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If tone really is in the fingers...
- Thread starter mbell75
- Start date
But what determines what a bad sound is? That's in the ear of the listener.
Yup, same as what a good sound is.
But, if you stick your fingers in your ears...nothing.
I love seeing "supporting member" over the name of someone who clearly derives pleasure from being argumentative and annoying. That means someone is willing to pay their hard earned money to bother others. Sad really...
A bad instrument will NEVER make a good player sound bad. It will, however, make a player sound like they're playing an instrument that is less than his/her ideal, but never truly bad. And a player's signature playing style always shines through. For example, I bought an 09 AmStd Precision that felt great, but the sound of it the first time I tried to gig it made me want to smash it. I still did the gig and everyone thought I did fine and nobody complained, except me. The replacement pickup I got was better but I still didn't like the sound as much as a good pre-CBS Precision. Nobody ever had any complaints about the way I sounded and it was OK but I still didn't like it. Then I found the right pickup for it a couple years later, and it transformed it to my ideal. Plays amazing, sounds absolutely perfect in every way. But even at its most horrible sounding with the stocker, everyone could still tell it was me playing it.
Another case in point:
I saw Kenny G a few years ago (you all can hold the snide comments about Kenny, thank you...not my bag either but he and his band blow most musicians out of the water and he's a nice guy). Kenny usually plays an old Selmer soprano sax that's been his number one for decades. But during this show, he did a bit where he gave away a new Kenny G signature sporano sax in a drawing, then invited the winner and her husband up on stage, played a song on it, signed the case and presented it to them. I think it's safe to say that the Kenny G sax line isn't nearly as good as a vintage Selmer. And using the exact same mouthpiece and mic as his Selmer, it sounded rather thin and reedy compared to the Selmer and everyone could hear it, including my wife who's not a musician. But danged if he didn't wail on it, played that song note perfect, and sounded just like Kenny G in the process. It certainly wasn't his ideal, nor would it be the ideal of any sax player, but anyone could tell it was Kenny playing and not Branford Marsalis.
So while you guys are right that some instruments just plain sound better than others, tone is in the fingers (and in Kenny's case, lips and breathing, too).
Depends on the person as to why. Specific brand, music need, endorsements, preferences, trying to look cool, etc etc. I guess if I had the chance to play multi-thousand dollar basses I probably would too however I am also content playing my basses that cost a couple hundreds of dollars as well.
Style and character are in the fingers.
With electric instruments, actual sound is created by the instrument, the amp, cab, fx, etc.
You can't compare a wood wind instrument like a sax to a bass. That is completely apples to oranges.
Omboucher matters for stringed instruments, including electric ones, or else there be no difference between picking and plucking. It's just done with the fingers instead of lips, tongue, and cheeks.
EDIT: oops embouchure
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Opposite of what? I don't understand what you didn't get in my comment I stand by my thoughts. If people think tone is derived from,like i said, some magical force from within your skin in your fingers is ridiculous. Playing style/technique and equipment is what makes up a persons tone within their sound.
Weekend warriors with two gigs a month can make do with dead spots, rough frets, less than sweet intangible musical response.
I'm finding, as I move beyond that basic level and start playing more regionally and more often, that all the finer points make playing not just more comfortable but better as the long nights and long festival days.
I begin to understand where I'm "fighting" my bass for tone and playability. My current favorite sounds great, is lightweight, and has super hot pickups just like I prefer. But minor setup and intonation issues are starting to get in the way. Now of course that's a setup issue, but I realize that the minor things mean more when I play more and when I am working to play to a higher standard.
Sure, I sound like me on whatever, but not at the end of the third set on a two-gig day...
Ummm... what people *mean* when they say tone *is* timbre. What tone actually is is something that is adjusted by EQ - how bassy or trebly something is. I thought we were all using the commonly understood meaning of tone, as in "toanz", as in tonewood, as in "good tone," as in the difference between Eric Clapton playing one note on his Strat and a total beginner then picking it up and playing the same note.
So, ok, literally speaking, you are correct, I agree. Tone is in the bass, or more specifically the tone knob.
