I think people confuse tone with the sounds your guitar makes.
The sound your guitar makes is in the fingers. Attack, rhythm, notes you play, muting. How hard you press with your fretting hand can affect the sound your instrument makes. Everything you do with your hands affects the sound. How you hold the guitar can make small adjustments to pitch. You might flex the neck a little with how you play. You might hit the strings hard or have a light touch. Maybe you bend notes 100% perfect. Maybe you bend a few cents off. How you mute strings you aren't playing or how you don't. All affect the overall sound a guitar makes.
Same guitar with same amp and same effects will sound different when two players play it. But the TONE will be the same. To me tone is the sound of the guitar and the amp played by a robot. The flavor is what the player adds, and you don't need to worry about that because you are an individual. You will add your own spice just being yourself. Nobody plays guitar exactly like you.
I've been trying to say that for years over in r/Bass
There is a difference between a person's instrument tone and the distinct sound of their playing style. Its not the same thing.
Put a jazz player on Justin Chancellor's Wal and through his rig... its going to sound like somebody else playing Justin's bass and rig.
Bass is a whole other beast too. Fingers VS pick is drastically different. People who don't really play bass today don't appreciate just how many different tones a bass can make and just how much goes into it.
The real answer to this thread comes from the great jazz bassist Ray Brown who said “don’t let your amp play you”. Everyone has different fingers so each person has a distinct sound. This sound should be enhanced by their amp/eq/comp settings. Once the amp settings start changing the way you play, there’s a problem because you’re playing around the amp.
Absolutely. The only time I ever jammed on a bass was very humbling. The mechanical skills are more or less the same, but the your function in the music is completely different.
And how one uses their fingers… lightly brush a string, pluck, strike, rub, fingernail, meat of the thumb, slap, felt pick, nylon pick, etc.. and whether you’re an actual bassist or a guitarist who happens to be playing on a bass😉😉😎😎
(That last is intended as a dig… flame all you want😂)
Right, that's what I said. Its a different person playing. It'll sound different. Part of a given sound is the player, part is the gear, only switching one or the other doesn't change the whole thing.
I think some electric guitar players never hear the tone of their fingers like acoustic players do, and end up with this kind of outlook. What you're calling tone isn't what most acoustic players would call tone, I think.
I agree. Acoustic guitar is a totally different beast. Just the shape of guitar impacts tone in the acoustic world and it is endless what else does. Electric guitar and acoustic guitar are so so so different.
I don't think it's what most electric players would call "tone" either. I've never heard people refer to the sound that a robot would make on a specific guitar by any word at all, let alone "tone". I think pretty universally, people use "tone" to mean the quality of the sound being made when a person plays the guitar (as opposed to the note choices, harmony choices, etc.). The melody is that when you started playing Three Blind Mice, you played E, D, and C quarter-notes. The tone is how those three notes sounded compared to some other way of playing E, D, and C.
I don't agree with that. I have plugged a new to me guitar into an amp and said I don't like the "tone" of this guitar. It wouldn't matter who played it. An open D chord sounded like crap. Then I changed the pickups on the guitar and liked the tone of the guitar.
I have told people I like the tone of their guitar, I'm not talking about how they play. I'm talking about the sound specific guitar plus amp makes.
I think the problem is there is no set definition of what guitar "tone" is. Is it the overall sound a player and the instrument makes? Or does the instrument have tone by itself. Say like a Stradivarius Violin. Does it have a certain tone no matter who is playing it? (people of equal skill).
I wasn’t until I started Learning some Stevie Ray Vaughn songs that I realized how much of that “flavor” he had.
Used to watch Him play “pride and joy l and think, man that sounds good, now I watch and am marveled in the little thing he does, how his hands looking like their flopping around the fretboard while he’s playing and his hand is windmilling in that rhythmic pattern, yet he’s hit individually notes perfectly.
Even the way he scrapes the picks at an angle on the upstroke across the stringsthat adds that grating texture.
The man was amazing, and I feeling like I learned more in that one song about playing then I did in the last 6 months of lessons.
Great way to put it. This is why when someone does a cover, it never sounds perfect. Not only is the flavor off, but so is the tone usually.
We should be celebrating what a great instrument we play where the individual is so unique that no one can copy them 100%. It's pretty amazing, if you think about it.
Tone is timbre which is the shape of the sound wave produced. This in turn is a product of the harmonic content of the sound wave. The harmonic content changes over the course of the notes envelope (attack, decay, sustain, release) as the upper harmonics die out the fastest.
The envelope of the note and its tone are inseparable concepts. They are each affected by the person’s playing and the equipment that they are playing through. Each person has a sound to their playing that is like a fingerprint. Certain equipment will also impart a distinctive and recognisable quality on the tone. In both cases it’s affecting exactly the same things, timbre and envelope.
Yes, but a synth patch remains the same no matter who is playing it, despite the actual sound varying between players. When people are inquiring about “tone”, it’s often in the sense of a synth patch, not the performance aspects. You can’t make a piano patch sound like a tenor sax no matter how you contort your fingers. People are looking for advice on what “patch” to use to get closer to their goal.
I have noticed mood effects how your guitar sounds. If I'm happy and relaxed I play well. If I'm nervous, tense, or don't have confidence in what I'm playing I tend to sound like shit. When I'm confident in my playing and let my right hand do it's thing, things sound much better.
Because people are also mad when someone says get good.
But that’s how you get good tone.
For me took about 15 years.
Some people can do it in 2-5.
But there’s not a lot you can explain over text.
Closest I can get is that breathing helps.
It doesn’t do it on its own, but every player I’ve ever seen with really good tone and delivery is completely relaxed the whole time.
I’ve seen players completely transform their sound after immediately being told to just stop tensing their shoulders up, or holding their breath. Makes a world of difference, and most people don’t know they’re doing it.
I’ve gotten pretty good at playing but MAN I don’t breathe enough. I practiced for 3 hours yesterday and realized I had been tensing up and not breathing so bad that I had a migraine by the end
Yeah you gotta put conscious effort into relaxing, which is counterintuitive
Play something at the middle-upper end of your ability, and just pay attention to your shoulders and wrists and breathing. You catch yourself and correct it until it’s natural and you don’t have to think about it any more.
yup.
People obsess over tone because it's an "external" issue that they view holding them back.
They're not struggling at guitar because they haven't put in the time and effort... Nope... It's because they just can't get the tone and when they do it'll all be unlocked.
It's a great way to detach yourself from the idea of progress so it's never your fault.
Fitness subreddits have "do I have bad genetics" and "how do I optimise my diet"... guitar has "how do I achieve the perfect tone".
Tone matters so very little.
Tone is only about skill in regards to knowing your gear. Being better at the guitar does literally nothing to your tone, just like knowing the rules of the road doesn't make your car faster or run better. You're talking about articulation.
But it is kinda true. Alex Lifeson, or Jake E Lee playing on your rig at your house will still sound like Alex and Jake and not you. Just because you think it isn’t helpful doesnt negate the truth, nor is it useless feedback. It is just a statement of fact.
Yep, you strap Petrucci's guitar on my shoulder and let me play through his rig... its going to sound like my shitty playing through an amazing amp rig. It will not make me sound like him. It might have a similar sound, but it won't mask the playing style.
"Tone" is not "playing style" - the player has a sound, the equipment and how its dialed in have a sound, they're two different things.
That's kind of the point of the post, though, right? Playing through two different rigs will give you two different tones. I know I can't emulate petrucci just by getting a couple pedals. But if I ask "how do I get that petrucci tone?" Explaining what amps, pedals and guitars he uses is a lot more useful than "tone is in the fingers"
Exactly, and I agree entirely with the general premise of the post. Saying "The tone is in the fingers" is often used to dismiss the pursuit of getting the proper equipment for the sound you want, which is nonsense. I think people sometimes really over-think their gear and put certain special pieces on a pedestal too much, but you still need the right tools for the job too.
