Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 1043 Location: Boulder, CO
Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 7:31 pm Post subject:
So NoCredit,
I've heard this augment a zillion times! The tone's in the hands or he's a feel player...blah blah blah...
Mike has the tone in his hands and has great time...but he also has great gear an knows how to maximize it's impact. He also has that direct connection to his soul that just rips your heart out. It's not one dimension over another. It's all those dimensions and levels working simultaneously that makes him so special.
Robben does the same thing....Miles did the same thing...all the greats do it. They hit you on multiple levels... it's mind boggling.
Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 916 Location: Fairhope, AL
Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 8:48 am Post subject: effects
Has anyone here tried the Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive? There was a guy who wrote in to "Guitar Player" mag and said he was able to approximate Robben's tone with that. I tried one not long ago. I didn't really have the time to wring it out, but I had a good first impression. The distortion wasn't too different from a Tubescreamer. Any of your impressions would be most welcome.
Thanks,
Frank
I've heard this augment a zillion times! The tone's in the hands or he's a feel player...blah blah blah...
...
:10: :10:
So you choose to disregard it, then?
I mean I'm not sure what your point is.
I do agree with what I think you said about Mike's heart. He's special and it is his professional forte, to know what is going to blow your mind. He's a natural and his brain is plugged in to a special musical place, and his hands, timing, and groove can deliver that juicy experience.
His equipment accounts for maybe 5% of that. You could give him anything. Any guitar. Any amp. Whatever. He'd sound like Mike.
I can tell you that I've seen this gear thing get overblown to the point where it is creating some fairly weird episodes.
The gear can be boxes or amps or speakers or guitars or cables or even digital cameras and recorders.
Like guitar players who have mountains of gear both audio and video, amps up the wazoo, axes from here to there. They get themselves a web-site and all of a sudden they are great earth-shaking players.
You go to the site and there's all these pictures of them playing, pages and pages and pages. They have articles where they wax eloquent over this gear and that gear. There's miles of MP3's or whatever of them playing.
You look at this and think, wow, this cat must be really good. But then you take a listen and they can't play better, or play worse than the local hacks around your town, and they couldn't keep real time to save their lives.
But to look at the web-site you would think you found a real cool player. Now what the hell is that? I mean really, what created that?
Then, Jeff Beck walks in, plugs a simple Tele into any tube amp you can find, starts playing and you go, whew, OK... I still do know great playing when I hear it.
Then you walk into a club and Robben is sitting in and he's playing an acoustic guitar and he is getting tones like you never heard out of a plain six-string steel without amps or boxes or whatever. They didn't have to record it and then "fix" it. He sounds great because he sounds great.
It's in his hands. He has killer timing. He has groove like all get out.
Ask the great players... they'll tell you the same if their sponsors can't hear. Ask the great guitar builders and if you can get them to be honest for a moment they will tell you the same. I don't know of any amp builders who would, their bread is buttered way too much by this crap, and forget the effects guys, just take the amp builder situation and multiply it by 10.
Maybe I've articulated it better this time, I don't know.
BTW, those pictures of Mike Landau, yeah, those are exactly the quitars I was talking about. Know what? There's nothing magical about them.
Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 1043 Location: Boulder, CO
Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 3:24 pm Post subject:
NoCredit wrote:
kirk95 wrote:
So NoCredit,
I've heard this augment a zillion times! The tone's in the hands or he's a feel player...blah blah blah...
...
So you choose to disregard it, then?
No I don't disregard it. I think Robben, Mike Landau and Scott Henderson could sound great on just about any guitar. But.. I'd rather hear Robben through his Dumble, Mike through his Dumble Modded Fenders with all his effects and Scott through his OD100 and pedals than not.
That 5% is a huge difference to player on that level. And if it didn't matter why do these guys play these rigs? These are not rigs you just go down to Guitar Center and buy.
Yes the tone starts in the hands and that is a huge part of it...but it's only part of it. There is a lot more going on! So to argue that the tone is all in the hands regardless of anything else is not a valid argument It's also a very subjective argument that nobody can win, therefore, why make it? It also implies that people who are into gear just don't get it and that's just not true. Robben, Mike and Scott are all into gear and they all get it. I'm into gear and I get it. And many of the members of this board are into gear and they get.
In the quest for TONE gear is one component. The MAIN thing o have learned from my gear chase is to get good tone out of a decent tube amp and a few pedals. BUT i sget even better tone with the Mystic Blues or Fire Amp. Why, those amps make me plat differentlym since the respond to what I'm doing with my hands (good and bad) it makes me clean up my playing and think more about how i pick (Pick, finger, thump, brush, snap..), the amps react to it and it does not mean that i sound MUCH different but i fell tied when i play "lesser" gear.
I spoke to Scott Henderson a while back and he said he could get his tone out of any good tube amp, BUT, that little extra he gets from the CAE and his pedals that makes him feel at home and that he knows.
I think that Kirk also wnat to say is that ONE thing that makes Scott, Mike and Robben into such monsters is that they care about EVEREY aspect of tone, form notes they play, phrasing, touch and GEAR that helps then express themselves. That completness makes them what they are, if Robben would not care about the tone of the gear it would mean that he wouldent listen as critically as he is, It's that devotion to all aspects of tone and music that makes a great musician.
