Interesting lack of distortion

[Ricardo.]

I don't know what Millo meant but I think ellwood means that in uber-death-core metal the guitarists plug into wall outlets and are indistinguishable from the beginners that also plug into wall outlets for Ultimate distortion of Elite Death!

[Pappy P]

I use distortion sometimes (OK alot). I've noticed that it does coverup mistakes. I think a compressor and echo do the samething.

 

I practice as clean as possible so I can hear the notes.

 

It definately takes alot of practive to play clean. I've been rehearsing and recording a song with a clean tone. The recordings really pick up any flaws

 

However, I do love the sound of distortion and ovedrive for some songs.

 

Please tell me it's not a sin to use the amount of distortion you want because you like it and not because you are trying to hide something. (serious question)

[Griffinator]

Originally posted by Pappy P:

Please tell me it's not a sin to use the amount of distortion you want because you like it and not because you are trying to hide something. (serious question)

No, it isn't, regardless of what blues snobs have to say about the matter.

[Gruupi]

The great thing about being a musician is that you get to chose what you play and what you sound like. You don't always have to rely on the radio to enjoy music, you can make your own. So Pappy nothing is a sin, play whatever you want to play. Nothing wrong with experimenting and practicing with different tones, but you have to go with what you think sounds best in the end. It never hurts to get advice and second opinions, but don't let someone talk you out of where your heart really lies.

[Zephyr]

"I remember thinking at the time how much distortion he used and how it gave him so much texture.

 

Not long ago I revisited the 1968 Live Creem DVD and had a similar feeling.

 

Have we lost all sense of proportion? Are we using noise to hide our poor playing?"

 

A valid point, though ive never thought of anyone using distortion as a cover-up. Now thati think about it, it's probably true, for example, even at my high school, during class, sometimes i hear high-gain distrotion, which is all a muddy mess, and sounds awful,

[Zephyr]

i really need to lighten up on the commas (9).

[miroslav]

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

Are we using noise to hide our poor playing?

I was making the same observation about a week ago in the "Brown Sound in a Box" thread.

For someusing stomp boxes to get that homogenized, soupy buzzzzzzthat is also sometimes drenched in chorus and delay/reverb FX...

...is just a means of hiding inferior playing.

 

Now I'm not saying everyone that uses a distortion, chorus, delay, or reverb stomp box(s) is an inferior player...but the weaker players quickly find that those devices will make them sound better than they really are.

I guess that's OK to a point...but those players often put themselves in a rut where they may never be able to play with just a straight guitar-n-amp rig, as they will instantly sound lousy without all the FX to hide their shortcomings.

 

I think its best to leave those boxes alone until you become fairly proficient with just a guitar and an amp.

[guitarisawayoflife21]

The answer is probably yes for some of you older guys, but I myself was raised on that distortion. The music that was playing in my house through my childhood were bands like Ac/Dc, Rush, and Led Zep. Those distorted really groove based songs are one of the main things that goes into my playing. I see no problem with the distortion just because I grew up with it my whole life. I do love being able to play with the amp on clean and really showing of my abilities though.

[Hardtail]

Originally posted by Griffinator:

Originally posted by Pappy P:

Please tell me it's not a sin to use the amount of distortion you want because you like it and not because you are trying to hide something. (serious question)

No, it isn't, regardless of what blues snobs have to say about the matter.

Oh come on now. We aren't that bad. Loosen your nose ring a bit.

[Dr. Ellwood]

Originally posted by guitarisawayoflife21:

The answer is probably yes for some of you older guys, but I myself was raised on that distortion. The music that was playing in my house through my childhood were bands like Ac/Dc, Rush, and Led Zep. Those distorted really groove based songs is one of the main things that goes into my playing. I see no problem with the distortion just because I grew up with it my whole life. I do love being able to play with the amp on clean and really showing of my abilities though.

Well sure! but that's NOT the kind of distortion we are talking about, most of us use THAT kind all the time except in allot of blues and even then to a point.

