Tone is all in the fingers

[lfmn16]

There are no absolutes

Isn't that statement an absolute?

 

[Arjank]

If I give someone my bass and he plays on it I hear the tone of my bass but the playing style of that other player, that's how I see it.
There's a bit of "overlap" though, but I think people should define how they see these things first before saying that the biggest part of the "tone" is coming from their fingers.

 

[pedroims]

I think what we mean with ''tone is in the fingers'' is that a bass will sound as good as the player is. You can give me a Fodera, the bass will sound like an Fodera but I wont sound any better than with a Squier, different yes, but no better.

 

[Arjank]

When I play on a good instrument, an instrument that is set up the way I like it, I will sound better because it'll cost me less effort to play it.
If I swap the PU's in my bass with better ones my sound / tone will improve, my playing style won't.
If you listen to old Stanley Clarke recordings where he plays a Gibson EB-2 his sound is muddy, he plays his ass off but it's not articulate. When he moved to Alembic you can hear the change in tone and articulation, that change is in large part due to better instrument.

 

[beans-on-toast]

... us sounding basically the same everywhere we go no matter what we use.

Shhhhh. The next time you want to buy some new gear, don't tell your wife that!

 

[mantaraya]

No, smart guy, it comes from using tons of different gear with my band over the years and us ending up sounding basically the same everywhere we go no matter what we use. It also comes from me letting others use my gear and them sounding almost exactly like they always do.

JimmyM. I am not saying its a statement from smartass but from whom i hear the most. If you reread mi post i clearly state it. And i do Believe as you ones tone's come from Being that person And that is traduced trough equipment. I cant stand is the obvious And yet rejected gear has its own voicing And that Also is traduced to your sound. I repeat, not saying all smartass ass says all tome is the fingers, but one their special statements so they can feel unique. I am partíally 50/50. And yes, this conclusi Also comes from owning and playing diferent gear and different situations. My point is not insulting the ones belivenig in What i think is the most overrated statement, but yet showing the point of uniqueness ego of some of them.

 

[phillipkregg]

Shhhhh. The next time you want to buy some new gear, don't tell your wife that!

I think your wife will understand if you just explain that it's like having new shoes.

 

[socialleper]

I keep hearing this and I don't believe it. If I hear a single note picked/plucked, I can tell a lot about the tone but almost nothing about the player's technique. I could go along with "musicality is in the fingers" i.e. phrasing, dynamics etc. but that's another topic and is not "tone".

ALL in the fingers? No. Partially in the fingers, you bet. The phrasing and timing of notes comes from the player and what is going on in his\her head. How it is presented to the audience is all about the equipment. The equipment that a player uses accentuates what they are doing and allows them to fully express themselves. Sometimes its inspiration, sometimes its ergonomics, sometimes its window dressing. Why does an artist pick oil paints over watercolor or pastel chalk. The vision is the same but how it is presented has an impact on what the viewer perceives.

 

[mantaraya]

If I give someone my bass and he plays on it I hear the tone of my bass but the playing style of that other player, that's how I see it.
There's a bit of "overlap" though, but I think people should define how they see these things first before saying that the biggest part of the "tone" is coming from their fingers.

+ 1. Is the Bass+cab+amp+strings+finger= tone/sound. This is all about. The "is all in the hands" loses the properties and objetctive inherent qualities of all this variables

 

[mantaraya]

I have to say theres an exception and thats with someone learning. Because you have to emphazize in his thecnique rather than equipment. I do see a great advantage telling your student its all in your fingers

 

[SteveCS]

I think your wife will understand if you just explain that it's like having new shoes.

Yes. A new pair of shoes for every dress = a new bass for every tune. I like your style!

 

[Doug Parent]

I think what we mean with ''tone is in the fingers'' is that a bass will sound as good as the player is. You can give me a Fodera, the bass will sound like an Fodera but I wont sound any better than with a Squier, different yes, but no better.

I like this take on that phrase. And I can acknowledge the spirit and intent in the phrase "tone is in the fingers" but it should not be taken literally and I don't think it was meant to be taken literally. If it were, it was sloppy and reflected the common malady amongst humans to not recognize actual causation or be able to articulate it. As a bass playing community at large we've already moved past that.

 

[JackANSI]

I really like how @socialleper framed it in post #108.

My opinion:

I think saying "in the fingers" is a misnomer that spreads misunderstanding. The people who use that phrase seem to want that misunderstanding/vagueness so they don't have to fully commit to a statement/premise that may be false. It seems to be used here to suss out what the anti-"in the fingers" person will accept as true so the pro-"in the fingers" argument will succeed (with the reverse being true as well). It's a phrase that should die a quick, yet painful death.

