I think most of us have that "tone" in their head of what they want to sound like......sometimes though it takes a long time, and a lot of "equipment experimenting" to get there
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Chasing Tone vs Creating Tone
- Thread starter billiam5billion
- Start date
I had the same realization recently. I was learning a Bouncing Souls song, which is obviously played with a pick on the recording, but I found it more accessible for me to do it fingerstyle. So I just kept playing along that way, adjusting my attack, and I feel like it's a new song in my ears.
If I don't sound like utter poo and it's appropriate for the song, then I'm happy with my tone.
It took me a few years after starting out to realize that I wasn't going to get the tones I heard on records without all of the studio trickery involved or heavily processing my signal.
This!!! Indubitably! I've heard a ton of my heroes cover songs from tons of other heroes. Not one of those guys sounds like the original. And they still release these covers. Proudly wearing the differences.
As example, Tony Franklin covered a few Maiden songs fer a tribute disc. Fretless and rounds, vs fretted and flats. Man, Steve Harris was a guy whose tone I wanted for years. Hearin Mr Franklin, another hero, perform that tune with HIS tone, like so many other guys on that level, really helped with my confidence in owning my tone! Now, I just play. And it is such a freeing feelin!
I'm taking one of the "Master Classes and Tom Morrello (guitarist Rage Against the Machine & Audioslave) said this exact same thing. He said the reason for my MC is not so that I can teach you how play like me, but that I can inspire you to play like you! That one statement was worth the cost. Glad your journey has brought you full circle!
Man, I had a different experience. My first bass was a Bentley Series 10 P bass. My first amp a Peavey TKO60 115 combo. When I realized I could play, I went thru every Maiden, Rush, Queen, VH and Kiss tune I could. And, I was pretty damn successful copping all those tones on my crappy gear, according to the old guys who'd hear me play. I was unaware of all the gear used on recordings. Information flow was quite different. No videos to see how to play. No gear rundowns. None of that stuff we take for granted today. As a kid? I just learned tunes and played. It was only much later that I got into all that went into my heroes' rigs and playing. I had no idea Harris used flats and guitar amps when I was learning his tunes. But I learned and played em, and got hired and got compliments on my accuracy and efforts. On a bass thru a rig folk might laugh at today. Including me. Heh...
I truly believe it's a which comes first scenario. If you start readin all about a heroes gear, first, it gets in yer head. As it got into mine years after I started playin. If you just play, watch no video and read nothin, just learn the track on headphones, with ears and hands, you might surprise yourself with your accuracy. Your hands will locate themselves to mimic what your ears are feeding them. At least partly, and, in my experience.
I definitely agree with that. And I'll try not to dredge up the boutique/expensive bass thread either
.Though at this point I myself have become a bedroom maestro (without the maestro). So the tone I go after for my own enjoyment and, hopefully, my own recording eventually, might diverge from what I'd go for on a gig. For example, because of hearing damage, I'm going for more and more of a Bunny Brunel -esque kind of tone mostly emphasizing the rear pickup.
I'm starting out again with all new equipment too having lost all of my basses last summer in an incident. So the one and only bass I have right now is my jaco pastorius, which actually gives a kind of nasally, pop pop tone that my hearing is more conducive to. Fortunately, I don't sound like Jaco on it, but my tone is progressively losing the low bottom as I go along which is, again, what my hearing kind of requires. I also use loads of compression to even out the volume and give it a kind of Legato flavor to it, again creating more distance from the Jaco tone.
If I had new ears and was actually gigging, though, that'd probably be a horrible live tone. But maybe in the next life I'll come up with a different tone altogether...
L
I have a little different opinion as far as gear goes. I have been playing bass for 50ish years. I went through the "sound like my hero" stages, but I got over that. I learned that I sound like me, my bass sounds like my bass, but depending on the amp, it can end up sounding like something else. I went through 20-25 amps trying to find what I felt I should sound like. I finally did a little over a year ago when I bought an older Eden WT300. Loved it and it sounded like me and my bass. Getting older and getting tired of lugging heavy gear, I sold it and started trying the light weight heads. The last one was a Genz Shuttle 9.0 and it sounded great, but still not like me and my bass. So about a month ago, I ran into a crazy deal for a WT550. Got it home, plugged it in and there was my tone again. So in my opinion the amp can make a difference in bringing out the nuances of the bass and the player. Some for the better and some not.