[Justus A. Picker]

Originally posted by miroslav:

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

Are we using noise to hide our poor playing?

I was making the same observation about a week ago in the "Brown Sound in a Box" thread.

For someusing stomp boxes to get that homogenized, soupy buzzzzzzthat is also sometimes drenched in chorus and delay/reverb FX...

...is just a means of hiding inferior playing.

 

Now I'm not saying everyone that uses a distortion, chorus, delay, or reverb stomp box(s) is an inferior player...but the weaker players quickly find that those devices will make them sound better than they really are.

I guess that's OK to a point...but those players often put themselves in a rut where they may never be able to play with just a straight guitar-n-amp rig, as they will instantly sound lousy without all the FX to hide their shortcomings.

 

I think its best to leave those boxes alone until you become fairly proficient with just a guitar and an amp.

That's one of the major reasons I think everyone should learn to play on an acoustic guitar first. It's just too easy to become distracted by effects and cool noises and lose sight of the music.

[Justus A. Picker]

Originally posted by Hard Tail:

Originally posted by Griffinator:

Originally posted by Pappy P:

Please tell me it's not a sin to use the amount of distortion you want because you like it and not because you are trying to hide something. (serious question)

No, it isn't, regardless of what blues snobs have to say about the matter.

Oh come on now. We aren't that bad. Loosen your nose ring a bit.

LOL! Metal players do get a bit defensive about their music of choice. It's almost like they have this subconscious inferiority complex....

[Dr. Ellwood]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

Originally posted by Hard Tail:

Originally posted by Griffinator:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pappy P:

Please tell me it's not a sin to use the amount of distortion you want because you like it and not because you are trying to hide something. (serious question)

No, it isn't, regardless of what blues snobs have to say about the matter.

Oh come on now. We aren't that bad. Loosen your nose ring a bit.

LOL! Metal players do get a bit defensive about their music of choice. It's almost like they have this subconscious inferiority complex....

---

[guitarisawayoflife21]

Originally posted by ellwood:Well sure! but that's NOT the kind of distortion we are talking about, most of us use THAT kind all the time except in allot of blues and even then to a point. [/QB]

Oh, your talking about the face melting insane blow the amp out turn it to 11 fuzz out all tone type of distortion. In that case yes, I think it is definatly being used to cover up inabilities in the player. They feel the more noise and distortion the better because they dont have to play everything cleanly and they can still get away with it.

[Griffinator]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

LOL! Metal players do get a bit defensive about their music of choice. It's almost like they have this subconscious inferiority complex....

And that wouldn't have anything to do with all the aging classic rock and blues guys ragging on us all the time, would it?

[Griffinator]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

That's one of the major reasons I think everyone should learn to play on an acoustic guitar first. It's just too easy to become distracted by effects and cool noises and lose sight of the music.

I agree. I learned to play on a Fender F-45 classical, then graduated to a Cortley steel-string acoustic. I was 19 before I had my first electric guitar - an Ibanez Iceman I had salvaged from the scrap heap and fitted a BC Rich neck onto. I loved that axe, until it got swiped...

[Dr. Ellwood]

Originally posted by Griffinator:

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

LOL! Metal players do get a bit defensive about their music of choice. It's almost like they have this subconscious inferiority complex....

And that wouldn't have anything to do with all the aging classic rock and blues guys ragging on us all the time, would it?

Well yes and NO.. all we want is for you guys to be better guitar players..that's all. There allot of players that are not older that would say the same thing, IN fact I bet there are young players on this Forum that would say the same thing, or at least know the difference. anyway screw it ..how did the gig go?

[Ricardo.]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

Originally posted by Hard Tail:

Originally posted by Griffinator:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pappy P:

Please tell me it's not a sin to use the amount of distortion you want because you like it and not because you are trying to hide something. (serious question)

No, it isn't, regardless of what blues snobs have to say about the matter.

Oh come on now. We aren't that bad. Loosen your nose ring a bit.

LOL! Metal players do get a bit defensive about their music of choice. It's almost like they have this subconscious inferiority complex....

