Does Tone Really Come From The Hands?
Posted by Jed in Advice, Gear, Technique And Practice on January 18th, 2010
I have heard this phrase since I was a teenager first learning how to play a D and G chord. People would talk about the great Stevie Ray Vaugh or Jimi Hendrix and how their tones moved there souls and it came from there magical hands.
“It’s all in the hands” repeated in my brain. So instead of buying a tube amp I would practice scales. Instead of getting a Tube Screamer I stuck with the Boss Super-Overdrive. Instead of looking into better guitar manufacturers I kept looking at my fingers and wondered why they sounded horrible.
I was in shredder mode. And that was the last thing my church needed. What my church needed was someone who could just play the solo for “God of Wonders” as it was written with a good quality tone (i.e. gear) behind it.
Back to the Greats and their Magical Hands. Sure Stevie Ray’s sound is amazing if you are a Texas blues player who loves gauge 14 strings, but I’m not. Sure Jimi’s tone was amazing for it’s time, but I’m pretty sure if I rolled into my church with a Marshal Stack cranked to ten, no, eleven and a Fuzzface, people would give me a weird stare (or grimace…or look of complete anguish).
Do you remember that scene from John Mayer’s concert DVD where he is playing on a bluff overlooking LA?
When I first saw this I couldn’t believe his tone, neither could my buddy who said “Man that guy’s tone is amazing. How do I get my hands to sound like that?” It was a rhetorical question so I didn’t draw attention to Johnny’s Signature head that goes for $8500.00. Even the Greats use great gear.
I think the core message the phrase, “tone comes from the hands” is trying to convey is that technique makes good gear sound great.
Any guitar rig is just going to sound better in the hands of a seasoned player who listens to Eric Johnson and Joe Bonamassa than it will given to a teenager whose idea of a good guitar player is Billie Joe Armstrong. But I would also bet that the seasoned player will sound better playing through a Dumble ODS-100 than a Marshall JVM.
Now tone without technique is useless so please don’t misunderstand me. There must be a solid foundation of technique and skill to support any guitar rig; however, don’t tell yourself that just because you are not a virtuoso that you don’t need or deserve good gear. If you can play the riff to “Hosanna” smoothly to a metronome and you play in front of your church then you and your congregation deserve the best gear you can get your hands on.
Does tone really come from the hands? I guess it’s true, but don’t let that be an excuse from getting good gear. If the “Greats” need it, you do too.
Love you guys, keep sharp,
-Jed
Pedal Profile: Hermida Zendrive
BACKGROUND: This pedal is built by Alfonso Hermida, a gear head who wanted nothing more than to work for Electro Harmonix. Tragedy struck and Electro-Harmonix went out of business so Hermida settled for second best: NASA. Retiring from NASA, Hermida set out to create a Robben Ford-tone-in-a-box. His creation: the Mosferatu. As rumor has it, Hermida sent the pedal to Robben Ford and his reaction was “It’s great but it has too much gain.” So Hermida created the Zendrive, which has earned a huge following.
THE AMPS: 1985 Mesa Boogie Mark III and a 65 London.
THE GUITARS: Gibson Custom Classic Les Paul (Silverburst; the color is important because, as everyone knows, silver Les Pauls have more sustain than black Les Pauls) Fender Eric Johnson Sig Strat.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I love that it is silver. I love silver gear, so this pedal has it good with me right away. At first though, it didn’t sit well with me at all. It sounded sterile and lacked character. I felt like I was just putting a blanket on my tone. I think that was because I had only used a tube-driven pedal, I wasn’t used to using a pedal based on circuits and transistors. Once I started getting used to how the pedal worked, I started to become a huge fan.
PROS: This pedal can be hard to make muddy and since I am primarily a Les Paul player this is a strong plus. The Les Paul sounds clear and smooth. The high frequencies are articulate without getting harsh. The low frequencies are tight and perfect for blues and worship players. Metal players, don’t even bother with this one. The EQ is very well rounded; although it leans more on the bright side, no frequency dominates another. It has a beautiful and unique sound “color.” It is no wonder it has such a loyal fan base.
CONS: The voice knob is one very noisy piece of plastic. The more I turned it clockwise the more hum and hiss I got. I didn’t start to really like the pedal until I started to turn the Voice knob all the way down. I have since turned it to 10 o’clock and appear to be finding a sweet spot that way. My thought is that the voice knob should be used sparingly.
Gain is designed to be low on this pedal. At first I felt this pedal had too little gain and thought I would be more happy with the Hermida Distortion or the Mosferatu, but I wanted an overdriven flavor. I then experimented with stacking the Zendrive with a tube screamer. It gave it more saturation without losing it’s original identity which is great for solos or whenever you need to go to eleven.