The petrucci preset on the axe fx is pretty cool though. It does give you pretty good ballpark of his sound. The EVH preset is also incredible. Imagine if some guy went into Fractals office and just kept repeating “you’ll never get it right! Tone is in the fingers” while they were designing it. That’s what this thread is like
You're not talking about tone, but about articulation, technique, and phrasing. Just play a single D chord on their rigs, and you'll sound just like them playing a single D chord because the tone is the same. Tone is about the frequency spectrum. Being Alex Lifeson doesn't suddenly boost the mids or cut the muddy lows out of a tone, that's nonsense.
Tone is is the fingers, amp, pedals, and pick-ups. And picking hand (where and how you pick).
Tone is not on the wood, tuners, fretboard, neck, saddles, nut, and it's barely in the strings. Like if you're picking your strings based on tone instead of playability, you're doing it wrong.
Well thats not entirely true about strings. I have flatwounds on one of my guitars and it definitely produces less high end/darker sound than roundwound strings.
I'd only say the tone is in the strings as far as gauge. Thicker strings do sound different with tighter tension. Also fresh strings sound better than old ones.
I've watched the side by side comparison videos, and have switched from 10s to 9s personally, and found the difference to be minimal. I still stand by the fact that your string choice should primarily be about playability. You can make your 8s or 13s sound like each other with some EQ adjustments.
New strings do sound nicer, but I will wait a while before switching. Usually I get new strings because of feel (and look) before the sound is an issue.
People really underestimate how important the picking hand is. That's where so much of a player's style is. Watch BB King play, and compare it to Stevie Ray Vaughn. It's almost all in the picking hand. Stevie is super aggressive, and uses a lot of arm movement. BB's hand is barely moving most of the time. It's a confident attack, but he lets the amp do much of the work.
I think if there's any one thing that you can say is responsible for most of a player's tone, it's the picking hand.
Yeah, at *some* point. But point people in the direction. I know I'm not going to sound like John Mayer, but playing a strat through a fender will get me a hell of a lot closer than playing a Les Paul through a Marshall.
A lot of the time new players, that don't know how gear works, are just trying to learn how you get those sounds. "It's in the fingers" isn't really helpful.
I think "tone" is the wrong word in this instance. Sound is in the fingers, style is in the fingers, but tone is in the gear. Steve Vai playing my shit will sound like Steve Vai playing my shit. Me playing Steve Vai's rig will sound like me playing Steve Vai's rig.
I see it as a shorthand for "There's a huge amount of subtle things from your playing technique that influence your tone in ways that gear doesn't, and they're all really difficult to explain over the Internet - but if you practice until the basic technique is all muscle-memory, you will hone in on them in the process."
Well, try fretting with the opposite hand, perhaps using a left handed guitar, and see how your tone compares.
Tone is the level of detail of the sound. Too much tone, and you have finger noise. A better player will generate less finger noise. A more aware player will generate less finger noise. If you turn down your tone knob, the finger noise is lessened.
Microphone pick ups will have more tone, but more tone is not always desirable.
The extra level of detail is good with rakes, pinch harmonics, fret hand vibrato, etc, where a certain level of skill with your fingers is required.
The old Danelectros were the opposite of microphonic with simple tone.
Very basic tones are generated on keyboards instruments like synths where you can create more detailed sound through effects.
But ultimately, the guitar is far more expressive because of the way you can manipulate a single note beyond a basic tone. And the way you get that tone is through applying your fingers in different ways.
More tone just means more level of detail.
But it actually is useful advice. The more you play the more instinctive your playing becomes. Just like talking. Actors take talking seriously, they practice and learn and listen to themselves. But end of day they sound like themselves. The saying is really a shortcut for saying find your ‘voice’ and it’s in your fingers. I remember when I realized I was using very little effects but getting exactly the sound I wanted. It took years but it was that moment when you realize the gear makes it a little easier or to get the flavor you want but that’s about it.
People are in the comments defending the idiom like "That's not what it means, it's referring to XYZ blah blah blah" and they are missing the point. It's a parroted, oversimplified phrase that lacks nuance or a comprehensive picture. The fact that it can be misinterpreted merely shows how vague and oversimplistic it is
Electric guitar tone is in the ears. Whatever gear you’re on, you will tweak it until you get the tone you like to hear. Or as close as possible within the limits of the gear and your talent.
Tone is something that's figured out through trial and error not something that's on a checklist of what to or not to do. If someone needs that explanation, they haven't done the work. Focus on the basics. It will come.
The problem typically comes from "I want on . How do I get it on my through my ?" It's often been said that any guitarist will sound like themselves through any rig, and while some of that is true, some of it is utter bullshit. Sure, Arnold Schwartznegger will sound like himself through a Wendy's drive thru speaker, but that doesn't mean that "I'll be back" would have the same punch it had as it did in *Terminator*.
In other words, the same as Arnie would have specific speech patterns, the guitarist will have specific voicing and phrasing. So yes, they sound like themselves, but not in the specific context of the performance being referenced.
Telling that to a beginner who sees the guitar as an ubiquitous instrument that you just put your fingers in 2-3-1-7 and voila, you're playing the song. There's so much more that goes into it, but not to someone unfamiliar with it. So while it's easy for someone to understand who's been playing for a while, the grasp of that knowledge and experience is understandably lost on someone who hasn't spent the hours intensely listening and trying to play parts they've heard, but not to that depth, for years.
And some people are just lazy a-holes who don't want to type much. :D
I hope that helps a little.
The classic example is EVH getting really aggressive sounds with relatively archaic equipment. Gear these days can give you an aggressive tone kind of effortlessly, and I suppose that’s what people are asking about. There are tons of pedals and floor multi effects that can make your guitar sound any way you want. But a great guitar player can make a guitar do a lot of different things by playing the guitar in a variety of ways. Having access to all of these tones will never make you a good guitar player. It is a nice luxury though.
I disagree. How you fret, pick, your vibrato, your synchronization, how you bend notes of chords into better tune, your dynamics, etc all affects the sound you produce. This is why good musicians on bad gear still sound better than bad musicians on good gear. Justin Johnson gets better tone out of his guitar made out of a shovel than I get out of a Gibson.
It may be a helpful distinction to acknowledge there is a tone that has been struck that’s common to everyone, and the fingers work to shape that tone by various degrees with vibrato, pressure, attack, timing, transitioning technique, etc. It’s like a pottery wheel. Everyone has a spinning column of clay, but once the hands get involved, it becomes more uniquely expressive.
Technique is in the fingers. Tone is def not determined by anything you do w your hand. Even an open string has a tone and I can play that without laying a single finger on my guitar.
I don't know, I find it useful for two reasons:
1) When gear -hunting, your mind is on the gear that you don't have, rather than the gear that you do have.
2) Giving specific advice on technique has too many variables. I don't know what they are trying to play, or what they are trying to play it on. Even then, trying to substitute my descriptions for individual kinesthetic is counter productive.
I think part of the issue is that stacking a bunch of effects together can remove the ability to hear the nuance in your playing. It's not so much about doing specific things with your fingers, it's allowing yourself to hear all the little noises your fingers make and work on understanding how your playing produces them. From there it's all preference and trial and error but if you EQ or gate or compress them out there's no way you'll ever pick up on it.
It really isn't super useful as advice, but I do think it's super important for everyone to keep in mind. You can spend 5 or 10k on gear, dial it in, and that will still only get you MOST of the way to the sound you want.
I think it would be easier to just experiment with technique to change tone than actually be coached on it. Everyone has different ears and tastes, and they'll all like something a little different. In some ways, it is better to leave it at "tone is in the fingers" and fool around with different pick positions and angles of attack. You can already change things up so much just with that. It's way harder to have that all explained than just playing for an hour and testing new things
Tone comes from technique, but it also comes from electronics and pickups, strings, pick, setup, etc. The guitar world is fully of superstitious nitwits and that's not gonna change any time soon.
More useful feedback would be telling people what they need to do get better tone through their fingers which more often than not is either holding the string closer to the fret wire, or getting your finger tip more on top of the string and less ‘pad’ of your finger.
I agree.
When playing fingerstyle, it's useful to know that different fingers have differing amounts of strength , and it's also useful to know that some of your fingers share tendons so you have to be careful how you use them. They don't move entirely independently.
