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Tone is all in the fingers

#161
JimmyM said:
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.
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Come on, this is totally disingenuous and you know it. If someone plays a P through a B15 they're going to sound wildly different than playing an alembic through an SWR biamp rig from the 90s. Sure, you can roll off the highs on the SWR and maybe get "in the neighborhood" of a tone useful for emulating the B15, but the reverse is not true, you will never get that big bright piano tone from the "old school" setup, and no amount of "finger" is going to change that. And that's if you have Stanley, Marcus, or whoever trying. Style wise they will still sound like themselves, surely, but tone wise it will be wildly different and the "90s" rig will be much closer to the normal sound.

I mean, if gear didn't matter, we'd all just be playing squiers through behringer ultrabass combos. But what do you play? SVTs and B15s? Expensive amps with a fairly specific sound. You must play those for a reason. You're a freakin ampeg endorser for crissake.
 
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#162
Omega Monkey said:
Come on, this is totally disingenuous and you know it. If someone plays a P through a B15 they're going to sound wildly different than playing an alembic through an SWR biamp rig from the 90s. Sure, you can roll off the highs on the SWR and maybe get "in the neighborhood" of a tone useful for emulating the B15, but the reverse is not true, you will never get that big bright piano tone from the "old school" setup, and no amount of "finger" is going to change that. And that's if you have Stanley, Marcus, or whoever trying. Style wise they will still sound like themselves, surely, but tone wise it will be wildly different and the "90s" rig will be much closer to the normal sound.

I mean, if gear didn't matter, we'd all just be playing squiers through behringer ultrabass combos. But what do you play? SVTs and B15s? Expensive amps with a fairly specific sound. You must play those for a reason. You're a freakin ampeg endorser for crissake.
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I was about to say that exactly, but got tired of this thread actually, and don't want any rocks hitting me ejejeje.
 
#163
Omega Monkey said:
Come on, this is totally disingenuous and you know it. If someone plays a P through a B15 they're going to sound wildly different than playing an alembic through an SWR biamp rig from the 90s. Sure, you can roll off the highs on the SWR and maybe get "in the neighborhood" of a tone useful for emulating the B15, but the reverse is not true, you will never get that big bright piano tone from the "old school" setup, and no amount of "finger" is going to change that. And that's if you have Stanley, Marcus, or whoever trying. Style wise they will still sound like themselves, surely, but tone wise it will be wildly different and the "90s" rig will be much closer to the normal sound.

I mean, if gear didn't matter, we'd all just be playing squiers through behringer ultrabass combos. But what do you play? SVTs and B15s? Expensive amps with a fairly specific sound. You must play those for a reason. You're a freakin ampeg endorser for crissake.
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First off, calm down. Do I talk to you like that? No I do not. Second, I explained very clearly in one of the earliest posts I made on this thread what it means. Third, I've done the rented gear thing a million times and the same thing happens every single time...we always sound like the exact same band.

Again, for those who are too obstinate to want to even try to get what I'm saying...I'm not saying that different gear doesn't sound different. It's that musicians will try to minimize the differences between gear by doing things like setting the controls to sound as close as they can get to their own rigs, and the way they play also contributes to a similarity of sound no matter what they use.

But if this is wrong, how come the biggest and most talented names in the business are the ones who usually say it?
 
#165
Different playing styles can coexist, a player doesn't have to just express themself in their own style.

Vocalists are able to sing in the style of other people. Even sounding like them. Elvis impersonators are one example. There are some amazing tribute bands whose vocalists can sound very much like the original.

Clearly, with skill, the same can be done with instruments. Many people have unique styles. Expression can be in the ability to mimic or to make a sound one's own. BB King had a unique playing style and yet he could play the blues and not sound like BB King. Rick Danko also had a unique playing style that other's copy. There are many other examples. Magazines often have playing in the style of...articles. Talented people can learn a style of someone else and write new songs to sound like the artist who they were copying wrote it. Arcade Fire wrote Keep the Car Running in the style of Springsteen. Bruce does the song.

Style can be learnt. Finding an interesting way to express yourself that you can make your own is the hard part.
 
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#166
JimmyM said:
But if this is wrong, how come the biggest and most talented names in the business are the ones who usually say it?
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I like how you're in favor of this argument when it's convenient, and not when it's not. Please, tell us how you feel about Victor Wooten using mixed drivers.

Bottom line, there's a reason David Gilmour plays a strat through a hiwatt and not an ibanez through a triple rec. I think you saying people adjust settings on different gear to get the tone from "their" rig is the first time anyone on your side of the discussion has even conceded that in this thread.

My annoyance at this thread and others like it, is that not only is it completely pointless to say something like "tone is all in the fingers", but it's also patently false (as I and several others have established here), and actually harmful to bass players who don't know any better, because they're going to miss out on the million different directions they could go in with their gear, and they might either end up with crappy gear that's limiting them, or just gear that doesn't inspire them to be the best they can be. Maybe there's someone whose technique is already pretty solid, and moving from a $300 bass to an $800 bass is all it would take to bump them up to the next level because that's what would inspire them. But if they get beaten over the head with the myth that gear doesn't matter, it's all the same, so why bother, just focus on technique (which is obviously important but it's ONE piece of the puzzle), they probably won't ever explore those options.

I think the extent to which gear matters is somewhat dependent on the individual. But you pretty much have to go through half a lifetime of experimenting and trying different things (or at least 5-10+ years) before you can really say what makes a (worthwhile) difference or not (for you).
 
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#174
JimmyM said:
I have, and the answer is "every bit of it."

OK, so we use acoustics instead :D
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For acoustic bass I agree with you there, although, I would expect a good acoustic bass still sounds better than a crappy one - I don't know, I'm an "upright bass-o-phobe!. Maybe acoustic bass is a different argument than for electric?
Anyway, I'm never again going to respond to these "Tone in the fingers" threads. I know I said that earlier, but now I mean it! LOL!
 
#176
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".:D
 
#178
Omega Monkey said:
Bottom line, there's a reason David Gilmour plays a strat through a hiwatt and not an ibanez through a triple rec. I think you saying people adjust settings on different gear to get the tone from "their" rig is the first time anyone on your side of the discussion has even conceded that in this thread.

My annoyance at this thread and others like it, is that not only is it completely pointless to say something like "tone is all in the fingers", but it's also patently false (as I and several others have established here), and actually harmful to bass players who don't know any better, because they're going to miss out on the million different directions they could go in with their gear, and they might either end up with crappy gear that's limiting them, or just gear that doesn't inspire them to be the best they can be. Maybe there's someone whose technique is already pretty solid, and moving from a $300 bass to an $800 bass is all it would take to bump them up to the next level because that's what would inspire them. But if they get beaten over the head with the myth that gear doesn't matter, it's all the same, so why bother, just focus on technique (which is obviously important but it's ONE piece of the puzzle), they probably won't ever explore those options.

I think the extent to which gear matters is somewhat dependent on the individual. But you pretty much have to go through half a lifetime of experimenting and trying different things (or at least 5-10+ years) before you can really say what makes a (worthwhile) difference or not (for you).
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+1. And personally i think Omega Monkey sum it all. This should be the end of this nonsense discussion
 
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#179
This thread is hilarious. You can get a wide variety of tones from using different technique (fingers), from one amp to the next, from the tone controls on a bass or amp, different speaker cabs, what type of strings, effects..... . Everything effects the tone
 
#180
dincz said:
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".
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you can't tell the difference between a softly plucked string or someone using a slap bass technique?
 

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