I always wanted the Geddy Lee/Chris Squire tone when I started out in the early 80's but never got anywhere near it. I finally learned how to get a tone I am totally happy with about two or three years ago.
So... started off chasing, spent a long time wandering around, then finally grabbed the bull by the horns and found my sound.
Here's a question. A couple, actually...
For Luciens; You say you eq that bass so you can hear it. To compensate for your hearing loss. I get it, totally. It's exactly what I do on my gigs, because all the surrounding din of noise on a stage in a club gets in my ears' way of hearing me quickly and well. So, it's a kind of hearing deficiency. So, a question might be, do you think Jaco set out to create his tone that we hear an love, or, was it a result of HIS hearing deficiency, and he made his tone hearable in his way, while you do it your way. And I do it mine. I bet, in a gig context, your tone would not only be great, but also very apparent in a mix. And, totally unique to you. That's a good thing!!
And, two. We all talk bout carrying our tone with us, unable to avoid it. So, are there things you, as a player do, to change the response or your tone that work? Effects, eq settings, certain strings, that actually affect the response you get from your basses and gear. For me? It's overdrive. My technique, my basses, my gear, are just too clear. I feel my mistakes are heard over my successes. Drive blurrs my top end a bit. Not only changing my HiFi rigs and basses top end, blurring it a bit, so I don't hear my mistakes quite as obviously, and, changes my modern, HiFi amps to something a little more LoFi and vintage, something I hear in many of my heroes' tones.
For Luciens; You say you eq that bass so you can hear it. To compensate for your hearing loss. I get it, totally. It's exactly what I do on my gigs, because all the surrounding din of noise on a stage in a club gets in my ears' way of hearing me quickly and well. So, it's a kind of hearing deficiency. So, a question might be, do you think Jaco set out to create his tone that we hear an love, or, was it a result of HIS hearing deficiency, and he made his tone hearable in his way, while you do it your way. And I do it mine. I bet, in a gig context, your tone would not only be great, but also very apparent in a mix. And, totally unique to you. That's a good thing!!
And, two. We all talk bout carrying our tone with us, unable to avoid it. So, are there things you, as a player do, to change the response or your tone that work? Effects, eq settings, certain strings, that actually affect the response you get from your basses and gear. For me? It's overdrive. My technique, my basses, my gear, are just too clear. I feel my mistakes are heard over my successes. Drive blurrs my top end a bit. Not only changing my HiFi rigs and basses top end, blurring it a bit, so I don't hear my mistakes quite as obviously, and, changes my modern, HiFi amps to something a little more LoFi and vintage, something I hear in many of my heroes' tones.
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I've never been that guy that "chases tone". Then again early into my experience with stringed instruments I got bored and lost interest in learning covers, although I've learned that it can be useful for pointing out weak spots in my technique that I can improve on.
Almost everything I play is a form of improv based on what bits of theory I've acquired over the years. And from my time with guitar, to my time with bass, there's never been one single tone that I've wanted to replicate.
In my experience, as long as a bass is setup well, and I can EQ to a point where I'm sitting comfortably within the mix of a band setting.. I can make it work for me.
My #1 is a Sire P7 at the moment, and it's the most versatile bass I've ever owned tonewise. The active EQ lets me get so many different, but usable tones from the bass.. and while they all sound like me, I can get as beefy, or as burpy as I deem fit. As long as I can hear articulation in my playing I'm generally happy with it.
But regardless of the tonal differences of a bass, as long as it feels good in my hands and has a decent setup, I can make it work for me.