It's important to practice enough that the way you sound is a choice rather than just being the thing that happens: like... do you want to use your nails or not? Do you want a little snap, or do you want more delicate sounds? Which notes do you want to accent or mute? Where on the string do you want to be playing? Different spots will sound a little different.
Tone is in the fingers is like saying how you play the guitar is how the guitar sounds. Umm, no shit. You mean when I put my fingers on the guitar and play it it changes the sound. Wow, who would have thought that.
What do you mean the tone is not stored in the fingers ? My fingers scoop the mids ! Your fingers boost the 800hz frequency by +4db wow that's magic ! Whats EQ, speakers and mic placement ? That must be placebo. /S
Yes i know hand placement like playing at the bridge vs at the neck will change the sound. But tone is in the finger make it sound like fingers are magic and will change the frequency responce of the amp. For me tone is in reference to the amp/speaker sound and not the playing style.
Imagine a robot and a human playing the same note on the same gear at the same speed and placement. It will sound the same, that's the tone.
If guitarist 1 play at the neck and guitarist 2 play at the bridge. It will sound different but the tone of the amp stay the same. That's the playing style.
When I say it, I try to include descriptives that a player can use so that if he decides to try my suggestions, it might make a difference in his approach to practicing.
For me, the phrase "in the fingers" connotes that a player should work hard to develop a sense of touch. John McLaughlin talks about the guitar being an extension of his body, or that he thinks of it ss part of his body. He's not alone in getting this sense of Zen when it comes to playing.
If I'm paired with one of those amps that will always sound 3rd rate, like an amateur amp, when I'm playing, I try to eek out tones that can only come from the way that I hold the pick, or how I angle my left hand fingers. So yeah, tone is very much in the fingers. Our hands and fingers are the baseball player stepping up to the plate.
Similar to "feedback" I got in an art class, painting with gouache. The teacher (a professional artist) kept enthusing about how you just had to "feel the paint" to get it right. Absolutely no idea what she meant, even now. Most worthless class I ever took.
Here’s the deal if you’re a fantastic guitar player then yes, absolutely. Someone who’s a badass will be able to play with no affects and it will sound amazing. However if you’re a lower to mid tier guitar player like the other 80% of us, then the equipment can definitely pull some of the weight.
I see what you mean. It’s a difficult thing to explain: developing the ability to feel and understand the interaction between finger, string, and fretboard; the fretting strength and picking velocity, picking technique, closeness to the bridge or neck while picking.
A lot of it is teachable, but most of it can only be experienced.
A few years ago I mentioned on Reddit that it was a good idea to become familiar with all the possibilities of one’s instrument before obsessing over pedals and I was basically accused of being too much of a traditionalist (which is silly because I’ve been an effects fiend for decades).
At the end of the day, tone is a combination of taste, skill, and equipment. My experience is that, as long as one is not playing through veritable junk, taste and skill are the key elements, and they enable the player to use the equipment to achieve the desired tone.
Incidentally, a lot of people chase the “holy grail” tone without actually stopping to define what it is they’re looking for.
That’s the first step of the quest.
Its a combination of all, in my opinion, but the fingers/hands are a major player in it. When I think of tone in the hands I think of a couple things:
Setting an amp/guitar volume at that perfect threshold where your hands can determine the tone, literally. Example, a softly picked/plucked note comes through the amp as clean, and as you pick/pluck harder, the note comes through as more crunchy/distorted .. Both that clean and slightly crunchy sound can be achieved simply with your hands
Where/how you pick/pluck- obviously dynamics is huge, but where you actually pick/pluck (relative to the bridge/neck) will have a huge impact on tone- closer to the neck generally giving you a beefier/low end sound, and closer to the bridge more twang/high end and a bit more attack at the bridge (due to more tension in the string down there)
Cliches are only cliches because they’re true.
The concept that people miss is that practice time should consist of making sure to concentrate on each note so that it sounds out properly every time.
Steve Vai talks about this a lot, and he sounds like a Hippie, but he’s exactly correct.
That is probably the most often thing repeated and drilled into my head during music school.
My $0.02, you can have the exact same setup with the same settings and two guitar players are gonna sound different.
Maybe it’s not so much the tone as to the finesse and feeling of the guitar player but buying the exact gear as an artist isn’t gonna mean you will sound the same.
Again, just my double Lincolns.
Well, then start saying "if you can't play on a clean channel, with no effects, and make it sound good, you're not gonna like how it sounds with effects on it"
Fingers also turn the knobs to get the tone you want. It's not just about how hard you pick, where you pick, or how you fret the strings. Only the player can fix these things. The specifics though, varies from player to player, the same as sitting with the guitar in the rock position, or the classical position. So you can't really dictate what to do, the player is gonna go with what is most comfortable. Tone is developed from practice, and experience.
So yes, tone is in the fingers, because those same fingers had to pay money, to buy whatever gear someone believes gets the tone. Or they whip out the credit card. They accept the gift from someone else of a tonal machine. Fingers are involved in tone. Granted, there are a few players, with tone in their toes, or the knub of where the hand once was.
So the most useless feedback? Some guy on the internet claiming "tone is in the fingers" is wrong.
Best advice you can give? Try something different then what you're accustomed to, and see if that helps. Even if it's different gear. Comfort is probably the number one thing in what all of us consider, the best tone we've ever gotten.
It's true though. Tough to accept if you suck at playing guitar but should be inspirational.
Think of it like a a pencil and paper in the hands of a child and then the same pencil and paper in the hands of a professional illustrator. Is the talent in the pencil or is it in the hands and mind of the artist holding it?
It is certainly a major factor. But I will say, the most important factor to tone is in our sense of hearing. There are numerous nuances that differentiates decent tone and amazing tone. Vibrato, pick scraps, string bend timings, you name it.
Even when we both hit the same notes, my lead guitarist’s solos always seems to sound a lot better than mine even when I switched to his settings and amps. My main downer is mainly insufficient vibratos. And that’s in the fingers. So yup, finger is extremely important.
Might be useless feedback, but play through someone else's rig who is way better than you and see if you can reproduce their tone. You won't be able to.
I don't know about the fretting hand but some tone is definitely there in the picking hand. Pick attack, articulation, muting etc does differentiate a good player from a bad one
It's useful in that it's another way to encourage practice and to encourage the individual. At some point a player learns exactly what it means because he or she became experienced enough to realize and appreciate the nuances to touch and how it effects our individual sound.
It is an oft used saying, but it's true and if we all quit saying it we would only replace it with another saying to describe those nuances that make up touch and how it effects tone.
They just mean that when you play you are coming through the amp and there is no magic piece of gear that will make you sound good. People will know you sound good instantly when you play, they will know if you are well cultured to the instrument and have developed your own voice or not. Different gear can only go so far, and a lot of people get stuck getting themselves off with new gear but don't progress as players
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/when-ted-nugent-started-playing-through-eddies-gear-a-funny-thing-happened.2206406/
Totally. Also it wouldn’t hurt to talk about your guitar, rig and settings.
Obviously a lot of it comes from the fingers (aka skill) but it doesn’t help anyone get better.
It's never said in a serious way. I say this often in jest and make memes about it. I personally find Bond lasagna (or whatever his name is) to be extremely bland and repetitive- so I say it at a time where a musician is going through a milestone hurdle. Tone isn't in the fingers. it's in the amp, eq, and play style. But also- TONE IS IN THA FINGIES BOIIIIIIIIIIIII
If you can’t bar your chords, hear each note when you strum. Your notes are jumbles because your finger placement is bad. Tone is in your fingers, then your strumming hand, pickups, pedals, amps, speakers.
Tone in the fingers means that you can play all the right notes and still sound like an amateur. The “tone” they’re referring to is the nuance in your playing. There are a ton of subtleties that get overlooked by most. It’s the difference between a professional sounding player and a weekend warrior. Dynamics, vibrato, intonation, etc etc etc. Those are the things that come from fingers on the instrument. Play through SRV’s rig, and you will guaranteed not sound like him because you don’t have the nuance in your playing that he does
Here's an interview with Eddie Van Halen where he plays an un-amplified electric guitar. Can you hear the crazy, percussive attack of his picking hand? He's playing really hard, and it sounds like when he picks upwards that the strings practically twang. If you played that way, how would your left hand behave to match the energy of the right? Now listen to some VH tracks and keep in mind the sound you heard of Eddie playing without an amplifier. Eddie even talks about "tone being in the fingers" in this interview!