---

I can't speak for all of "us," but I don't consider myself a 'metal head.' It's just another genre of music that I like. I put on the Skip James, Funkadelic, and Stray Cats as much as Metallica. I'll stand for any of them as much as I will for the right to listen to Slayer.

[Justus A. Picker]

Originally posted by Griffinator:

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

LOL! Metal players do get a bit defensive about their music of choice. It's almost like they have this subconscious inferiority complex....

And that wouldn't have anything to do with all the aging classic rock and blues guys ragging on us all the time, would it?

The question is, why do you let it get to you? If a specific tone works for you and transmits your intended message to your target audience it doesn't matter if I or anyone else thinks or says it sounds like formless noise.

 

You don't need to defend it, unless of course you like the debate....

[Griffinator]

Originally posted by ellwood:

anyway screw it ..how did the gig go?

That would be on the "jitters" thread - now fallen to the second page... I'll bump it, though, just for you...

[Griffinator]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

unless of course you like the debate....

SHHHHHHHHH!

 

Don't let the secret out!

[Warthog]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

Originally posted by miroslav:

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

Are we using noise to hide our poor playing?

I was making the same observation about a week ago in the "Brown Sound in a Box" thread.

For someusing stomp boxes to get that homogenized, soupy buzzzzzzthat is also sometimes drenched in chorus and delay/reverb FX...

...is just a means of hiding inferior playing.

 

Now I'm not saying everyone that uses a distortion, chorus, delay, or reverb stomp box(s) is an inferior player...but the weaker players quickly find that those devices will make them sound better than they really are.

I guess that's OK to a point...but those players often put themselves in a rut where they may never be able to play with just a straight guitar-n-amp rig, as they will instantly sound lousy without all the FX to hide their shortcomings.

 

I think its best to leave those boxes alone until you become fairly proficient with just a guitar and an amp.

That's one of the major reasons I think everyone should learn to play on an acoustic guitar first. It's just too easy to become distracted by effects and cool noises and lose sight of the music.

I'll second that emotion...

[MILLO]

Originally posted by Warthog:

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

Originally posted by miroslav:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

Are we using noise to hide our poor playing?

I was making the same observation about a week ago in the "Brown Sound in a Box" thread.

For someusing stomp boxes to get that homogenized, soupy buzzzzzzthat is also sometimes drenched in chorus and delay/reverb FX...

...is just a means of hiding inferior playing.

 

Now I'm not saying everyone that uses a distortion, chorus, delay, or reverb stomp box(s) is an inferior player...but the weaker players quickly find that those devices will make them sound better than they really are.

I guess that's OK to a point...but those players often put themselves in a rut where they may never be able to play with just a straight guitar-n-amp rig, as they will instantly sound lousy without all the FX to hide their shortcomings.

 

I think its best to leave those boxes alone until you become fairly proficient with just a guitar and an amp.

That's one of the major reasons I think everyone should learn to play on an acoustic guitar first. It's just too easy to become distracted by effects and cool noises and lose sight of the music.

I'll second that emotion...

---

I'll "third" that motion.

[Xplorer]

I don't know how anyone could develop a useful picking technique with a ton of distortion washing out the soung of the acutal guitar. Maybe distortion pedals should come with a gain knob that ages. After about 10 years it's fully matured to 100% gain available.

[jhhorvath]

It would be interesting to hear the tones Hendrix might choose were he alive today...

 

When you listen to old Hendrix and Cream recordings, you have to remember that the hardware we have today didn't exist then. It was HARD to get creamy distortion, and as someone here noted, it usually was only attainable with volume.

 

And being older, it's hard for me to remember this exactly, but I don't think we had overdrive and distortion pedals per se; we had "fuzz" pedals. The overdrives and distortion pedals came a bit later. And then came the Mesa Boogie (and its derivatives) using cascading gain stages to milk saturation directly from amplifiers without needing all the volume (although, being a guitarist, I find I LIKE volume).

