Playing... that has been the number one influence on my tone... playing a lot.

Listening... Listening to other guitarists of different styles... BUT also listening to MY playing within the band context and fitting in with the band (gives me an impression of better tone when what I am doing "works").

Better gear has helped a bit... BUT...I find I sound better on worse gear now...if that makes any sense. Clearer pickups (less mud) helped me hear where I was playing sloppier and helped me improve there.

Another big one for me and it ties in with what you are saying about LISTENING, and that is listening to myself. Only one way to do that, hit record. Amazing, kinda never sounds like what you just played almost like hearing a recording of your own voice. Recording even silly exerxises help me nail down my sound by creating awareness. And on a fun side note having all those recorded tracks to mangle in samplers etc when bored is great too lol...

I'm going to go with listening as well, and mostly non-guitar music at that.
My biggest challenge has always been breaking away from the cliche'd phrases.

Oh, and reading too. Great for the imagination.

Not playing by myself all the time. It makes a huge difference to how you approach and interpret a song if you feed of other players. Finding your place in mix and which tone will best fill that space in the sonic spectrum is a must learn lesson imo.

If you don't have others musos to regularly play with, something with an mp3 line in that allows you to jam along to backtracks or songs is a brilliant alternative. The stuff I play in church and with my local guitarist buddy isn't really the stuff I would choose if it was up to me, so playing along to backtracks of the kinds of music I like fill that void nicely.

Spending time relaxing left hand totally and just picking with the right hand on open strings. Meditating on pick angle and depth. Really opened up a whole range of sounds. For example, shallow pick depth plus flat angle and just a touch of skin off the thumb makes chords jangle and ring with each note like a little bell, deep pick depth flat angle clean pick gives a sharp pop to attack almost slappy very handy for getting some extra screexh from the overdrive unit...

being inspired by other musicians and widening your listening choice .... is what definitely helps me fine tune my tone.... if i hear someone get tones i like ...i explore it

constant new musical adventures and study .... leads to inspiration and avoiding stagnating with your technique /tone

"more time on the instrument" also helps

i agree with all above, Listening is very important. Also for me and the thing that i always struggle is the feedback from other people/musicians. Sometimes i think we are not honest with each other, or sometimes we don´t accept critics. For me there is only one person that i can trust in term of sounding good, because i know his only intentions for me is to improve my Sound.

Keira WitherKay wrote: being inspired by other musicians and widening your listening choice .... is what definitely helps me fine tune my tone.... if i hear someone get tones i like ...i explore it

constant new musical adventures and study .... leads to inspiration and avoiding stagnating with your technique /tone

"more time on the instrument" also helps

I was hoping somebody mentions this: constant exploration and study. Too many of us spend too much time as amateurs trying to figure out the secrets on our own. Shelling out some bucks to get help from somebody that knows how to get things under your fingers is priceless IMO.

dojedagonzalez wrote: i agree with all above, Listening is very important. Also for me and the thing that i always struggle is the feedback from other people/musicians. Sometimes i think we are not honest with each other, or sometimes we don´t accept critics. For me there is only one person that i can trust in term of sounding good, because i know his only intentions for me is to improve my Sound.

I feel you touch on a very good point. Peer review can help, but opinions can also serve to confuse. Confidence is essential. But seeing as you are aware of struggling with criticism, this is one of those things you will get better at. In the end, nobody can sound exactly like you and you can't sound exactly like them either.... Guess we are all different there, I personally don't trust anybody that tells me I am sounding great lmfao...

Mine also has to be focusing on keeping my hands relaxed....huge difference, but also picking angle and how much of the pick to use.

Lastly actually listening to what comes out of the speaker instead of focusing on my hands (looking where to play) or concentrating on a click (which i tend to avoid and substitute with more realistic and fun alternatives)

Quinlan Kok wrote: Mine also has to be focusing on keeping my hands relaxed....huge difference, but also picking angle and how much of the pick to use.