That 5% is a huge difference to player on that level.
And if it didn't matter why do these guys play these rigs? These are not rigs you just go down to Guitar Center and buy.
Yes the tone starts in the hands and that is a huge part of it...but it's only part of it.
There is a lot more going on!
So to argue that the tone is all in the hands regardless of anything else is not a valid argument It's also a very subjective argument that nobody can win, therefore, why make it? It also implies that people who are into gear just don't get it and that's just not true. Robben, Mike and Scott are all into gear and they all get it. I'm into gear and I get it. And many of the members of this board are into gear and they get.
So that's why I don't agree with your argument.
Peace! :-D
That 5% is tiny. It is 5% and their mood and situation could erase that.
Mike could walk into any Guitar Center, pick out some stuff. Give him some time to spec the capabilities of the equipment and figure out how loud he needs to go and tone controlling and volume controlling, and he could pin you to the wall. And I say you figuretively. You'd need a spatula to peel yourself off.
"the tone starts in the hands and that is a huge part of it." Yeah like 95%
There IS a lot more going on. They are playing with killer timing and groove and the other cats in the room with Mike, like Toss Panos on drums and Jimmie Johnson on bass make magical vibrations.
I don't think you get it.
So we're going to have to agree to disagree, then.
Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 1043 Location: Boulder, CO
Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 10:12 pm Post subject:
NoCredit wrote:
That 5% is tiny. It is 5% and their mood and situation could erase that.
No that 5% is huge for these guys...or why do they bother to have Dumble make them amps? What would be their reason?
NoCredit wrote:
Mike could walk into any Guitar Center, pick out some stuff. Give him some time to spec the capabilities of the equipment and figure out how loud he needs to go and tone controlling and volume controlling, and he could pin you to the wall. And I say you figuratively. You'd need a spatula to peel yourself off.
Yea he could, but he doesn't...what amp does he play? What guitar does he play? They're not from guitar center?
NoCredit wrote:
"the tone starts in the hands and that is a huge part of it." Yeah like 95%
Based on what exactly?
NoCredit wrote:
I don't think you get it.
Really? See now you're not implying anymore.
NoCredit wrote:
So we're going to have to agree to disagree, then.
Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 886 Location: SF Bay Area
Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 10:28 pm Post subject:
Whew! Where to start. One of the things I like about this board, besides the common interest in an artist and genre I enjoy, is the generally upbeat and positive tone of the folks here. The internet does allow one to put up a front that is not necessarily coincident with reality. And something about sitting alone at a computer, unchecked, seems to encourage some people to be more opinionated or stronger in their opinons than they would be in a typical social situation.
Music is a performance art. In order to create the venue for the performance, a certain amount of promotion is necessary. Musicians, notably guitarists, and most certainly, guitarists of a rock bent, tend to have a strong sense of self, which is needed in order to put a performance out there, and create the situation to allow the performance. Just about any grouping of rock oriented guitarists is an anthropology lesson in the making, even with folks who would seem to have nothing to prove and are superficially making nice.
The one sided, broadcast nature of the internet is ready made for self promotion. And yes there are lots of creatures of the web, self made experts and such. They were always there, they just have a more powerful forum. They used to hang around clubs talking up themselves. Maybe they put a CD together and were hawking it, or maybe they were just trying to "be one of the boys" without having earned it. To each his own. Some of this activity is helping to keep live music from dying completely. Some of these folks are keeping the musical instrument industry in black ink. Everything has it's place in the eco-system.
As for "hands" vs. "gear". I have always been an "it's in the hands" person. I splurged on an exotic amplifier, beyond the point of diminishing returns, as I was financially disposed at the moment and felt like treating myself to something really nice that I would get some use out of. My primary guitar came from a consignment shop for $1600 and the few other guitars I have were all under $1000. I learned to play on cheap crap and had to force decent sound out of it, so I developed some degree of tone production. When I worked in a music store in the mid 70's and we couldn't give Strat's away, I used to plug one into a MiniBrute and play "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" to the point were customers asked "is that what he's really using?". To which I responded that "no, but you can do it with this, just like this". Sold quite a few rigs that way to folks who came in looking for whatever was described in the latest Guitar Player interview. And hopefully, some of those folks went home and worked on it until they were able to do it too. I'm not saying that I or any of the other folks nailed the tone, or sounded just like Jeff. Only that it was possible to demonstrate that most of the sound came from how you played the instrument. Also, while a good player can force a decent tone from an inferior instrument, a beginning player is going to have an easier time learning tone production playing something that has a decent sound to start with.