Timbre is in the bass as well, the system, as well as the embouchure of the player - how their fingers (or pick) attack the strings, how they mute the strings, where their picking hand is in relation to the bridge or fretboard, the position of their fingers on their fretting hand, and so on.
That then falls back to style vs. tone.
Tone is the sound the instrument; and in the case of a guitar\bass all of the electronics that go along with it. Because of the several layers between the player and the sound the audience is hearing, you can't compare an acoustic instrument like a wood wind or brass to an electric bass. Even a piano or something like a violin or double bass is a stretch.
No player will make a passive P with flats sound like Warwick Thumb. That's tone. And it's literally impossible. Physics won't allow it. People confuse style or character for tone.
And yes, a rubbish bass rig will make the greatest player sound bad. Again, physics.
What people "mean" should be what they say. If they are saying it wrong, that's on them to correct, not on me to decipher.
No. Anyone can say things like "because physics," that doesn't win you an argument on the internet or anywhere else. You should read up on the physics of timbre.
First of all, as was clarified earlier in the thread, we're referring to timbre. Tone is the amount of bass or treble frequencies controlled in or out of a signal via EQ or capacitors. If we can agree that for purposes of this discussion though tone=timbre, fine, let's do that.
Second of all, every individual instrument has it's own timbre. Of course no player is going to make a P bass sound like a Warwick, or a tuba, or a lute. Can we just accept that and not bring it up again, because it's a stupid derail at best. Clearly Jimmy was not suggesting that a saxophone sounds like a bass guitar, or that a P bass sounds like a Warwick Thumb.
Style and embouchure are both aspects of technique, but they are not synonyms - and embouchure definitely affects timbre, whether a note is amplified and played through a series of gain stages or played and heard acoustically. If you strike the strings hard, you will create more harmonics in your signal than if you strike the string softly, which is exactly what timbre is - a difference in timbre is the difference in the number of harmonic frequencies in the signal, which harmonic frequencies are present in the signal, and how strong each of those harmonics is. It isn't just style or technique either - have the same person play the same passage on the same bass with three different pick gauges from the same pick manufacturer. Same style, same technique, same player - different quality of "meat" hitting the strings. Just like differences in pick thicknesses, there are differences in fingers - how much skin is on the finger, how much muscle is between the finger and the bone, how wide or narrow those fingers are and whether they are fretting the string or plucking the string. Wide fingers fretting strings will sound different from narrow fingers fretting strings. Can I tell you what those differences are? Hell no. But there are reasons that have nothing to do with the electrical components in a signal chain for why Miles sounds very different from Louis (who were both microphoned and amplified, at least on every recording of them that I've heard) even though they both played trumpet. Those differences are mostly their embouchure, since you can hear the same differences throughout their careers. Same as Jamerson and Geezer Butler. They sound very different, even though they're both playing equipment that is far more alike than it is different - they're not playing Warwicks, anyway. They both sound like P basses with flats, and they're both playing near the neck, but they're both recognizably different from each other throughout their careers, and recognizably themselves throughout their careers. Their "tone" is different, their timbre is different. They strike the strings different, with their very own fingers, nobody else's.
I don't agree all tone is in the fingers - but the fingers are definitely a contributor to good or bad tone, as is gear, and what is meant by saying "tone is in the fingers" is really just "don't worry about your gear, go and practice." Because most of us spend way too much time obsessing over our gear instead of practicing.
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Why?
EDIT: Never mind, I read your "why." LOL...it's nonsense, but OK. You win the intranets.
I'll add that people's fingers are different lengths, thicknesses, etc. I am sure that those differences contribute to tone as well.
For many folks, the default is to dig in.
I bolded this in the hope that you'd actually focus on it. Here it is again:
if tone really is in the fingers, then, example, with a six string guitar, if I picked up say, Ritchie Blackmores' guitar, with his set up and I up stroked an Em chord, it would sound exactly like he does,
If the tone is in Richie's fingers, per your analogy, and YOU play it, how do you contend that it will sound like HIM instead of YOU? Do his fingers remain with the guitar?
I stand my observation that that makes no sense and was likely a mistake.