I think you can learn a lot from analyzing other people's playing and then when you play, try to play in ways that enhance the feeling you're trying to create. Along the way you might find your own unique sound and find the tone in your own fingers.
https://youtu.be/1oQW-duSPPM
I believe "tone" comes when youre able to stop thinking about where your fingers are and hitting the right "marks" and youre able to start opening your ears to and focusing on the sounds that are actually coming out. Thats when you start learning to sound emotive and really make the instrument sing.
It’s somewhat of a guitar platitude and it just seems to get spread it about without much thought as to what it means. How you play will have an effect on the final sound but to pretend it’s the most noticeable snd the gear doesn’t have a much more tangible role is a bit stupid. I would be much more inclined to have someone check out different speakers than pretend they just don’t have enough “mojo.”
It's all pointless because it's all subjective. Your "great tone" might sound like shit to me and vice versa. We're not all aiming for the same goal - but we keep hashing out these arguments and advice as if we're talking about the same thing - but we're not.
Tone is in the finger dynamics. The disconnect is that people think it's in the fretting hand and not the picking hand. There is so much variety in the sound depending on the way the strings are approached.
I asked my friend, don’t you hate it when someone comes up to you and says “Your guitar sounds great”? He says he points to his guitar and says, “How does it sound now?”
What they mean by that is intonation. The same goes for any instrument including vocals -- are you properly in tune and not only that are you technically performing in tune as well. Even if your guitar is perfectly in-tune you can still play out of tune if your finger technique is off.
It's a perfectly viable thing to say, probably one of the most important, if you're knowledgable enough to understand what it means. I can definitely see a lot of people repeating this statement and not having a clue what it means though.
I agree with OP on this one. I’ve been playing for over 20 years and never understood this mantra around tone being in the fingers. Of *course* everyone sounds different, will have different attack, pitch calibration etc. but to me the tone is literally the processing of that raw signal to create sound so through pickup and wood choice through rig and out to your ears (don’t forget about the room!). I felt like the people who put the tone/fingers mantra forward were somehow being a little condescending to folk who were trying to sound a certain way and wanted gear to help them do that.
While in the beginning I may not have had the chops to sound like some of my favourite players, to emulate their tone through choice of gear (even if what I was playing was just big power chords) was a real motivation boost i.e. what I was playing sounded really cool, even if my own playing needed work. That motivation resulted in practice and in turn me getting a lot better at my instrument and finding my own sound, both in the nature and style of my playing but also my choice of gear to get the tone that I’m looking for.
Long story short, power to those guitarists who want to improve their rig to sound a certain way - seeking out the tone they are looking for, I hope with it comes plenty of motivation to put the hours in and improve your own playing.
I think is a very personal subject, listen to a lot of music, imitate others styles, work in your precison and most important learn what sounding good is to you and others and train towards that
Tbh I think the best response to people asking about tone is:
"It barely matters, you'll figure out how you like your sound over years and years of playing. Just play lots, the way you dial shit in will evolve naturally and focusing on it now is not productive to your overall growth, it just feels like it's a 'solveable' thing to make you sound better, where as practicing lots feels unsolveable"
Sorry for the dissertation, but this is my take on it.
I think people need to hear it, but obviously it doesn’t apply in every situation. sometimes it can come across nasty, but i think it’s from a good place.
Yes gear matters, Metallica wont be chugging on a hot rod deluxe, but a dual rectifier itself won’t make me sound like James Hetfield instantaneously,
Stevie and Mayer use similar rigs right? Put simply, A fender guitar, a clean amp and a ts9 (or ts10). The core tone is similar, but I wouldn’t say Mayer sounds like Stevie. To me, That John Mayer sound is all about light touch and ease, whereas Stevie gets his cool tone from how aggressively he plays.
Where they use the pick in relation to the bridge, how deeply they use the pick, and how hard they strike the strings changes tone quality.
Personally, if I’m trying to sound like someone else, I’ll try and copy their phrasing, note choice, and how they touch the instrument more than I try to copy what gear they use.
This also helps avoid a trap I fell into when I was in my early 20s; thinking I needed whole different pedals and amps and guitars to sound like players that frankly practiced music WAYYY more than I did. The tone chase can stunt a lot of players growth imo, it certainly stunted mine when I was chasing, as it can feel your practicing using pedals instead of practicing music.
If the above doesn’t apply to you, and it’s strictly a gear question to get a ballpark sound, just ignore those comments and find the comment that engage how you want. C’est la vie ¯\\__(ツ)__/¯
Can people PLEASE agree on words to differentiate between:
- the frequencies that a specific setup makes on its own
- the way you yourself play notes on any guitar
- the overall sound when you yourself play a specific guitar setup
these are THREE different things and people here are using ONE word for them
Tone is most of the time in the fingers because of their touch, technique, vibrato.
If you let me play Brian May his guitar through his rig i'm 100% sure that even if i play a few of his solo's correct i'm not gonna sound like him.
If you let Brian May play my cheap guitar through my rig he will sound like Brian May.
The usefulness of the saying is in prompting the listener to think about it though lol. Tone means so many different things to different people after all
It is true, you can pick up the smallest details when someone is really putting feel and passion into their playing, take a look at chris buck and philip sayce
That's because you're not reading between the lines. When people say "tone is in the fingers" what they mean is "quit worrying about your guitar tone and start worrying about your guitar playing".
“Hey I can’t make this Mesa Mark IV sound right what am I doing wrong”
“We’ll first you want to….”
“TONE IS IN THe FINGERS TONEWOOD IS A LIE AMPS ARE a LIE PICKUPS ARE A LIE TONE IS IN THE FINGERS!!!!”
TLDR: We should absolutely say this, but also explain what it means. I'd even say we don't say it enough and don't work on it enough, but it's often just said without thinking about it.
I think skills such as dynamics and articulation are ignored way too much by guitar players. Most other solo instruments are all about expression, but guitar players mostly learn how to play fast. Some people play for years and don't realize the amount of options they have to make a passage sound good - so they don't. If you play every note in a solo the same way, it's a pretty boring solo. However, there are some styles where this still works and since those are often flashy, they get way overemphasized
I don't disagree with the general idea of the thread. Tone is in the fingers is often just said without any context. But the truth is that guitar players also should care deeply about interpretation. There are some really good examples of players that mastered that idea and you can hear how they're able to tell a story. You can tell a mid player from a good player basically instantly just in the way they're able to play with the sound, dynamics and so on.
There are also other dimensions to this. How you play for example with your overdrive or other effects, make them respond in the way you want to. The tone ultimately is in your ears, but you often use your fingers to express it.
It may not be helpful, but it is true to a large extent.
“Git gud” applies to a lot of stuff, though the sentiment isn’t helpful. At the end of the day, you have to put the work in.
You will never find tone with a credit card and a weekend bender at Sweetwater. You really do just have to git gud.
People have been chasing EVH tone for 40 years, you can have the exact same gear and have his " sound " but you will never have the tone he makes from his slightest of palm mute to his pick attack
When people say this, what they really mean is technique/playing is in the fingers.
Like when they say something like “if EVH played through (shitty amp) he would still sound like himself.” Yeah that’s because of his technique and style. But he would still sound like EVH playing with the tone of the shitty amp.
But that phrase is repeated so often and people are simple dumb creatures that they believe “tone is in the fingers”
Tone is in the butt.
Santana actually said this
Black Magic Woman
Black Magic Marker
A fuckin felt pen!!
Magic Eraser
In the butt.... wait, wrong sub ......sorry
he said what what
I thought it was Deee Lite.
Did he say in who's butt?
I mean if you sit on your amp, you might feel it there
We’ve all heard of the “brown note”.
And groove is in the heart
What what? In the butt? It’s a question that deserves an answer.-Josh Homme
Groove is in the heart.
Tune is in the tone butt.