For me, the tone I'm after is a compromise between what I hear in my head (which is an amalgamation of different things I like) and what I'm capable of getting out of my stuff at that point in time. I'm not going to stop playing just because it doesn't sound exactly like something I heard someone else play, or some blend of things that I heard in my head and was trying to reproduce. You aren't always going to get there and it isn't worth the fight. I grew up in Hawaii and surfed there. Hawaiian surfers learn to work together with the wave, to take what it is doing at any particular moment and dance with it. The same thing happens when you play an instrument. The room you're in, the other things being played, all affect how the whole sound is coming together. You work with it, with a goal in mind. I chose gear based on how easily it lets me play what I want to play, and hear what I think sounds good to me. If I have to struggle to make it sound appropriate to me, then it detracts from the rest of the experience and interferes with the rest of the creation of music. The basic tone of the rig needs to be somewhere in the vicinity of what I'm after so I can get what I want from it without too much attention to that aspect of playing.
Just about anything you try to do follows a logrithmic curve. It takes expotentially more practice, effort, or money to make incremental improvements the farther along you go. I've never been a real tweak, but lately I've discovered that there sort of a wall where once you get that far, you have to put in that much more effort to go a little further. To get that E string to balance with the B string without having to hit it way differently, or whatever. The great tone gods have had hundreds of guitars thrust into their hands, and while they can get a great sound out of just about any of them, they have picked the cream of the crop for their own use. Just to make it easier for them to do what they do so well. The instrument works with what they are trying to do. It's going to be different for each player. Robben's "new best friend" was hanging on the wall at the San Jose Guitar Center for over a year. I probably looked at it dozens of times. Might have even played it. Must have been lots of folks who played it while it was there. But in Robben's hands, it fit. The sound of it worked with how he plays, and allowed him to get sounds that he thought were good to him.
This also gives me an opportunity to clarify some impressions I may have created about my clinic post and playing through Robben's Dumble. I've tried to consol myself with the idea that the Dumble is probably a bit less "romantic" than the Deluxe Reverb. But what really comes back to me is the expotential aspect of that "next level" (or several levels in this case) that is the sound Robben was getting. Probably his guitar is 10% better than mine. I think I have a good one but Robben has probably played hundreds of 335s and kept only a couple that worked for him. That's the next level. And of course the other 80-95% is how he plays that axe. I was struck by what a special combination of talent and years of practice could create. And this is just the basic raw tone. Sitting there playing the exact same thing and hearing it sound so wonderful. This is just one of the "tools" that Robben has that along with what he plays and how it fits it into the music, is what makes him so special and attracts the rest of us to his playing.
I agree completely with the comments about timing. I take this as the phrasing, how Robben fits a note into the song in just the right place. Robben called this "playing with melodic intent". He is trying to make it sound like music to his ears.
So all of it works together. We have the theory page to discuss harmonic and melodic concepts, we have the discussions of various performances by Robben and other musicians from an artistic level, and we have discussions of the tools of the trade. It all comes together to make the music we enjoy. And each aspect has that expotential curve as you assend to the heights of our favorite players. _________________ There are no such things as wrong notes, there's only the look on your face.
My Stuff: www.stevekirbymusic.com
Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 916 Location: Fairhope, AL
Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2004 1:33 pm Post subject: discussion ad nauseum
Okay, I tried to distract you guys with the Sparkle Drive thing and it didn't work. Aeolian, I really enjoyed your post. I think you let some much needed air into this thread. My two cents worth is this;
If I can only chunk my 1-4-5 chords along with the beat, then any pawn shop rig will probably suit me. When I work and study and "pay my dues" to the point where I can play with melodic intent and approach the level of artistry that people like Robben and Garth and Ronnie Earl, and so many others display, then I need a rig that I can make music with, and do it without having to spend half a day tweaking it. Everybody can benefit from good gear, but not everyone can get the best it can deliver. That takes talent and perserverance. Tone is in the heart, but it sure doesn't hurt to have the best gear you can afford.
Frank
Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2004 2:54 pm Post subject: fixed
, i am adding my egotic 2 cents, listen to my attempt of deja blues, my 63 strat plugged in my really tired 8440 SD, i love robben , i love blues. Sorry i tried to mail revelation but i sucked too much..... Blob
http://www.soundclick.com/genres/ChartsNew.cfm?Genre=Blues
i am so sorry Bluesman, The first 2 clean minuts ar Robben 'our beloved Robben", it is a n instructionnal tape i'e got on the net , i am just playin' from 2 to 6.
anyway thanks for listening.
Blob
Deja Blues is a lot of fun to play over if you scroll down a little you might find a Abergdahl that have (miss)used that backing a lot _________________ Clips: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/5/abergdahlmusic.htm
i am so sorry Bluesman, The first 2 clean minuts ar Robben 'our beloved Robben", it is a n instructionnal tape i'e got on the net , i am just playin' from 2 to 6.
anyway thanks for listening.
Blob
I think that before someone got things wrong: Tone is in the CD player and not in the fingers!
________
Medical marijuana
Last edited by marinblues on Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:59 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 886 Location: SF Bay Area
Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 1:01 pm Post subject:
marinblues wrote:
I think that before someone got things wrong: Tone is in the CD player and not in the fingers!
Yeah, I need a Mark Levinsion or Rockport CD player, my old Cal Audio Labs doesn't have the feeling any more
Seriously, where did you folks get that backing track? I love it. _________________ There are no such things as wrong notes, there's only the look on your face.
My Stuff: www.stevekirbymusic.com
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See now you're not implying anymore.
