Hone Your Tone - Gmc Workshop!, Let's work together towards your dream sound! Options

[Kristofer Dahl]

HONE YOUR TONE!

When you have found that 'perfect' tone, you will experience a dramatic improvement in the musicality of your lines. Therefore, working on your sound is just as important as practicing anything else.

Getting a good tone can be a little tricky, as there are many things to consider. In order of priority:

1 Does your tone fit the mix? A common mistake is for people to dial in a tone that sounds big/cool on its own. However “big” often means bass heavy - and impossible to fit in a mix.

2 Does your sound fit the backing track? A backing track with cutting rhythm guitars will often need a treble-rich lead sound, in order for the lead to be heard without raising its volume way above everything else. The opposite is also true: If you are playing over a backing track without any distorted rhythm guitars, the patch you used for metal probably won’t work. You need something smoother with less treble.

3 Does the sound fit your playing style? Perhaps you need compression and distortion for your legato lines to sound good? Or maybe the opposite is true: you need something dynamic to enable more expressive phrasing. Or maybe you need both?

NB - note the order of priority above. There is no point in starting with a bombastic sound that makes your playing sound larger than life, if it does not fit the track you are working with. Because what sounds amazing when soloed, will often sound wrong ‘in the mix’.


Let’s get rolling!

For this workshop I have chosen a backing track from Stephane Lucarelli, which I personally have had a lot of fun with:

 Soul___RnB_Blues_backing_track_in_B_minor.mp3 ( 1.76MB ) Number of downloads: 649


You can use B minor pentatonic (or B minor scale / D major scale / D major pentatonic)

When tweaking your sound I suggest you start without any time based effects (=reverb and delay). Make sure you can be heard without needing to raise your volume way above the backing track.

If this gives you problems, you either have a bass heavy tone - or - you need to add more treble/presence.

When you have dialed in a sound that allows you to be heard while still on the same level as the other instruments on the backing track, you can start experimenting.

For a liquid lead sound - many people like to have something in front of the amp, such as an overdrive or booster. This will affect the attack part of your sound and can also change the EQ.

Without adding any times based effects (reverb/delay) you will never get pro results. A common mistake here is to mix these effects too loud. Listen to my example video above, can you hear any reverb/delay? Yet there are three different stereo delays and two different reverbs.

I don’t recommend you to start with that many, but it goes to show how much is happening behind the scene. The good stuff is often the subtle effects which you don’t think about. Therefore I recommend you to tweak your tone on a daily basis, doing small adjustments here and there to get a feel for how they impact on your sound, in a mix. Maybe 10 minutes before starting your practice/playing session.

A good starting point when tweaking delay/reverb, is to find a setting you like - and then back it off to the point that you can’t really hear it anymore. Then try turning it off - can you hear the difference now? If so, you should start understanding what subtle tweaking means.


-----

Record yourself playing over the backing track and share the result with us, together we'll discuss how to optimise your sound!

* We’ll be running this workshop throughout April.
* When uploading a sample of your sound, let us know what equipment you are using and what effects you have added (if any)
* We should all record over the same backing track, this way the advice given will be useful for everybody.

Since everyone has different gear and experience I am hoping we’ll be able to help each other out. I know there are some very skilled tone tweakers among you guys - I have been blown away by the tones I have been hearing in the collabs.

P.S. Thanks Phil for suggesting this killer workshop idea!

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!