How much time do you spend tweaking tone?

[Uncle E]

I understand that, which is why I may be able to mimic it, but could never arrange something like that. I simply do not have the theory. Jazz is a language of which I have a very limited vocabulary. I'm good enough at improv in my bailiwick (blues/rock), it was/is one of my strengths. But this stuff is another level. Chord substitutions, when to throw in the maj7s or diminished chords, and all of the 'add9#13' things in between.

Think more passing tones/chord movement and less theory.

[CoolGuitarGear]

I used to, a lot, but I noticed something soon enough: I could find a tone that sounds amazing on a particular composition, but that same setting and tone sounded 'off' in a different composition (perhaps different sounding background guitars, a different style of music/playing). Now, I just dial something in quickly and say 'good enough.' Considering how many bad tones I've heard from top-rank guitarists, I'm not too concerned... seems many ears are a bit different, and some can hate a tone others think is fantastic.

[vurt]

I'd love to hear you play. I know I'm not in your league.

awww thanks bro but honestly im just a noodler...


oooh you meant mike.
that makes sense

Yer in a league of your own. I mean that, sincerely!

thanks.

[tapper mike]

I understand that, which is why I may be able to mimic it, but could never arrange something like that. I simply do not have the theory. Jazz is a language of which I have a very limited vocabulary. I'm good enough at improv in my bailiwick (blues/rock), it was/is one of my strengths. But this stuff is another level. Chord substitutions, when to throw in the maj7s or diminished chords, and all of the 'add9#13' things in between.

Every "Soloist" transcriber brings themselves into the song. They do this with their experience first and knowledge second.
Saundra Sherman's version of Body and Soul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvAipr ... u&index=76

My version I imported the midi melody into PowerTab and then added the Harmony and passing bass notes.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhYVZhUTIG_3hApje9m ... b?e=2N7jvZ

If you have Guitar Pro or similar you can import the file. The most important part is to lean "in the style of" before you can move on to arranging in the style of.

I started my journey with chord melody the hard way. While I was well versed with advanced jazz chords in rhythm charts and playing the melody of a tune. I fought tooth and nail trying to play chord melody as there weren't any transcriptions easily available back in the 80's The only tip I ever got was. Transpose the melody an octave up and put the chord below. So if the melody note is B and you are playing over an Am7 chord play Am9

Then I got this book but the first edition
https://www.amazon.com/Jody-Fishers-Gui ... 0739094068
It was a love hate relationship because I loved to hate it but couldn't walk away from it. It had no standards in the book because he couldn't attain the publishing rights. But it did have a lot of practical theory on how to harmonize using things like harmonic justification which basically means ignore

I didn't go full Jody Fisher mostly because I don't have the time. My interests are too varied in music in general. I know that I might not finish what I start if I chose to go down that route.
(browse the playlist not just the first video)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Gj6escghpx

[xtp]

I used to spend hours and hours and I just got frustrated. Tinnitus is a pain because if I drive an amp loud I go temporarily deaf. My frustration led me to spend about 8 years analyzing what I wanted from tone, and that was about sixty percent of the hard part; defining what good tone was to me exactly. I went on to develop an EQ/Filter system that allows me to track my tone down to the volume level of an acoustic guitar but the filter is only one part of the whole; guitar, cabs, pickups, all are important and work together to get the end result. Now I just plug in, and play.

[tapper mike]

I wish I could find the one "happy place" tone to satiate all my musical guitar desires. What I've found myself doing is chasing tone and trying to recreate it. Sometimes I get there and other times I reach for a stand by tone.

For the past 25 years summer comes along you'll find me at a free concert on a weeknight at a local park. These cover bands make more that 90 percent of the guys working the bar circuit. They are the cream of the crop cover bands. To that end they go through great lengths to sound as much like the original act as possible. They don't have a lot of free time and both the keyboard players as well as the guitar players purchase sound packs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYrn1Yxnqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJymJ1S ... vcdzHXyrzt

I'll spend a little time tweaking tone when I can. I found that the line 6 custom tone library is hit or miss. I've learned to walk away when it's a miss rather than trying to tweak it in.

[xtp]

I wish I could find the one "happy place" tone to satiate all my musical guitar desires. What I've found myself doing is chasing tone and trying to recreate it. Sometimes I get there and other times I reach for a stand by tone.

I spent a lot of time analyzing with an equalizer. The one thing I did that solidly stands against convention is I took the Amp out of the equation, not physically, but aurally. I switched to a Class D amp that amplifies without adding any 'color' == [distortion]. In the biggest part, I focused on removing the sounds I didn't like by filtering.