FINAL IMPRESSION: Quality little pedal with a Dumble flavor (I should confess that I have never actually played a Dumble or heard one live, so perhaps I am completely wrong). It is currently the core of my tone right now. For a Dumble-in-a-box type sound this pedal delivers and deserves the hype.
Keep sharp,
-Jed
P.S. I’m working on a post for Monday called “Does Tone Really Come From The Hands?” It promises to be an interesting read. Keep on the look out for it.
Pedals, Pedals, Pedals!
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on January 14th, 2010
I’m going to start posting pedal reviews of pedals starting tomorrow. The first one will be on the Hermida Zendrive which will be up tomorrow to start off.
Let me know if there any other pedals you think I should review. This should be fun; please join in the discussion.
What To Do When Nothing Seems To Feel Right In Practice
Have you ever showed up to rehearsal and nothing seemed to jell? It is frustrating. No matter what you do, switch guitars, tweak EQ, change voicings, you can never seem to get things to mesh right.
Worse of all, you can’t seem to get a handle on what is wrong.
When this happens, the best thing to do is to take a take a step back and take a look at the big picture. Often times the problem is that we are looking at the pedal and not seeing the pedalboard.
I like to run through a mental priority checklist to help give insight into the situation and to see if it is me or if there is something wrong.
God First. As Christians and churchgoers we can hear this a lot, but it is important not to let it become cliché. The objective and purpose of making music isn’t really music at all. The objective is to draw people closer to God, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. Worship music does this and our guitar playing and attitude has a pretty important part to play in this.
Application: Pride and ego are out of the picture. We show up to serve not to bless people with our presence, talent and really great tone (even though these are all blessings). Be willing to defer to leadership and other members of the worship team.
Song and Vocals Second. I wish this weren’t true, but Sunday morning music isn’t about our guitar playing. A lot of the music in modern worship music is guitar based.
Application: All musical elements, from stage volume, guitar solos and even delay, should be set to compliment and enhance the worship experience, not distract from it.
Tone Third. Tone should be as good as you can get it without compromising the previously mentioned priorities. The thing with tone is that it can be the difference between a good/average guitar part and a great guitar part. Good tone just makes everything we do better.
Application: Research and Experiment. Ask around on forums, in guitar shops (this will exclude Guitar Center), or with friends you have who just sound good. Searching youtube for clips of pedals or artist interviews is a great way to find tips.
Here is Andy Timmons talking about settings and sounds he uses for his BB Preamp:
Technique Fourth. If you can’t play the perfect Lincoln Brewster solo don’t worry. You can still be a very accomplished worship guitarist. Luckily for us, Hillsong and Passion riffs are quite a bit easier. You don’t have to be a virtuoso, but you do have to have solid technique.
The essential quality to master from a technical standpoint is good timing. You must be able to play a lick or riff evenly, smoothly and with expression. In other words, every note should be deliberate and have the proper dynamic (volume) applied to it.
The best way I know how to acquire this talent is through the use of the metronome. Sit in your little practice space with a metronome set to about 20 to 50 BPMs less than the original tempo of the song. Play it at that tempo until you can play it smoothly while being as relaxed as possible. Then start upping the tempo about 10 BPMs and repeat until you get to the original tempo.
Hope this helps you to keep things straight.
Keep things sharp.
-Jed
Taking Tone To The Next Level: Pt 2
In a frenzy of tonal expectancy, I ordered the speaker. Scouring the warehousespeakers.com I decided on the 12” HM75 speaker because it was the closest speaker to the Celestion G1T2T-85 already in my R-55.
It felt like it took longer than it really did to be delivered. When it did arrive, I immediately texted my friend whom we’ll call Jason. I am the least handy person in the world so Jason offered to help me put it in. This turned into him putting it in and me watching and making wise-cracks about solid-state amps (thanks, Jason).
The first thing we had to do was give a proper A/B test of the old speaker vs the new. I set up my rig and let a nice E chord ring. The R-55 is a mellow, smooth-sounding amp and has always sounded a little shallow. The shallowness of the amp is partly due to the depth (or lack thereof) of the cab. From what I have been able to find out, this is also the reason why Rivera discontinued the model in favor of the Chubster which is the same amp with a deeper cab.
The other reason for the shallowness was my blatant neglect of the amp.
Jason and I got tired of hearing the old sound, so we (he) got to work installing the new one. It was a fairly simple process especially if you are just sitting watching someone do the work. It looked like it was pretty much just unplugging the old speaker, loosening a couple screws, pulling out the old speaker and then repeating the process in opposite order with the new speaker.
My friend whom we'll call Jason ripping off the grill of my Rivera R-55
Getting that old speaker out of there
We (he) got the new speaker in and the sound was incredible. It really was power-stance-inducing tone. Everything sounded bigger and more expressive. Highs and mids were clear and distinctive and after messing with some dirty contacts in the EQ nobs, the bass came out like it had been hiding all this time.