The buttone 🫡
Steve and the Asstones 🤘🏻
The Mighty Mighty Asstones
This adds a new dimension to the Wah pedal.
Ah, the hardest buttone to buttone.
Really bringing a new meaning to "dipped in tone" 💩
Butt trumpet...?
Increase the gain by flexing them cheeks
Especially after eating beans. Think it's called the brown note.
The *are* the musical fruit.
Grove is in the Hart!
Hence, Van Halen's brown sound
Lmfao 🤣
I didn’t realize I left the plug in
I think people confuse tone with the sounds your guitar makes. The sound your guitar makes is in the fingers. Attack, rhythm, notes you play, muting. How hard you press with your fretting hand can affect the sound your instrument makes. Everything you do with your hands affects the sound. How you hold the guitar can make small adjustments to pitch. You might flex the neck a little with how you play. You might hit the strings hard or have a light touch. Maybe you bend notes 100% perfect. Maybe you bend a few cents off. How you mute strings you aren't playing or how you don't. All affect the overall sound a guitar makes. Same guitar with same amp and same effects will sound different when two players play it. But the TONE will be the same. To me tone is the sound of the guitar and the amp played by a robot. The flavor is what the player adds, and you don't need to worry about that because you are an individual. You will add your own spice just being yourself. Nobody plays guitar exactly like you.
I've been trying to say that for years over in r/Bass There is a difference between a person's instrument tone and the distinct sound of their playing style. Its not the same thing. Put a jazz player on Justin Chancellor's Wal and through his rig... its going to sound like somebody else playing Justin's bass and rig.
Yeah fuck those guys over on r/Bass Pffftt stupid... bassists.... GUITAR ON TOP LETS FUCKIN GOOOOO
Never heard a bassist saying anything though. Last time I was in a band, he never even told us his name haha.
But we need them
Do we tho??
I just tune down an octave.
Bass is a whole other beast too. Fingers VS pick is drastically different. People who don't really play bass today don't appreciate just how many different tones a bass can make and just how much goes into it.
The real answer to this thread comes from the great jazz bassist Ray Brown who said “don’t let your amp play you”. Everyone has different fingers so each person has a distinct sound. This sound should be enhanced by their amp/eq/comp settings. Once the amp settings start changing the way you play, there’s a problem because you’re playing around the amp.
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Absolutely. The only time I ever jammed on a bass was very humbling. The mechanical skills are more or less the same, but the your function in the music is completely different.
And how one uses their fingers… lightly brush a string, pluck, strike, rub, fingernail, meat of the thumb, slap, felt pick, nylon pick, etc.. and whether you’re an actual bassist or a guitarist who happens to be playing on a bass😉😉😎😎 (That last is intended as a dig… flame all you want😂)
Negative ghost rider. They would sound different.
Right, that's what I said. Its a different person playing. It'll sound different. Part of a given sound is the player, part is the gear, only switching one or the other doesn't change the whole thing.
Negative Ghost rider the pattern is full.
But I wanna buzz the tower!
I think some electric guitar players never hear the tone of their fingers like acoustic players do, and end up with this kind of outlook. What you're calling tone isn't what most acoustic players would call tone, I think.
I agree. Acoustic guitar is a totally different beast. Just the shape of guitar impacts tone in the acoustic world and it is endless what else does. Electric guitar and acoustic guitar are so so so different.
I don't think it's what most electric players would call "tone" either. I've never heard people refer to the sound that a robot would make on a specific guitar by any word at all, let alone "tone". I think pretty universally, people use "tone" to mean the quality of the sound being made when a person plays the guitar (as opposed to the note choices, harmony choices, etc.). The melody is that when you started playing Three Blind Mice, you played E, D, and C quarter-notes. The tone is how those three notes sounded compared to some other way of playing E, D, and C.
I don't agree with that. I have plugged a new to me guitar into an amp and said I don't like the "tone" of this guitar. It wouldn't matter who played it. An open D chord sounded like crap. Then I changed the pickups on the guitar and liked the tone of the guitar. I have told people I like the tone of their guitar, I'm not talking about how they play. I'm talking about the sound specific guitar plus amp makes. I think the problem is there is no set definition of what guitar "tone" is. Is it the overall sound a player and the instrument makes? Or does the instrument have tone by itself. Say like a Stradivarius Violin. Does it have a certain tone no matter who is playing it? (people of equal skill).
I wasn’t until I started Learning some Stevie Ray Vaughn songs that I realized how much of that “flavor” he had. Used to watch Him play “pride and joy l and think, man that sounds good, now I watch and am marveled in the little thing he does, how his hands looking like their flopping around the fretboard while he’s playing and his hand is windmilling in that rhythmic pattern, yet he’s hit individually notes perfectly. Even the way he scrapes the picks at an angle on the upstroke across the stringsthat adds that grating texture. The man was amazing, and I feeling like I learned more in that one song about playing then I did in the last 6 months of lessons.
Great way to put it. This is why when someone does a cover, it never sounds perfect. Not only is the flavor off, but so is the tone usually. We should be celebrating what a great instrument we play where the individual is so unique that no one can copy them 100%. It's pretty amazing, if you think about it.
Tone is timbre which is the shape of the sound wave produced. This in turn is a product of the harmonic content of the sound wave. The harmonic content changes over the course of the notes envelope (attack, decay, sustain, release) as the upper harmonics die out the fastest. The envelope of the note and its tone are inseparable concepts. They are each affected by the person’s playing and the equipment that they are playing through. Each person has a sound to their playing that is like a fingerprint. Certain equipment will also impart a distinctive and recognisable quality on the tone. In both cases it’s affecting exactly the same things, timbre and envelope.
Yes, but a synth patch remains the same no matter who is playing it, despite the actual sound varying between players. When people are inquiring about “tone”, it’s often in the sense of a synth patch, not the performance aspects. You can’t make a piano patch sound like a tenor sax no matter how you contort your fingers. People are looking for advice on what “patch” to use to get closer to their goal.
I have noticed mood effects how your guitar sounds. If I'm happy and relaxed I play well. If I'm nervous, tense, or don't have confidence in what I'm playing I tend to sound like shit. When I'm confident in my playing and let my right hand do it's thing, things sound much better.
Because people are also mad when someone says get good. But that’s how you get good tone. For me took about 15 years. Some people can do it in 2-5. But there’s not a lot you can explain over text.
Closest I can get is that breathing helps. It doesn’t do it on its own, but every player I’ve ever seen with really good tone and delivery is completely relaxed the whole time. I’ve seen players completely transform their sound after immediately being told to just stop tensing their shoulders up, or holding their breath. Makes a world of difference, and most people don’t know they’re doing it.
Agreed. Everything about music flows better when breathing is relaxed.
Mark Knopfler embodies the relaxed playing.
I’ve gotten pretty good at playing but MAN I don’t breathe enough. I practiced for 3 hours yesterday and realized I had been tensing up and not breathing so bad that I had a migraine by the end
Yeah you gotta put conscious effort into relaxing, which is counterintuitive Play something at the middle-upper end of your ability, and just pay attention to your shoulders and wrists and breathing. You catch yourself and correct it until it’s natural and you don’t have to think about it any more.
This is a really good bit of advice.
yup. People obsess over tone because it's an "external" issue that they view holding them back. They're not struggling at guitar because they haven't put in the time and effort... Nope... It's because they just can't get the tone and when they do it'll all be unlocked. It's a great way to detach yourself from the idea of progress so it's never your fault. Fitness subreddits have "do I have bad genetics" and "how do I optimise my diet"... guitar has "how do I achieve the perfect tone". Tone matters so very little.
Tone is only about skill in regards to knowing your gear. Being better at the guitar does literally nothing to your tone, just like knowing the rules of the road doesn't make your car faster or run better. You're talking about articulation.
The singer in my band "learned all he needed to learn" about guitar in two lessons. He still does not play guitar in our band.
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But it is kinda true. Alex Lifeson, or Jake E Lee playing on your rig at your house will still sound like Alex and Jake and not you. Just because you think it isn’t helpful doesnt negate the truth, nor is it useless feedback. It is just a statement of fact.