The process was fun, and I sort of ended up with the amped guitar sounding in tone like how the guitar sounds acoustically; to the point that I remember one day thinking the amp wasn't working, but when I turned the pot down the volume dropped considerably, so the 'image' as such, must be very similar amped and un-amped; maybe not the sort of thing that everyone would want but it works for me, and it is very easy to add overdrive because the tone is already existing before the signal hits the overdrive pedal.

I think the biggest thing I learned was to listen, and how to interpret aurally those things I could hear I thought sounded good. The challenge was to then create a circuit that would capture the good tones and discard the rest; but that was what made the process a fun hobby.

[Uncle E]

Legendary amp designer Harry Kolby told me he did a similar thing with Page Hamilton’s live rig. He put power soaks on all the 100 watt amps so he could power them with 600 watt amps!

[xtp]

Legendary amp designer Harry Kolby told me he did a similar thing with Page Hamilton’s live rig. He put power soaks on all the 100 watt amps so he could power them with 600 watt amps!

I have to admit, the thought of being anywhere near 600watts makes my hearing cringe. I'd go deaf in the first 30 seconds.

[Uncle E]

Yes. A 40 watt amps blows me away these days. But the concept was the same as yours: optimize the amp for the best tone, wherever that may be, and use a separate amp to control the actual volume. It’s a smart way to go.

[xtp]

When I was going down the path of searching for tone, after a while of drilling down, there was a point I reached where the search became almost philosophical. I changed my views on a lot of the 'phenomenons' that find their way into 'urban rumor' along the way. I think, by nature, most people want to add or to build, so you start with a pedal and add more, and I did too, in the beginning, and then one day I realized the guitar had the tone already, so everything I added took away from that, and that was when I changed tack and adopted the method I did. I also reasoned that the cab is the only other factor beside the guitar that cannot be transparent, so therefore the tone of the cab is also important to determine.

I probably went overboard for someone who plays only as a hobby but I have an inventive mind and the challenge to my intellect was fun. I finished the project about 8 years ago and now I see the guitar, the filter, the amp, and the cab in the same way I do a favorite acoustic guitar where the tone is fixed.

[Uncle E]

It might be interesting to use Tonex to capture the sound of an amp's input section, before the signal gets to the EQ's. That way you can use the raw tube saturation with any amp, with as little of the captured amp's character as possible. Might be a nice way to control volume levels.

The UAFX pedals do something interesting where they allow you to switch between them and your amp's preamp (if your amp has a serial effects loop). Again, a good way to control volume levels.

[xtp]

It might be interesting to use Tonex to capture the sound of an amp's input section, before the signal gets to the EQ's. That way you can use the raw tube saturation with any amp, with as little of the captured amp's character as possible. Might be a nice way to control volume levels.

The UAFX pedals do something interesting where they allow you to switch between them and your amp's preamp (if your amp has a serial effects loop). Again, a good way to control volume levels.

The amp is an Acoustic Image Clarus+, and there is an effects loop, although I tend to put everything in a line before the preamp. The AI amp's are closer to a hifi amp than a guitar amp and were developed for acoustic bass.

I run the guitar into the pre-amp of my filter and output from my filter into the amp; I could pretty much put any kind of modeler after my filter and before the AI pre. I was running a boss blues driver for a while, and as long as I kept the output level of the signal hitting the AI pre within the AI bandwidth, kind of like line-level theory in a hifi, from say, cd player output to a pre, the AI pre quite happily applied the energy to push the signal onto the power-stage and the cabs without adding any self-color or distortion, and by distortion, I mean audio hifi type distortion, not overdrive.

At the time the project was active, I had ideas to try all sorts of tone modelling, and I had plans of replacing the pots with fixed values or trims to simplify the thing down from 5 units joined by patch cables, and I was going to build a second version where I put everything onto a single board, but . . . another non music project came along and that is still ongoing, and as the thing is at the moment, I plug in and play no different than I do with an acoustic guitar, and I think that was one of my thought-threads at the time; an acoustic guitar is a combination of a guitar, a filter [the shape, curves wood etc] and an amplifier and cab [the sound-box].

[voidhead23]

It depends. If I'm in one of my 'spells' where I'm second-guessing everything I do and fretting over minutiae and worrying that whatever I'm doing is wrong...i'll spend days tweaking.

But i have a relatively clear idea in my head of what a guitar should sound like for what i do, so if i'm sitting with a plugin or amp, i just go there and see if the amp can do what i want. If i can't get there in a couple of minutes i move on and delete the demo/try a different amp. As with most things, i think it helps to know what you're looking for.

[Uncle E]

It depends. If I'm in one of my 'spells' where I'm second-guessing everything I do and fretting over minutiae and worrying that whatever I'm doing is wrong...i'll spend days tweaking.

Oof, I hope you can get past this for good. This should be fun at all times.