Edit: Crap. I like the way Doug put it better just before me... less accusatory and more succinct. (I didn't mean to sound accusatory, just real, but after reading Dougs...)

 

[Doug Parent]

I really like how @socialleper framed it in post #108.

My opinion:

I think saying "in the fingers" is a misnomer that spreads misunderstanding. The people who use that phrase seem to want that misunderstanding/vagueness so they don't have to fully commit to a statement/premise that may be false. It seems to be used here to suss out what the anti-"in the fingers" person will accept as true so the pro-"in the fingers" argument will succeed (with the reverse being true as well). It's a phrase that should die a quick, yet painful death.

Edit: Crap. I like the way Doug put it better just before me... less accusatory and more succinct. (I didn't mean to sound accusatory, just real, but after reading Dougs...)

You bring up a good point. I see it this way. People are basically good but not always necessarily bright. When they hit a confusion, they can get overwhelmed and in order to deal with this overwhelm and confusion, they adopt a "datum" to deal with the confusion (and also make themselves "right") The datums they invent to make themselves right could be called a computation. If "the tone is in your fingers" is used by someone to make himself right , then he failed to address the earlier confusion he ran into. (Amplifiers have those funny knobs with strange words or numbers that were never really understood Or maybe it's compounded by earlier confusions on the subject of math. Peoples strange behavior and computations can usually be traced back to an earlier confusion. In this case we have a datum "tone is in the fingers" and then there is the matter of how this phrase is picked up and used by others while perhaps also trying to deal with a similar confusion. The phrase itself is incomplete as a datum, but it appears to "serve" some people well who never really understood their tools but didn't want to appear stupid.

 

[Jeff Scott]

What maybe plays a role in these discussions is that a part of the bass players community prefers a bass that is set up as light as possible and they play with a very light touch. Played that way the bass itself does dictate most of the tone, but there's less room for dynamics. Others (like me) prefer a bit more room for dynamics in the right hand and variation in tension in the left hand. That way we areable to influence tone with our fingers. Different schools of playing, that will lead to different views on what determines tone.

Hmm, I have experienced it the other way around. When my basses would be setup with high action I can't play as dynamically as I would want to. Lower action gives me much more control over the movement of my fingers and therefore the dynamics since I don't need to play with excessive force (which I did when I started out). I can get more different "tones" out of a low action bass then out of a high action one, especially when you don't only use fingerstyle playing.

How would that work? With a medium action bass you can play with and without force, on a low action bass there's only the without option.

My basses are setup with pretty low action and I can get a subtle tone that's suitable for a "singer-songwriter tone" (using a different angle of my finger tips so the string swings more parallel to the fingerboard) but also a very snappy aggressive tone when digging in and using a different angle of my finger tips so the string swings more perpendicular to the fingerboard. Remember what Bruce Lee said, it's all about economy of motion.

On fretless I actually need a somewhat higher setup for that

In the early '00s I played Gary's then new signature bass after a Tribal Tech gig I went to. The strings were pretty much laying on the fingerboard and I could barely get anything useful out of the instrument that sounded like music, yet Gary could produce magic with that bass!

 

[Arjank]

In the early '00s I played Gary's then new signature bass after a Tribal Tech gig I went to. The strings were pretty much laying on the fingerboard and I could barely get anything useful out of the instrument that sounded like music, yet Gary could produce magic with that bass!

What a coincidence, I almost wanted to mention Gary Willis in my post

 

[Stranger Danger]

No

 

[Eric66]

One day some pro plays your cheap crappy bass and then it hits you.
After that moment you can never ever blame your instrument anymore.
The only one to blame is you!

 

[Mantis Tobaggan]

I love how in every gear thread you get somone who says they saw a guy play a bass string nailed to a wooden pole and it sounded better than his whatever. But yeah, for the millionth time, technique has a greater effect on tone but yes gear is also a factor.

 

[Hopkins]

It does not mean that all gear sounds identical. It means that your style of playing is way more important to the overall sound than the gear you use.

IMHO, style is style, and tone is tone. Flea's tone sounded completely different when he used those Acoustic rigs. Tim Commerfords tone sounded totally different when he used a Jazz bass on RATM's second album, than he did using his Ray on the first. Their styles did not change, only their gear.

I think people seem to think that style and tone are the same thing, they are not.