I'm starting a Grand Funk Railroad tribute band and I'm wondering how I can distort my fingers so that I can cop Mel Schacher's heavy driven tone.
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Tone is all in the fingers
- Thread starter dincz
- Start date
I'm pretty sure I can but I wouldn't be able to identify the player. Not sure I get your point.
in your op that I quoted you said "If I hear a single note picked/plucked, I can tell a lot about the tone but almost nothing about the player's technique" You didn't say anything about identifying the player
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I actually said "almost nothing". Obviously I could hear whether he's picking or slapping but that's not enough information to define a player's individual technique.
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a lot of it's in the hands. A lot isn't.
I sound like me on damn near everything I play through. That's the tone I shoot for. I get there (tonally) through my hands (technique), and my ears and heart- adjusting my instrument and amp to my liking.
They go hand in hand.
I can get where I want on MOST gear, MOST of the time.
But gear does matter, for me just a little less than my hands. Gear is the tool that I use for my art- but I'm not limited to one tool, and I can make my art with a lot of different tools and it's still me and an expression of me.
I think everyone is correct, some are just being a bit extreme in their examples.
Hands are most important. But not the only element.
I sound like me on damn near everything I play through. That's the tone I shoot for. I get there (tonally) through my hands (technique), and my ears and heart- adjusting my instrument and amp to my liking.
They go hand in hand.
I can get where I want on MOST gear, MOST of the time.
But gear does matter, for me just a little less than my hands. Gear is the tool that I use for my art- but I'm not limited to one tool, and I can make my art with a lot of different tools and it's still me and an expression of me.
I think everyone is correct, some are just being a bit extreme in their examples.
Hands are most important. But not the only element.
I could take a Strad and do a good impression of strangling a chicken.Just to share my annoyance of "Tone in the fingers" threads with everyone else, I'm going to start a new thread "Tone Is All In the Fingers On Acoustic Upright". JimmyM brought up a good point there I think. Then I'm going over to Talkviolin.com and start a thread titled "Tone Is All In The Fingers On Violin - unless you're playing a Stradivarius - in which case it's mostly the violin".
More and more TB threads are started by people that just want to argue with everyone that disagrees with them.
This one was an exception then. And there seems to have been more agreement than disagreement.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
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- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
"More and more TB threads are started by people that just want to argue with everyone that disagrees with them."
I started the thread and I know that's not why I started it. So it's an exception.
... Really? You quated my post calling me clueless and this is your argument? It doesn't make a sound. But when I pick it up and play it through an amp I notice the difference between even using fingers and using a pick pales in comparison to the change in tone from just using the eq controls on the amp. Of course you can always hear the player's style, that's the foundation. But that has to be transmitted into an electrical signal which has to go through at least an amp and then a driver. This amp has a tremendous affect on tone and we're not even going to talk about pedals. With all this converting and signal manipulating going on it seems to me utterly ridiculous to think most of the tone is coming from your "fingers" which seems to be the majority consensus. Have you all ever used pedals before? Even the same amp gives me a wider variety of tones than my fingers or a pick.
However, I'm open to being wrong, so if I am please do explain. How is it that technique is makes more difference than bass+pedals+amp+cab when it comes to tone? I'll even give you technique being the same as tone even though I think of it differently. Because people usually set them similarly? That's not always true AND besides the point. It does seem we can all agree that tone is not all fingers but many still say "fingers" are a bigger factor in tone than anything else. I still disagree.
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That may have been your intention, but that's not what happened. You'll need to find someone else to argue with because you are going on ignore.
My fingers were all up in her tone..............uh, wrong user board. I'm getting too old to multitask effectively.
Why just one tone?
If I play at the bridge using my nails I have a piano tone.
Dig in at the neck pup has grindy tone.
Whomping down on the string has a dead but full tone.
Using double-stops and chords adds something else.
Using pedals? They just accentuate what my fingers are doing.
I did spend a year working this out though, and still learning mind you.
It's been a lot of fun.
"Your bass sounds great, John". Yes. A lot of work went into it to sound that way.
If I play at the bridge using my nails I have a piano tone.
Dig in at the neck pup has grindy tone.
Whomping down on the string has a dead but full tone.
Using double-stops and chords adds something else.
Using pedals? They just accentuate what my fingers are doing.
I did spend a year working this out though, and still learning mind you.
It's been a lot of fun.
"Your bass sounds great, John". Yes. A lot of work went into it to sound that way.