Lastly actually listening to what comes out of the speaker instead of focusing on my hands (looking where to play) or concentrating on a click (which i tend to avoid and substitute with more realistic and fun alternatives)

I find jam tracks and drumloops much more handy than click tracks that is for sure. Not so much for tone but for the other big one, groove. It is much easier finding all the little pockets and getting a good swing or boogie feel when jamming along to a suitable rhythm section. If you are into Blues or Rock, go download the Guitar Center King Of The Blues backing tracks. They are full naked tracks and it is all there, shuffles, boogies, quick change slow change etc. Also some nice slow blues and blues/rock tracks. I have ones from five years ago and still find they are more than enough to get my groove on ?

I will give thanx to that ?, the tracks are great!

Playing every minute you can spare.. Listen to everyone and everything, try new things... Practice the right things... Right... Practice makes permanent and a bad habit is created easier than you think...

Lighter strings....
Smaller amps...
a good setup...

Hanging out with more muso's.

Good luck

From a recording point of view I'll list some that constantly get the worst results:

Picking too soft
Tuning for the tuners sake: tuning so the tuner goes "green" as opposed to tuning so the guitar is in tune

beardedmoose wrote: Playing every minute you can spare.. Listen to everyone and everything, try new things... Practice the right things... Right... Practice makes permanent and a bad habit is created easier than you think...

Lighter strings....
Smaller amps...
a good setup...

Hanging out with more muso's.

Good luck

I had an instructor that used to stress quantity over quality, I don't think many guys took her seriously but it paid off for me. And to me practicing the right things translates to starting sloooooowwwwllaaaaayyyy.... no shame in turning the metronome waaaaaay down till it is perfect.

Yeah my biggest amp is 20 watts and she sonds great with dials to ten, pretty insanely loud though so I am in the market for a five water...

Good info bro, some golden rules that took me many years to discover.

Mixerboy wrote: From a recording point of view I'll list some that constantly get the worst results:

Picking too soft
Tuning for the tuners sake: tuning so the tuner goes "green" as opposed to tuning so the guitar is in tune

The problem is not in ho the guitar is tuned really. If the chords are all wonky and the lead is off pitch, that's the guitarist tbh. There is no such thing as perfect tuning on a guitar, by nature of the relative scale a guitar with constantly changing tension etc just doesn't behave like a piano that hits fixed strings.

This has to do with Quinlan's post about pressure on the fretting hand. Take lets say a movable dom7 chord. Play it in one pl#ce on the neck, and slowly increase and decrease pressure on the fretting hand. You will hear it detune by much more than you expect. So each chord for each place on the neck has an ideal amount of pressure per fretted string. Because the higher up the neck you go the less pressure you need to get it clear as a bell and perfectly in tune.

So as a guitarist one has to build awareness of this. Not only that, a fat double stop can easily get a Strat out of tune as it can most guitars, so if you then have to play chords after that the ideal amoint of pressure changes as you now have to compensate for the tuning. Sounds incredible but thats what makes a good live guitarist good eh. And that's what makes a session musician do it in a few takes saving you time and bucks.

As for picking too soft, once again, this is just bad technique on the fretting hand, soft picking is brilliant, it is essential to the sound of many guys Mark Knopfler comes to mind as well as every good blues player ever. Lack of dynamics sucks yeah but in itself picking softly is not a problem as long as the tone is good.

If you watch It Might Get Loud, there is a section where Jack White talks about how his guitars are hardly ever in tune, and how he enjoys fighting it to get it to sound good. "You have to pick a fight with it. You have to pock a fight with it and win."

So out of tune playing equals inexperienced guitarist. As recording engineer you have zero shame and full right to tell the guy to learn to play in tune. Physics dictates that tuning a guitar accurately for every fret is impossible. No matter how you tune it, you are going to play out of tune somewhere on that neck unless you learn to tune with your fretting hand. I am nowhere close to nailing it, I have some comfort zones alright and I can cheat a ripping solo in my little box, but I have mates that DO have this level of control and they are making good money in music and music alone. And that is how you carve a career, you win every argument your instrument throws at you, on the spot, with grace.