Tone is in your fingers debate

[lwknives]

I will believe that "tone is in the fingers" when I hear somebody make an open G chord on a Fender Telecaster straight into a Fender Twin sound like a Les Paul with EMGs into a 5150 with a delay and chorus in the loop.

Until then, I'll believe the truth, which is that "expression is in the fingers, while tone is in the guitar, pickups, amp, effects, cabling, power, room you're playing in, mic, recording preamp, post effects, etc."

ALSO, a bad player can make a good rig sound bad and a good player can make a bad rig sound good, but that's because what we consider to mean "sounding good" has a lot less to do with the tone than we might think. Music is about the expression of emotion, after all. So this means that the way you express yourself through your instrument is going to be more important than a bunch of gain stages, filters, and effects, etc.

However, in the same way that no matter how hard I press the gas pedal on a VW van, I'm not going to be able to win with it in a Formula 1 race, no matter how I hit that G chord on a tele into a Twin, I'm not going to be able to make it sound like a 5150.

So no, "tone" is not in the fingers, but the way you express yourself through your instrument, which is by far the most important part of playing, definitely is.

Really you are just re defining what tone means.
I could just as easily say that the sound that comes out of the guitar when an open chord is played is the RIG and the way the guitar player makes it sound is the TONE!
If you are just re defining the word tone to not include the sound that comes out when the guitar how can you know you are correct? The dictionary definition seems to be a little more open in its definition of tone.
But if tone is defined as the sound that comes out of the speakers then the expression definitely effects the tone!

 

[Sixstring]

Somewhere in the last decade everything became binary. It's either yes or no, 0 or 1, black or white. Why can't it be both?

For me personally it's too broad of a paint brush, specifics are much better when describing something especially when it comes to something you hear.

To have one word that has so many meanings is far too confusing, then to place it in the same context and it makes it even worse.

 

[henryrobinett]

After watching thousands of guitarists live, I will say that I've watched an accomplished guitarist sound great through an expensive rig, but not move me, and watched a 'untrained' guitarist play through a combo with a knockoff guitar and blow my socks off.

Call it 'fingers' if you like, but it's all about talent. All the practice in the world will not help make you a great guitarist...only talent will. The ability to 'hear' what sounds good, and translate that to fingers.

I played in a band in High School. One guitarist was completely oblivious to anything 'technically' musical. Notes, forms, scales...pretty much anything involved with the cerebral aspect of music making. The other guitarist was well trained. Note for note on cover songs, well practiced on various picking forms, chord structure, etc. Night after night, the 'untrained' guy got the vote in the audience as the better guitarist. There was a certain something that he brought to the band that spoke to the audience. It made a mark on me that all the training in the world does nothing if you don't 'have it'...translates to 'talent.'

Jimmy Page doesn't have great technique...he's downright sloppy most of the time...but he 'nails it'.

Well yeah. It's not necessarily about being schooled. You can have the most untrained guy that can hell out of the guitar. The way he grabs the notes, his articulation, the intensity in the way he plays. None of those things have anything necessarily to do with training or knowledge of theory. But then again, MAYBE if he had a great teacher, he might learn something about articulation. Most teachers don't go into that much detail.

Sometimes sloppiness is part of the sound and technique. Sometimes playing too CLEAN doesn't fit the player or the vibe. It's the player. The player is in command of the fingers.

 

[Stratoblaster]

Uli Jon Roth has interesting comments regarding all of this (tone, fingers, mindset); I totally agree that it's fundamental to have clean execution and touch right off the bat...sounding clean, full notes without even being plugged in. It's all downhill from there:



I love a lot of his comments when he is discussing touch and tone...thought it pretty funny when he says "overdrive pedals are packed with the devil...I don't like it" He has some other pretty funny quotes throughout the entire video, like "but here, it's a lethal death ray" when talking about the directive properties of 4x12's and '"the total destructive power" of a really oddball fuzz pedal heh.

 

[hippietim]

Obviously, a Schecter with EMGs plugged into a rig with an ass-ton of fuzzy distortion is never going to be a good starting point to play Sultans of Swing and a Tele into a Twin will not be a good choice for a Pantera tribute band. But assuming somewhat sensible gear for the situation, the tone is in the fingers is because players have an idea of what they expect the sound to be when they're playing something and they adjust their playing to get that sound. The better the player, the more likely they'll extract good "tone" out of rigs other than what they would normally use.

So when guys like Eric Johnson obsess over everything in the signal chain, I don't think they're always thinking that anything really sounds radically different - I think a lot of times it's more of a case that they can play what comes more naturally to achieve what they're going for.