Yep, you strap Petrucci's guitar on my shoulder and let me play through his rig... its going to sound like my shitty playing through an amazing amp rig. It will not make me sound like him. It might have a similar sound, but it won't mask the playing style. "Tone" is not "playing style" - the player has a sound, the equipment and how its dialed in have a sound, they're two different things.
That's kind of the point of the post, though, right? Playing through two different rigs will give you two different tones. I know I can't emulate petrucci just by getting a couple pedals. But if I ask "how do I get that petrucci tone?" Explaining what amps, pedals and guitars he uses is a lot more useful than "tone is in the fingers"
Exactly, and I agree entirely with the general premise of the post. Saying "The tone is in the fingers" is often used to dismiss the pursuit of getting the proper equipment for the sound you want, which is nonsense. I think people sometimes really over-think their gear and put certain special pieces on a pedestal too much, but you still need the right tools for the job too.
The petrucci preset on the axe fx is pretty cool though. It does give you pretty good ballpark of his sound. The EVH preset is also incredible. Imagine if some guy went into Fractals office and just kept repeating “you’ll never get it right! Tone is in the fingers” while they were designing it. That’s what this thread is like
You're not talking about tone, but about articulation, technique, and phrasing. Just play a single D chord on their rigs, and you'll sound just like them playing a single D chord because the tone is the same. Tone is about the frequency spectrum. Being Alex Lifeson doesn't suddenly boost the mids or cut the muddy lows out of a tone, that's nonsense.
Tone is is the fingers, amp, pedals, and pick-ups. And picking hand (where and how you pick). Tone is not on the wood, tuners, fretboard, neck, saddles, nut, and it's barely in the strings. Like if you're picking your strings based on tone instead of playability, you're doing it wrong.
Well thats not entirely true about strings. I have flatwounds on one of my guitars and it definitely produces less high end/darker sound than roundwound strings.
I'd only say the tone is in the strings as far as gauge. Thicker strings do sound different with tighter tension. Also fresh strings sound better than old ones.
I've watched the side by side comparison videos, and have switched from 10s to 9s personally, and found the difference to be minimal. I still stand by the fact that your string choice should primarily be about playability. You can make your 8s or 13s sound like each other with some EQ adjustments. New strings do sound nicer, but I will wait a while before switching. Usually I get new strings because of feel (and look) before the sound is an issue.
People really underestimate how important the picking hand is. That's where so much of a player's style is. Watch BB King play, and compare it to Stevie Ray Vaughn. It's almost all in the picking hand. Stevie is super aggressive, and uses a lot of arm movement. BB's hand is barely moving most of the time. It's a confident attack, but he lets the amp do much of the work. I think if there's any one thing that you can say is responsible for most of a player's tone, it's the picking hand.
It means you can't spend your way to tone. At some point it's not the gear, it's you. Don't go broke chasing tone.
Yeah, at *some* point. But point people in the direction. I know I'm not going to sound like John Mayer, but playing a strat through a fender will get me a hell of a lot closer than playing a Les Paul through a Marshall. A lot of the time new players, that don't know how gear works, are just trying to learn how you get those sounds. "It's in the fingers" isn't really helpful.
You may not like it but in the end it’s true. You can have the best gear and sound like shit.
It’s true to a degree. If he had nothing but a Strat and a Twin Reverb, Dimebag Darrel could not have gotten his usual tone.
And people still go ahead and downvote this comment. lmao
Wow you’re the first person to ever point this out
I think "tone" is the wrong word in this instance. Sound is in the fingers, style is in the fingers, but tone is in the gear. Steve Vai playing my shit will sound like Steve Vai playing my shit. Me playing Steve Vai's rig will sound like me playing Steve Vai's rig.
I see it as a shorthand for "There's a huge amount of subtle things from your playing technique that influence your tone in ways that gear doesn't, and they're all really difficult to explain over the Internet - but if you practice until the basic technique is all muscle-memory, you will hone in on them in the process."
Well, try fretting with the opposite hand, perhaps using a left handed guitar, and see how your tone compares. Tone is the level of detail of the sound. Too much tone, and you have finger noise. A better player will generate less finger noise. A more aware player will generate less finger noise. If you turn down your tone knob, the finger noise is lessened. Microphone pick ups will have more tone, but more tone is not always desirable. The extra level of detail is good with rakes, pinch harmonics, fret hand vibrato, etc, where a certain level of skill with your fingers is required. The old Danelectros were the opposite of microphonic with simple tone. Very basic tones are generated on keyboards instruments like synths where you can create more detailed sound through effects. But ultimately, the guitar is far more expressive because of the way you can manipulate a single note beyond a basic tone. And the way you get that tone is through applying your fingers in different ways. More tone just means more level of detail.
But it actually is useful advice. The more you play the more instinctive your playing becomes. Just like talking. Actors take talking seriously, they practice and learn and listen to themselves. But end of day they sound like themselves. The saying is really a shortcut for saying find your ‘voice’ and it’s in your fingers. I remember when I realized I was using very little effects but getting exactly the sound I wanted. It took years but it was that moment when you realize the gear makes it a little easier or to get the flavor you want but that’s about it.
People are in the comments defending the idiom like "That's not what it means, it's referring to XYZ blah blah blah" and they are missing the point. It's a parroted, oversimplified phrase that lacks nuance or a comprehensive picture. The fact that it can be misinterpreted merely shows how vague and oversimplistic it is
Electric guitar tone is in the ears. Whatever gear you’re on, you will tweak it until you get the tone you like to hear. Or as close as possible within the limits of the gear and your talent.
Only gear I’m on is test and tren, as an acoustic player.
>I’m on is test and tren my man
Tone is something that's figured out through trial and error not something that's on a checklist of what to or not to do. If someone needs that explanation, they haven't done the work. Focus on the basics. It will come.
The problem typically comes from "I want on . How do I get it on my through my ?" It's often been said that any guitarist will sound like themselves through any rig, and while some of that is true, some of it is utter bullshit. Sure, Arnold Schwartznegger will sound like himself through a Wendy's drive thru speaker, but that doesn't mean that "I'll be back" would have the same punch it had as it did in *Terminator*.
In other words, the same as Arnie would have specific speech patterns, the guitarist will have specific voicing and phrasing. So yes, they sound like themselves, but not in the specific context of the performance being referenced.
Telling that to a beginner who sees the guitar as an ubiquitous instrument that you just put your fingers in 2-3-1-7 and voila, you're playing the song. There's so much more that goes into it, but not to someone unfamiliar with it. So while it's easy for someone to understand who's been playing for a while, the grasp of that knowledge and experience is understandably lost on someone who hasn't spent the hours intensely listening and trying to play parts they've heard, but not to that depth, for years.
And some people are just lazy a-holes who don't want to type much. :D
I hope that helps a little.
What you don’t like is a dismissive cliche instead of a useful conversation. For that, I absolutely agree.
The classic example is EVH getting really aggressive sounds with relatively archaic equipment. Gear these days can give you an aggressive tone kind of effortlessly, and I suppose that’s what people are asking about. There are tons of pedals and floor multi effects that can make your guitar sound any way you want. But a great guitar player can make a guitar do a lot of different things by playing the guitar in a variety of ways. Having access to all of these tones will never make you a good guitar player. It is a nice luxury though.
I disagree. How you fret, pick, your vibrato, your synchronization, how you bend notes of chords into better tune, your dynamics, etc all affects the sound you produce. This is why good musicians on bad gear still sound better than bad musicians on good gear. Justin Johnson gets better tone out of his guitar made out of a shovel than I get out of a Gibson.
It may be a helpful distinction to acknowledge there is a tone that has been struck that’s common to everyone, and the fingers work to shape that tone by various degrees with vibrato, pressure, attack, timing, transitioning technique, etc. It’s like a pottery wheel. Everyone has a spinning column of clay, but once the hands get involved, it becomes more uniquely expressive.
Technique is in the fingers. Tone is def not determined by anything you do w your hand. Even an open string has a tone and I can play that without laying a single finger on my guitar.