It's kind of nice, as in my GAS is never about "What can get me *insert famous bass player here*'s tone".. but "How much am I going to enjoy the sound of this bass once I get MY hands on it." The only reason I've ever sold a bass or guitar is because I wanted money to fund another piece of gear... never because of a lack of satisfaction with its capability. Although I will admit, stepping up to my latest amp has produced a result that makes me all kinds of giddy every time I plug into it... but I'd have never sought it out if not for the fact that my old amp was malfunctioning. The old amp was never completely satisfying to me with it's EQ options.. but it did it's job, and I made it work for me for as long as it lasted. And didn't matter quite so much once I got the Sire and fell back in love with active EQ at the bass. I could've bypassed the amps EQ with a pre-amp or EQ pedal if I so wished.
I'm definitely in the camp that finding comfort in YOUR bass tone, rather than someone else's is the way to go. It allows you to put the focus back on frankly, something I consider more important. Your technique, and whatever music you're trying to create or replicate. Frankly I think it's okay if you don't sound exactly like the original artist, as long as you can sound good and feel comfortable with your own tone doing it.
And let's face it.. how many of those players sound the same live as opposed to the albums we're all used to, where studio magic has been done?
Almost everything I play is a form of improv based on what bits of theory I've acquired over the years. And from my time with guitar, to my time with bass, there's never been one single tone that I've wanted to replicate.
In my experience, as long as a bass is setup well, and I can EQ to a point where I'm sitting comfortably within the mix of a band setting.. I can make it work for me.
My #1 is a Sire P7 at the moment, and it's the most versatile bass I've ever owned tonewise. The active EQ lets me get so many different, but usable tones from the bass.. and while they all sound like me, I can get as beefy, or as burpy as I deem fit. As long as I can hear articulation in my playing I'm generally happy with it.
But regardless of the tonal differences of a bass, as long as it feels good in my hands and has a decent setup, I can make it work for me.
It's kind of nice, as in my GAS is never about "What can get me *insert famous bass player here*'s tone".. but "How much am I going to enjoy the sound of this bass once I get MY hands on it." The only reason I've ever sold a bass or guitar is because I wanted money to fund another piece of gear... never because of a lack of satisfaction with its capability. Although I will admit, stepping up to my latest amp has produced a result that makes me all kinds of giddy every time I plug into it... but I'd have never sought it out if not for the fact that my old amp was malfunctioning. The old amp was never completely satisfying to me with it's EQ options.. but it did it's job, and I made it work for me for as long as it lasted. And didn't matter quite so much once I got the Sire and fell back in love with active EQ at the bass. I could've bypassed the amps EQ with a pre-amp or EQ pedal if I so wished.
I'm definitely in the camp that finding comfort in YOUR bass tone, rather than someone else's is the way to go. It allows you to put the focus back on frankly, something I consider more important. Your technique, and whatever music you're trying to create or replicate. Frankly I think it's okay if you don't sound exactly like the original artist, as long as you can sound good and feel comfortable with your own tone doing it.
And let's face it.. how many of those players sound the same live as opposed to the albums we're all used to, where studio magic has been done?
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Another thing about this:
When I worked in music stores (and I'm convinced if today I was working at Guitar Center or a favorite local store where you are), a big lead-off was the guy would tell me, 'I want to sound like (insert your hero here)' and want me to show them this or that to get there. We've all done that.
So . . . . let's imagine you had fabulous mystical powers and let's say you could have snapped your fingers and stopped your favorite band in mid-concert. Everything is frozen in place. You walk onstage, take the bass off the guy's shoulder and strap it on yourself. You know this band's songs backwards and know his parts exactly, note for note, you GOT this. You snap your fingers, everything's back, and they call out the next song, and now YOU'RE playing the gig instead of your hero, his bass, his rig, the whole thing. Think Mark Wahlberg in 'Rockstar'.
Now . . . . . do you REALLY think you'll sound just like him? Those of us that have been around know better.
When I worked in music stores (and I'm convinced if today I was working at Guitar Center or a favorite local store where you are), a big lead-off was the guy would tell me, 'I want to sound like (insert your hero here)' and want me to show them this or that to get there. We've all done that.