Me doing an interpretive pose to express the magnitude of the power-stance-inducing-tone we were hearing after the new speaker was put in. This is also me committing the number-one sin for the internet: showing your face.
Me, being so engulfed in the tone coming out of the new speaker that I forgot I was still in a power stance.
Both my friend, whom we call Jason, and I were freaking out at this point. The combination of face-melting tone and the school-girl-like giggles that were coming from both Jason and me must have been a strange sound so Jason’s wife (whom we’ll call Shari) came up to investigate. After hearing the amazing sounds coming out the Rivera, this was her reaction.
Shari dropping her jaw after the jaw-dropping tone from the amp. (All pics used with permission, especially this one. Thanks for being so cool Shari-if that’s your real name.)
This whole experiment has proven to be the biggest single leap in tone advancement I have ever made. No pedal, no guitar, and certainly no instrument cable has made such a difference in the sound quality of my rig. My conclusion is if you really want to take your tone to the next level, research replacing your stock-tone-sucking speaker with a better quality one.
Keep sharp.
-Jed
Taking Tone To The Next Level: Pt. 1
This is the question that is on my mind most of the time and I’m guessing on yours as well. No matter where we are on the tone hierarchy we are always trying to get to the next level.
Getting to the next level can often feel like inventing the light bulb. You try a thousand things and nothing seems to work and then one time you flip on the power switch and better tone is coming out of your amp. You don’t even play better, but you feel like you do. You crossed over to another level of tone.
Yesterday I crossed over to another level of tone. I am so excited. You guitar players know what I mean.
A couple of weeks ago a friend who we’ll call Jason (which is convenient seeing as his name is Jason) crossed over to the next level in tone.
He plays through a 15 watt 1×12” Trainor Combo. He has had it forever (God said let there be light and there was Jason with his Trainor) and it has always been a decent little amp.
Then a couple of weeks ago we were hanging out at his house and the discussion veered towards gear. His face lit up (which happens a lot when we talk about gear), “Jed, you have to see what I did.”
We went to his “rehearsal space” where he had his guitar, pedalboard and amp set up and ready to go. He handed me the guitar like a kid on Christmas afternoon, turned everything on and told me to play. So I did.
There is no expletive I could say to describe what I felt at that moment. It was one of the most humongous tones I had ever heard coming out of a little 1×12 combo. The low end had an amazing tight response and everything just sounded clearer and bigger.
I turned to Jason to enquire what was making the difference. He began to tell me that he had replaced the speaker with a speaker from warehouseguitarspeakers.com.
I was impressed. It was the kind of tone that kept me from putting the guitar down. It is amazing how good tone inspires faster playing.
Since that day I have completely rethought tone, amps, pedals and even guitars. For exploratory research I have bought a speaker from the same company that Jason bought his from, and am planning on putting it into my Rivera R-55.
The next post will be an update on this tone trek and I hope to have it up in a couple days.
Until then, keep sharp.
-Jed
The Rehearsal Survival/Excel Guide
1.Be set up and ready to play by start time, even if no one else is. Doing this will communicate volumes about how seriously you take rehearsals. Do this, sound great, and you will be a well-trusted guitar player.
2. Listen to the music, know your parts.
3.Be ready for anything. Changes happen at the last minute. Be flexible and ready for the unexpected. Treat every surprise with a cheerful and optimistic heart and you will be a cherished guitar player.
4. Have your pedal board ready. Double check connections if you need to. Make sure set up will be easy for you. You should only have to plug in a couple cables and a power chord. This will minimize your set up time so you can focus on more important things…like tuning.
5. Tune before every song. Do this quietly without any sound coming out of your amp or PA.
6. Don’t play Metallica Riffs between songs. I may or may not know this from experience.
7. Have a Volume Plan of Attack. We have all heard it before: “Can you turn down?” You know it’s going to happen so come up with a strategy for dealing with volume without hurting your town. There are lots of options so be creative.
8. Prepare yourself to play what the songs needs, not necessarily what you first want to play. Put the needs of the song above your own. I just put a put a Proco Rat on my pedal board. For those who don’t know, the Rat spits out gain like a fire hose. I showed up to rehearsal with anticipation of testing it out just to find out that we had a pretty mellow set that Sunday. The new pedal got no playing time that weekend, but the songs got what they needed. As much as it hurts for me to say, the song takes priority over personal preference.
9. Play John Mayer Riffs, but only on occasion.
Stay sharp.
-Jed
What the Playstation 3 taught me about playing guitar
Posted by Jed in Technique And Practice on September 29th, 2009
Like many of you, I just discovered that we can buy a Playstation 3 for $299.99. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.
This caught my attention. Sweet action-packed excitement in full 1080p glory. Not to mention it can read Blu Rays.