 

I don't think Hendrix would avoid heavily saturated harmonic distortion if he were playing today, but my guess is that he would insist on a rig that gave him good note definition and articulation.

 

The thing I learned early on about distortion on the guitar is that the guitar, when in a band context, has to "play nice" with the sounds made by the other instruments. With uber-distortion (depending on context), the guitar doesn't sit as prettily in the mix. In fact, you can keep adding volume, but you still don't cut through the mix (or even find a comfortable place in the mix for the guitar to co-exist with the other instruments.)

 

A couple decades before The Smashing Pumpkins, I had attained Pumpkin tones with some home-built crap I was experimenting with, and I LIKED those tones -- still do. (And I remember hearing the Pumpkins and marveling at the way that world was finally ready for some nasty distortion with a decidely raspy and transitorized content -- a sound I liked but felt too ashamed to admit because the "correct" mindset was that "good" distorttion came from tubes and sounded a certain way.)

 

The amount of distortion used needs to be matched to the context, and lots of Pumpkin-style distortion generally works best if you can control everything else about the mix. Otherwise, as some here have noted, you get the mud effect.

 

For what it's worth, though, I tend to learn and practice as much as I can on an acoustic guitar, then move it to electric when I'm ready to dial in the tone I'll use onstage. (It always seems so much easier on the electric once I've got it together on the acoustic.) And once I'm with the other instruments onstage (and depending on the room), I usually find I need to adjust the tone a bit to take THEIR overtones into consideration.

 

As someone else noted, you sometimes THINK you're hearing a lot of distortion even when you're not. There's a similar psychological effect with tempo. You like a song you've heard a couple times, but you haven't tried playing it yet. You'd SWEAR it's a fairly quick tempo; but then you get into it and start playing it, and you discover it's not all that fast, once you're more familiar with the piece's phrasing and structure.

 

Are we losing our sense of proportion? Nah; there's just more and brighter colors from which to choose today.

 

Are we hiding bad playing behind a wall of distortion? Not intentionally. As someone noted, as you become a better player, you learn more about dialing in impactful tones that come across better and play nicer in the sandbox with the other instruments.

[Dr. Ellwood]

"my guess is that he would insist on a rig that gave him good note definition and articulation."

 

+1 I think that would be his most important consideration!

 

[The Geoff]

I learned to play guitar in the *very* late 50s and early 60s.

 

The slightest trace of distortion was a sin. I've that ingrained in me. I still prefer to play through a clean amp.

 

In order to achieve the more 'modern' sounds, I prefer to put some kind of pedal in front of my rig.

 

That's why I prefer an amp with a LOUD clean channel, and 'vintage' pickups (PAFs).

 

G.

[Zephyr]

Originally posted by MILLO:

Originally posted by Warthog:

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

quote:

---

Originally posted by miroslav:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

Are we using noise to hide our poor playing?

I was making the same observation about a week ago in the "Brown Sound in a Box" thread.

For someusing stomp boxes to get that homogenized, soupy buzzzzzzthat is also sometimes drenched in chorus and delay/reverb FX...

...is just a means of hiding inferior playing.

 

Now I'm not saying everyone that uses a distortion, chorus, delay, or reverb stomp box(s) is an inferior player...but the weaker players quickly find that those devices will make them sound better than they really are.

I guess that's OK to a point...but those players often put themselves in a rut where they may never be able to play with just a straight guitar-n-amp rig, as they will instantly sound lousy without all the FX to hide their shortcomings.

 

I think its best to leave those boxes alone until you become fairly proficient with just a guitar and an amp.

That's one of the major reasons I think everyone should learn to play on an acoustic guitar first. It's just too easy to become distracted by effects and cool noises and lose sight of the music.

I'll second that emotion...

---

I'll "third" that motion.

---

I'm fourthing that motion

[Dr. Ellwood]

Why are you frothing?? tell us more!

[Zephyr]

Huh?, im not "frothing", im "fourthing".

 

Although i could just stick some alka Seltzer in my mouth and go on a rampage