So . . . . let's imagine you had fabulous mystical powers and let's say you could have snapped your fingers and stopped your favorite band in mid-concert. Everything is frozen in place. You walk onstage, take the bass off the guy's shoulder and strap it on yourself. You know this band's songs backwards and know his parts exactly, note for note, you GOT this. You snap your fingers, everything's back, and they call out the next song, and now YOU'RE playing the gig instead of your hero, his bass, his rig, the whole thing. Think Mark Wahlberg in 'Rockstar'.
Now . . . . . do you REALLY think you'll sound just like him? Those of us that have been around know better.
Agreed, wholeheartedly. I didn't start out feelin that way. I have, however, gotten to that point. I do a ton of cover work. I can't cop all those tones nightly. And the worry of it got in the way of my fun. Once I discovered my tone, then decided to own it, I just play the darn tunes, with respect to the original artist, but in my own way. This has helped me in a few ways. One? More fun on gigs vs worry. That translates to me bein happy on stage, projecting that happy, and getting more gig calls, not fewer.
Second, it helps with memory and my ability to add songs or lists quickly. If I took time to memorize every note and tone played on the hundreds of tunes I perform regular, I'd still be home charting, and not out making cash. Instead, I own what I do, and essentially write my parts over changes and arrangements. I do learn tunes as accurately as I can, taking into consideration the artist, style, etc. But, at some point you gotta just trust yerself. An play. In my opinion. I create the lines I play for these covers. No major changes, just integrating myself into these compositions. Kinda like if the writer had approached me for the session. What would I do? Helps me add tunes quickly, and on a lot more gigs.
Ok yes, I mostly agree. The thing that is the slight nuance is that I find myself balancing the act of adding gear that gives me the tone I want and removing things that get in the way of the tone I want. Figuring out which is which is sometimes hard, and frequently things I thought were in the first category are actually in the second.
That said, my experience is that tone starts closest to the musician. It's in the hands and technique, then it's about the bass and the components of the bass (physical construction, strings, pickups/pickup placement, electronics, etc), then any effects, amp, speakers, etc. Any one of those things can make/break the tone, but the closer to the musician it gets made/broken the easier/harder it is for one of the downstream things to fix/break it.
For example, I recently played an audition where I had my bass/pedalboard but played through an awful amp that just didn't give me what I wanted. I mostly got what I was after and was able to adapt to what the amp could do and it still sounded pretty good. But I also recently dealt with an issue where my pickups were too close to the strings on one of my basses and that was causing the active preamp to have a bit of distortion coming out of the jack on the bass. No amount of gear between the bass and amp could fix it and it drove me absolutely nuts. Once I fixed that everything was good. So if you mess up the tone "upstream" it's hard to fix, but if "upstream" is good it's harder (but not impossible) for the "downstream" gear to mess it up.
That said, my experience is that tone starts closest to the musician. It's in the hands and technique, then it's about the bass and the components of the bass (physical construction, strings, pickups/pickup placement, electronics, etc), then any effects, amp, speakers, etc. Any one of those things can make/break the tone, but the closer to the musician it gets made/broken the easier/harder it is for one of the downstream things to fix/break it.
For example, I recently played an audition where I had my bass/pedalboard but played through an awful amp that just didn't give me what I wanted. I mostly got what I was after and was able to adapt to what the amp could do and it still sounded pretty good. But I also recently dealt with an issue where my pickups were too close to the strings on one of my basses and that was causing the active preamp to have a bit of distortion coming out of the jack on the bass. No amount of gear between the bass and amp could fix it and it drove me absolutely nuts. Once I fixed that everything was good. So if you mess up the tone "upstream" it's hard to fix, but if "upstream" is good it's harder (but not impossible) for the "downstream" gear to mess it up.
Welcome aboard the "tone is in the fingers"/"the tone you seek is within you" train. Congrats, you've made it! Sit back and enjoy the ride, because it all gets simpler and smoother from here. Less gear, less fuss, more music making.
If ONly tb had a "Love" button. Straight truth, here. Thankya!
"The tone was actually the friends we made along the way!"
BobDeRosa
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- May 16, 2012
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Excellent posts! And that wonderful quote applies to more than just bass playing.
