skill. Effects used well can add a lot in the right situations though.
Attila
I kinda knew this would be a bit of a testing topic. ?
Too few times in my opinion, do we question and test our reasioning for wanting a new pieces of equipment.
As I have said before sometimes the value of spending money on a well defined lession will out perform/last most gas-attacks.
V8
+1.
The guitar teachers do agree - not that there is anything wrong with a skillfully applied reverb/delay/chorus/distortion. Hubert Sumlin said his blues tones was all in the fingers - nothing wrong with a pick, but the feel/sound is completely different. Personally I think the skills of using fingers/pick/FX in context is the goal of using the guitar as a musical tool.
I've reckon I've learnt more about music(icality) plugging straight into a clean amp or playing acoustic than years spent thrashing away behind lotsa gain, a boosted wah and delays pinging all over the place. I recall X-Rated Bob remarking that one of the forthcoming challenges should be a single track, single instrument composition to test one's ability to perform musically (I'm paraphrasing - apologies if I got the gist wrong) - I agree, thats quite a challenge to one's ability to perform! (and compose)
Not that I'm against effects! A metal zone cranked to 80's Metallica settings is still a beautiful thing... :? But I'm learning to appreciate a skillfuly applied reverb/delay and the 'grindy break-up' a quality valve amp (controlled with the guitar's volume) inspires.
psyx
Squonk wrote:
I started off on the wrong foot, bought a cheap multiFX unit and everything was cushty, I think all the delays etc were covering up my crap playing.
Eventually I would just switch on the dirtiest distortion and let it rip.
I soon realized that I couldn't actually play the thing at all, especially after watching a David Gilmour DVD, I am not saying he is the 'Tone Master' or that he doesn't use effects, but I noticed all the little things he does that I couldn't do, Bending, hammerons and pulloffs etc etc.
I started playing 'Clean' and adding effects when needed/if needed. A long way to go but not hiding behind the effects.
Clever use of effects can cover up all kinds of musical sins... I use to do live sound at weddings and parties and when someone wanted to sing and had little or no skill or talent, I could make them sound alot better with the clever use of effects. So this goes for vocals as well as guitar. You know you have some real skill if you can sound good with or without effects.
Alot of 'artists' record albums and sound amazing because of studio editing and effects. But when they try to sing without the plethora of effects, they sound terrible... Spending a few weeks with a 'vocals coach' could have helped them achieve their potential, but because they sound good enough in a studio, they never bothered.
So the same goes for guitar. You can fool yourself that you can play good by using effects.
Although... Isn't that why their there?? ?
Bob-Dubery
There's nothing automatically "wrong" with effects, even with acoustic guitars (I'll try to post a good sound clip example illustrating this on the weekend). The OP raises an interesting point about music where the effect is essential to the music. I don't believe this implies a lack of skill, just different skills. The OP cites Edge as an example, but an earlier example could have been John Martyn who had established himself as a guitar player of some skill before he started experimenting with echo units (tape when he first started, and no tap tempo). He still had to conceive compositions like "Glistening Glyndebourne" (a notable early example of his use of echo) and figure out how to make it all work - easier said then done, I think.
But good playing, a good touch always comes in handy and can give you things that no stomp box can. I recall a remark that Alan made a while back about Steve Newman being a master of dynamics. If you've seen him play you'll know exactly what Alan is on about - the way he can go from a whisper to a shout and back (or vice versa) just with his touch on the guitar, the way he can make a specific note or phrase jump out. Just a marvellous exhibition of skill and, more importantly, it allows him extra shades in his musical palette and gives him more scope for making interesting and satisfying and engaging music.
Bob-Dubery
X-rated Bob wrote:
There's nothing automatically "wrong" with effects, even with acoustic guitars (I'll try to post a good sound clip example illustrating this on the weekend).
OK...
this is Richard Thompson from 1996. Heres he's using a uniVibe (or one of the clones of that effect). It lends a spooky feel which fits well with the song. He doesn't RELY on the effect (he could play that song without the effect) but it does add entirely appropriate colour here. It's an enhancement. I guess this goes to Alan's recent point in a newsletter - the good tone, or the good effect in this instance, is the one that's right for the song.
He tours with that effect, even for the solo shows, and never seems to vary the settings much. He gets a lot of mileage out of that one effect (uses it with electric guitar as well).
Here's John Martyn (actually not THAT acoustic) with a piece for which the effects are integral.