When this historically low price came out, I told a friend that I might have to finally get one. Why not? It’s a historically low price.
A couple weeks passed and I still didn’t get one. Maybe I was waiting for some magical leprechaun to drop an extra 300 bucks in my money clip, or maybe I was waiting for the price to drop another hundred bucks.
My friend recently asked me if I had bought one. After telling him that I hadn’t, he asked why. “It just doesn’t seem worth the money, I guess.”
“Did you ever buy games systems when you were younger?” This seemed like a random question to me, but I went with it.
“Not really. I never spent much money on games systems. I was always buying guitar pedals. I guess playing guitar just seemed more fun.”
My friend laughed, “And that’s why you can play like Lincoln Brewster and the rest of us can’t.” (This is not to say that I am the only one in the world who can play like Lincoln or that I can even really be put on the same level of playing as Lincoln. I can personally say that I know five people who can mimic his playing well, and I am acquainted with two who could really give him a run for his money. It is just that my friend and I were with a select group of people, many of whom couldn’t play guitar, none of which had a chance of sounding like Lincoln Brewster.)
The Attitudes That Automatically Improve Your Playing
There are two mentalities my friend illustrated in that discussion that can turn you (and me and anyone else who may be reading) into a really good and proficient guitarist. I have seen time and again that when these attitudes are adopted players start to improve by leaps and bounds.
Attitude #1: Love picking up the guitar.
This is elemental yet profound. When picking up the guitar is more fascinating than picking up an Xbox controller, improvement will happen.
I have a theory: We don’t just get better at things we do often, we get better at things we love to do. When we really enjoy playing guitar our mind is more relaxed, open to new things, and more alert to what it is experiencing.
If we don’t enjoy playing guitar then we never get past feeling like it is a chore. All of our energy is taken up thinking how much we don’t like doing what we are doing.
Attitude #2: Love pushing the limits.
When you do pick up the guitar, find excitement in pushing yourself. Stay relaxed, but don’t be afraid to sound bad while trying something new and more challenging.
This is sort of like the gamer who plays a Tony Hawk game. Every time he plays the game, he polishes some old tricks then attempts some new ones. The little Tony Hawk icon falls with a bone-crushing splatter, but that doesn’t stop our gamer (his bones are fine).
In seconds, the gamer has revaluated how to perform the trick and is trying it again. This process for the gamer is fun and exciting.
When we adopt this attitude it makes making progress fun and accelerates our playing.
Love Conquers All
When we love picking up the guitar more than the Playstation controller, not only will we enjoy practicing, but practicing will become more productive.
A treasure I didn’t know I had
There is something about rediscovering old gear. It’s like getting something for free. A piece of gear that you forgot about shows up on the radar and all of a sudden you have a “new” piece of gear.
This just happened to me. Three years ago I found a 1985 Mesa Boogie Mark III 100 watt head for $499.99. I had already been playing through a Rivera R55 1×12 combo (and still do) and even though it didn’t seem like the most practical thing for me at the time, I jumped on it.
It was hard to find some practical uses for such a powerful head and in most cases I just used my Rivera combo.
Then I went to Colorado Springs for a year to take part in the New Life School of Worship. It was an amazing time of learning from great teachers and also from peers and practitioners.
I could only bring the gear that would fit into my Ford Taurus. Good bye, Mesa Mark III. See you in a year.
When I got back to the happening metropolis of Des Moines, Iowa, I had an opportunity to play guitar for Brian and Jen Johnson at a pretty big church. This seemed like the perfect time to dust off the old Mesa.
When I started to set up for the “gig” the Mark III was acting up. I couldn’t get it to work. As near as I could tell, it had to be retubed. Hello, Rivera R55.
After using the Rivera for another year, I finally decided to get the old Mesa fixed. So today I sat down with my amp and a friend’s Eric Johnson Strat (recently equipped with Dimarzio 58, 58, 61s) and plugged it in and cranked it up.
It works!
What the heck? How is this possible? Have I been sitting on a brilliant, great-sounding amp all this time and not known about it?
Yes. And why? Because of a little something called “User Error.”
Once I appropriately punished myself, I got a great feeling of rediscovery. This amp has a lot of character and sounds that I haven’t discovered yet. Now, three years after buying this amp, I get to take that journey and “bless” a church with it’s heavenly harmonic overtones and classic Marshall-like crunch.
This is going to be fun.
Keep sharp and keep checking your closet for forgotten gear treasures.
-Jed
Life Lately
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on September 3rd, 2009
It has been busy. A sister getting married, rearranging the stage at church and overall work duties has given me little time to write and post like I would like to. I promise I have not fallen off the face of the planet or forgotten about the joys of playing guitar as worship. More post will come.
Thanks,
-Jed