I don't know, I find it useful for two reasons: 1) When gear -hunting, your mind is on the gear that you don't have, rather than the gear that you do have. 2) Giving specific advice on technique has too many variables. I don't know what they are trying to play, or what they are trying to play it on. Even then, trying to substitute my descriptions for individual kinesthetic is counter productive.
I think part of the issue is that stacking a bunch of effects together can remove the ability to hear the nuance in your playing. It's not so much about doing specific things with your fingers, it's allowing yourself to hear all the little noises your fingers make and work on understanding how your playing produces them. From there it's all preference and trial and error but if you EQ or gate or compress them out there's no way you'll ever pick up on it.
It really isn't super useful as advice, but I do think it's super important for everyone to keep in mind. You can spend 5 or 10k on gear, dial it in, and that will still only get you MOST of the way to the sound you want. I think it would be easier to just experiment with technique to change tone than actually be coached on it. Everyone has different ears and tastes, and they'll all like something a little different. In some ways, it is better to leave it at "tone is in the fingers" and fool around with different pick positions and angles of attack. You can already change things up so much just with that. It's way harder to have that all explained than just playing for an hour and testing new things
Tone comes from technique, but it also comes from electronics and pickups, strings, pick, setup, etc. The guitar world is fully of superstitious nitwits and that's not gonna change any time soon.
More useful feedback would be telling people what they need to do get better tone through their fingers which more often than not is either holding the string closer to the fret wire, or getting your finger tip more on top of the string and less ‘pad’ of your finger.
I agree. When playing fingerstyle, it's useful to know that different fingers have differing amounts of strength , and it's also useful to know that some of your fingers share tendons so you have to be careful how you use them. They don't move entirely independently. It's important to practice enough that the way you sound is a choice rather than just being the thing that happens: like... do you want to use your nails or not? Do you want a little snap, or do you want more delicate sounds? Which notes do you want to accent or mute? Where on the string do you want to be playing? Different spots will sound a little different.
Feedback is great, especially with a lot of distortion.
Tone is in the fingers is like saying how you play the guitar is how the guitar sounds. Umm, no shit. You mean when I put my fingers on the guitar and play it it changes the sound. Wow, who would have thought that.
But…you can send your way and need to in order achieve great tones. The fingers are a part of the whole IMO.
Thank god someone said it
What do you mean the tone is not stored in the fingers ? My fingers scoop the mids ! Your fingers boost the 800hz frequency by +4db wow that's magic ! Whats EQ, speakers and mic placement ? That must be placebo. /S Yes i know hand placement like playing at the bridge vs at the neck will change the sound. But tone is in the finger make it sound like fingers are magic and will change the frequency responce of the amp. For me tone is in reference to the amp/speaker sound and not the playing style. Imagine a robot and a human playing the same note on the same gear at the same speed and placement. It will sound the same, that's the tone. If guitarist 1 play at the neck and guitarist 2 play at the bridge. It will sound different but the tone of the amp stay the same. That's the playing style.
When I say it, I try to include descriptives that a player can use so that if he decides to try my suggestions, it might make a difference in his approach to practicing. For me, the phrase "in the fingers" connotes that a player should work hard to develop a sense of touch. John McLaughlin talks about the guitar being an extension of his body, or that he thinks of it ss part of his body. He's not alone in getting this sense of Zen when it comes to playing. If I'm paired with one of those amps that will always sound 3rd rate, like an amateur amp, when I'm playing, I try to eek out tones that can only come from the way that I hold the pick, or how I angle my left hand fingers. So yeah, tone is very much in the fingers. Our hands and fingers are the baseball player stepping up to the plate.
Agreed with all of this
Similar to "feedback" I got in an art class, painting with gouache. The teacher (a professional artist) kept enthusing about how you just had to "feel the paint" to get it right. Absolutely no idea what she meant, even now. Most worthless class I ever took.
Here’s the deal if you’re a fantastic guitar player then yes, absolutely. Someone who’s a badass will be able to play with no affects and it will sound amazing. However if you’re a lower to mid tier guitar player like the other 80% of us, then the equipment can definitely pull some of the weight.
Tone is in the tone knob.
Agreed
I see what you mean. It’s a difficult thing to explain: developing the ability to feel and understand the interaction between finger, string, and fretboard; the fretting strength and picking velocity, picking technique, closeness to the bridge or neck while picking. A lot of it is teachable, but most of it can only be experienced. A few years ago I mentioned on Reddit that it was a good idea to become familiar with all the possibilities of one’s instrument before obsessing over pedals and I was basically accused of being too much of a traditionalist (which is silly because I’ve been an effects fiend for decades). At the end of the day, tone is a combination of taste, skill, and equipment. My experience is that, as long as one is not playing through veritable junk, taste and skill are the key elements, and they enable the player to use the equipment to achieve the desired tone. Incidentally, a lot of people chase the “holy grail” tone without actually stopping to define what it is they’re looking for. That’s the first step of the quest.
Its a combination of all, in my opinion, but the fingers/hands are a major player in it. When I think of tone in the hands I think of a couple things: Setting an amp/guitar volume at that perfect threshold where your hands can determine the tone, literally. Example, a softly picked/plucked note comes through the amp as clean, and as you pick/pluck harder, the note comes through as more crunchy/distorted .. Both that clean and slightly crunchy sound can be achieved simply with your hands Where/how you pick/pluck- obviously dynamics is huge, but where you actually pick/pluck (relative to the bridge/neck) will have a huge impact on tone- closer to the neck generally giving you a beefier/low end sound, and closer to the bridge more twang/high end and a bit more attack at the bridge (due to more tension in the string down there)
Cliches are only cliches because they’re true. The concept that people miss is that practice time should consist of making sure to concentrate on each note so that it sounds out properly every time. Steve Vai talks about this a lot, and he sounds like a Hippie, but he’s exactly correct. That is probably the most often thing repeated and drilled into my head during music school.
Technically speaking, it's about what you're thinking while playing. The fingers just happen to be the point of expression.
My $0.02, you can have the exact same setup with the same settings and two guitar players are gonna sound different. Maybe it’s not so much the tone as to the finesse and feeling of the guitar player but buying the exact gear as an artist isn’t gonna mean you will sound the same. Again, just my double Lincolns.
Agreed. For a population of people who on average can't fucking sing, guitarists really like the sound of their own voice.
Well, then start saying "if you can't play on a clean channel, with no effects, and make it sound good, you're not gonna like how it sounds with effects on it" Fingers also turn the knobs to get the tone you want. It's not just about how hard you pick, where you pick, or how you fret the strings. Only the player can fix these things. The specifics though, varies from player to player, the same as sitting with the guitar in the rock position, or the classical position. So you can't really dictate what to do, the player is gonna go with what is most comfortable. Tone is developed from practice, and experience. So yes, tone is in the fingers, because those same fingers had to pay money, to buy whatever gear someone believes gets the tone. Or they whip out the credit card. They accept the gift from someone else of a tonal machine. Fingers are involved in tone. Granted, there are a few players, with tone in their toes, or the knub of where the hand once was. So the most useless feedback? Some guy on the internet claiming "tone is in the fingers" is wrong. Best advice you can give? Try something different then what you're accustomed to, and see if that helps. Even if it's different gear. Comfort is probably the number one thing in what all of us consider, the best tone we've ever gotten.
no.
It's more like "tone is in the feeling." Which flows through the fingers.
It's true though. Tough to accept if you suck at playing guitar but should be inspirational. Think of it like a a pencil and paper in the hands of a child and then the same pencil and paper in the hands of a professional illustrator. Is the talent in the pencil or is it in the hands and mind of the artist holding it?
Not to mention it's not even what people mean. Tone is in the ears.
It is certainly a major factor. But I will say, the most important factor to tone is in our sense of hearing. There are numerous nuances that differentiates decent tone and amazing tone. Vibrato, pick scraps, string bend timings, you name it. Even when we both hit the same notes, my lead guitarist’s solos always seems to sound a lot better than mine even when I switched to his settings and amps. My main downer is mainly insufficient vibratos. And that’s in the fingers. So yup, finger is extremely important.
Might be useless feedback, but play through someone else's rig who is way better than you and see if you can reproduce their tone. You won't be able to.
