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What is tone?

#61
Tone is...
  1. ...the sum of all the elements of what you play and how you play it; whether you use your fingers or a pick, whether you pluck the strings toward the bridge or the neck, what strings you use, what pickups you have, any active electronics in the bass, where the knobs are set, the wood the bass is made of, whether the neck is through the body or bolt on, the fretboard material, whether it's fretless or not, any effects pedals, what sequence they're in and where the knobs are set, which preamp/amp you have and where the knobs are set, the cabinet you have, including the speaker choice, cab dimensions and whether it's sealed or ported, the room you're in, how big it is, what shape it is, where in the room you're set up... change any one of these things and it affects your tone in some way.

  2. ...why you can give the exact same bass, amp and cabinet to ten different people, ask them to play the same simple passage, and they'll all sound different.

  3. ...a magical unicorn that you will spend your life (and most of your money) chasing, and no matter how close you get, it is always just out of reach.
 
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#65
silky smoove said:
Frequency response doesn't get it done on its own. You have to consider time as well for attack, sustain and decay characteristics. It's the difference in a spectrum analysis and a waterfall plot.
Click to expand...

I think by definition, envelope is considered more related to timbre. Tone in its most basic element is the frequency components of a note. The definitions certainly overlap though.
 
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#70
metron said:
I think by definition, envelope is considered more related to timbre. Tone in its most basic element is the frequency components of a note. The definitions certainly overlap though.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Any discussion of roundwound tone vs flatwound tone highlights this. The comparative lack of sustain is often described as part of a flatwound string’s tone. Frequency response alone does not tell the story.
 
#74
I think tone comes from the persons technique, I had my amp and bass set to a pleasing tone for me
and handed my bass off to another player there is video taped of both he and I playing, and with nothing adjusted he had a completely different tone than what I was getting when I listen to the videos of the show. So even with the same gear and eq it was noticeably different. ( and yeah I liked his better) :) so after more years of playing then I would like to admit I believe it is a large percentage the person and the rest the rooms acoustics and whatever extras you may add (pedals and things other than simple Eq) Simply put I sound like me :)
 
#76
silky smoove said:
I disagree. Any discussion of roundwound tone vs flatwound tone highlights this. The comparative lack of sustain is often described as part of a flatwound string’s tone. Frequency response alone does not tell the story.
Click to expand...

All Im saying is that when people say tone, they are often talking about both tone and timbre. Like flats vs rounds. But I agree if you are trying to define what people mean when they talk about it in forums like this.
 
#78
I would say tone is the sonic quality of the notes you and your rig produce. Differences in tone are due to differing emphasis or de-emphasis of certain harmonics in the harmonic spectrum of the note you are playing. It’s why a piano, a singer, a violin, and a trumpet will all sound different when each is playing the exact same unison note.

Like many analog things, the incredible sensitivity of humans to differences in tone, like our sensitivity to dynamic range and hue in our vision, is pretty amazing. Actually it is fine enough to be impossible for us to accurately describe with language, so fine that attempts to categorize it using signal processing have also proven difficult.

So when we switch from “what is tone” to “what is good tone” I think we wind up in subjective territory. And as is the case with humans in the realm of the subjective, there nevertheless arises an aesthetic that aficionados become aware of.

In this way there can be 100s of examples of “good tone”, but also many examples of “bad tone” that people can by and large agree upon. Just like people by and large agree that Van Gogh was a good artist, I think many by and large agree that Derrick Trucks’ slide guitar tone is good, or even great.
 

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