I have a friend name Tony whose email address starts with: The Tone. He sings for The Shades of Blue Orchestra which is a local swing orchestra and he does have “the tone”. If you enjoy the classic vocals of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett, you will love this band. But we’re not here to talk about vocals, necessarily 😉
I had another friend years ago who sold me my Tube Screamer. We worked together and spent way too much time discussing gear and music. One thing he said has always stuck with me, “It’s all about the tone, man.”
How to get tone
So, with my Tube Screamer in hand, I went home and experimented with my own rig – a Fender Princeton Chorus. Up until that time, I had just used the overdrive channel for distortion but it was always far too much for some songs. Dialing it back proved to be a major challenge to get just enough breakup for a lighter, bluesier feel. Further, it was all or nothing with the channel switching. If I could get the overdrive under control for a slightly pushed sound, how could I bring back the raging tone for something else? This pedal made the difference. I’m not selling the pedal as it seems to be selling well even today. However, let’s consider our tonal possibilities apart from our gear.
Where to start
You may have heard by now that tone is in your hands. It frequently surprises me how few guitarists actually understand this. One practice with my group at church many years ago, I played up close to the bridge on my guitar to thin out the sound and get a more music box quality. Everybody immediately swung around to look at me with great surprise. They had never heard anything like that from a guitar and especially not from me. During my own practice time at home, I had been experimenting with picking and strumming at different places. As we played the song, it occurred to me I could use that particular tone for a key part of it. Fortunately, they all loved it validating my experiments in tone.
That was on an acoustic. You have the same options on your electric and then some. If you have two pickups, combining the pickup selection with where you hit the strings really expands the palette of available sounds you can get.
The basics
When you play your guitar, where do you typically hit the strings? Most go right for a center position between the neck and bridge. Usually, acoustic players are right over the sound hole and many play right over the fretboard that extends over the body. Can we call it monotone? Maybe it is time to experiment!
Neck tone
As you move towards the neck, the sound will tend to be rounder and have less attack. To some degree, it will have more bass content. This will allow a softer tone for picking but also allows broader strumming patterns with less of the pluck or strike from the pick to be heard. I use a strumming technique I call “feathering” to get a nice wash sound with much less rhythm information for some songs. More on that in one of the rhythm courses at Just 2 Play Guitar.
Bridge tone
So, as you move towards the bridge the tone will thin out and the attack will be more pronounced (“Attack” meaning the pluck of the string is more noticeable). This is due to the fact that the string is more constrained by the bridge making it feel stiffer. Picking patterns become more pronounced like a music box. Strumming will bring out the sound of the pick more and create an almost shaker like quality with the scratching across the strings.
More tone options to consider
- Pickups
- Finger nails and finger picks
- Flat pick choice
As mentioned earlier, the pickups on your electric will color the tone and broaden the sounds you can get even further. Try the different positions with each pickup selection.
Finger pick choice is also key. If you play fingerstyle with no pick and no finger nails like I do, the sound is much softer as the attack is muted. Add finger picks or use your nails to bring back the pluck.
Finally, your choice of flat pick can have a significant effect on your tone. I once saw a bluegrass band where the guitarist used thin picks and I was surprised at how much of the flapping I could hear. Bluegrass guitarists usually drive the rhythm by selective muting of the strings to get a “chuck” sound in between strums. Now combine that with the bass player and they have a strong rhythm section with just those two instruments. In this case, it was more “flap” than “chuck“.
Experiment with tone
Take all of these things into consideration and try them! Something to try is to take a well known song and change up the tone to see what you can find hidden under your hands. You will find it is easy to change the whole feel of a song just by moving your hands and trying a new tone. You may even find another song suddenly rises out of you as it reminds you of something else.