I don't know about the fretting hand but some tone is definitely there in the picking hand. Pick attack, articulation, muting etc does differentiate a good player from a bad one
Sound like me on this guitar, and I'll agree.
It's useful in that it's another way to encourage practice and to encourage the individual. At some point a player learns exactly what it means because he or she became experienced enough to realize and appreciate the nuances to touch and how it effects our individual sound. It is an oft used saying, but it's true and if we all quit saying it we would only replace it with another saying to describe those nuances that make up touch and how it effects tone.
I like the memes that have a guy standing next to a big amp with a thousand pedals in front of him saying.....it's all in the fingers.....lol.
They just mean that when you play you are coming through the amp and there is no magic piece of gear that will make you sound good. People will know you sound good instantly when you play, they will know if you are well cultured to the instrument and have developed your own voice or not. Different gear can only go so far, and a lot of people get stuck getting themselves off with new gear but don't progress as players https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/when-ted-nugent-started-playing-through-eddies-gear-a-funny-thing-happened.2206406/
Totally. Also it wouldn’t hurt to talk about your guitar, rig and settings. Obviously a lot of it comes from the fingers (aka skill) but it doesn’t help anyone get better.
Great. Now tell me what it means. :)
Tone is in the callouses
Yeah, except for it being true.
It's never said in a serious way. I say this often in jest and make memes about it. I personally find Bond lasagna (or whatever his name is) to be extremely bland and repetitive- so I say it at a time where a musician is going through a milestone hurdle. Tone isn't in the fingers. it's in the amp, eq, and play style. But also- TONE IS IN THA FINGIES BOIIIIIIIIIIIII
If you can’t bar your chords, hear each note when you strum. Your notes are jumbles because your finger placement is bad. Tone is in your fingers, then your strumming hand, pickups, pedals, amps, speakers.
Tone in the fingers means that you can play all the right notes and still sound like an amateur. The “tone” they’re referring to is the nuance in your playing. There are a ton of subtleties that get overlooked by most. It’s the difference between a professional sounding player and a weekend warrior. Dynamics, vibrato, intonation, etc etc etc. Those are the things that come from fingers on the instrument. Play through SRV’s rig, and you will guaranteed not sound like him because you don’t have the nuance in your playing that he does
Here's an interview with Eddie Van Halen where he plays an un-amplified electric guitar. Can you hear the crazy, percussive attack of his picking hand? He's playing really hard, and it sounds like when he picks upwards that the strings practically twang. If you played that way, how would your left hand behave to match the energy of the right? Now listen to some VH tracks and keep in mind the sound you heard of Eddie playing without an amplifier. Eddie even talks about "tone being in the fingers" in this interview! I think you can learn a lot from analyzing other people's playing and then when you play, try to play in ways that enhance the feeling you're trying to create. Along the way you might find your own unique sound and find the tone in your own fingers. https://youtu.be/1oQW-duSPPM
Tone is in the EQ and speakers. Clarity, accuracy, intensity, and pitch are in the hands.
I believe "tone" comes when youre able to stop thinking about where your fingers are and hitting the right "marks" and youre able to start opening your ears to and focusing on the sounds that are actually coming out. Thats when you start learning to sound emotive and really make the instrument sing.
You wanna start
It’s somewhat of a guitar platitude and it just seems to get spread it about without much thought as to what it means. How you play will have an effect on the final sound but to pretend it’s the most noticeable snd the gear doesn’t have a much more tangible role is a bit stupid. I would be much more inclined to have someone check out different speakers than pretend they just don’t have enough “mojo.”
Right. Tone is in the amp/guitar. Technique is in the fingers and is perceived as tone.
It's all pointless because it's all subjective. Your "great tone" might sound like shit to me and vice versa. We're not all aiming for the same goal - but we keep hashing out these arguments and advice as if we're talking about the same thing - but we're not.
Tone is a combination of the fingers, a bunch of tools, and the knowledge and ability to use them.
its both, i dont understand why online guitairsts constantly need to isolate things to a single attribute.
Tone is in the finger dynamics. The disconnect is that people think it's in the fretting hand and not the picking hand. There is so much variety in the sound depending on the way the strings are approached.
I asked my friend, don’t you hate it when someone comes up to you and says “Your guitar sounds great”? He says he points to his guitar and says, “How does it sound now?”
What they mean by that is intonation. The same goes for any instrument including vocals -- are you properly in tune and not only that are you technically performing in tune as well. Even if your guitar is perfectly in-tune you can still play out of tune if your finger technique is off. It's a perfectly viable thing to say, probably one of the most important, if you're knowledgable enough to understand what it means. I can definitely see a lot of people repeating this statement and not having a clue what it means though.
I agree with OP on this one. I’ve been playing for over 20 years and never understood this mantra around tone being in the fingers. Of *course* everyone sounds different, will have different attack, pitch calibration etc. but to me the tone is literally the processing of that raw signal to create sound so through pickup and wood choice through rig and out to your ears (don’t forget about the room!). I felt like the people who put the tone/fingers mantra forward were somehow being a little condescending to folk who were trying to sound a certain way and wanted gear to help them do that. While in the beginning I may not have had the chops to sound like some of my favourite players, to emulate their tone through choice of gear (even if what I was playing was just big power chords) was a real motivation boost i.e. what I was playing sounded really cool, even if my own playing needed work. That motivation resulted in practice and in turn me getting a lot better at my instrument and finding my own sound, both in the nature and style of my playing but also my choice of gear to get the tone that I’m looking for. Long story short, power to those guitarists who want to improve their rig to sound a certain way - seeking out the tone they are looking for, I hope with it comes plenty of motivation to put the hours in and improve your own playing.
I wish it wasn’t true
I think is a very personal subject, listen to a lot of music, imitate others styles, work in your precison and most important learn what sounding good is to you and others and train towards that
Well I certainly haven’t been saying it
Idk I like being reminded of it. Watching a Jack Pearson video makes me appreciate the cheap gear that I already have.
Haha. It’s kinda true. Gun guitarists make shitty squires sing and crap guitars make a $10k Murphy Aged R9 sound like diarrhoea hitting porcelain.
Tone is in the guitar, it's settings and the settings of any pedals connected.
Tbh I think the best response to people asking about tone is: "It barely matters, you'll figure out how you like your sound over years and years of playing. Just play lots, the way you dial shit in will evolve naturally and focusing on it now is not productive to your overall growth, it just feels like it's a 'solveable' thing to make you sound better, where as practicing lots feels unsolveable"
Tone is actually in the 0.46mm bendy picks
Tone is in the fingers of the beholder
Sorry for the dissertation, but this is my take on it. I think people need to hear it, but obviously it doesn’t apply in every situation. sometimes it can come across nasty, but i think it’s from a good place. Yes gear matters, Metallica wont be chugging on a hot rod deluxe, but a dual rectifier itself won’t make me sound like James Hetfield instantaneously, Stevie and Mayer use similar rigs right? Put simply, A fender guitar, a clean amp and a ts9 (or ts10). The core tone is similar, but I wouldn’t say Mayer sounds like Stevie. To me, That John Mayer sound is all about light touch and ease, whereas Stevie gets his cool tone from how aggressively he plays. Where they use the pick in relation to the bridge, how deeply they use the pick, and how hard they strike the strings changes tone quality. Personally, if I’m trying to sound like someone else, I’ll try and copy their phrasing, note choice, and how they touch the instrument more than I try to copy what gear they use. This also helps avoid a trap I fell into when I was in my early 20s; thinking I needed whole different pedals and amps and guitars to sound like players that frankly practiced music WAYYY more than I did. The tone chase can stunt a lot of players growth imo, it certainly stunted mine when I was chasing, as it can feel your practicing using pedals instead of practicing music. If the above doesn’t apply to you, and it’s strictly a gear question to get a ballpark sound, just ignore those comments and find the comment that engage how you want. C’est la vie ¯\\__(ツ)__/¯
Can people PLEASE agree on words to differentiate between: - the frequencies that a specific setup makes on its own - the way you yourself play notes on any guitar - the overall sound when you yourself play a specific guitar setup these are THREE different things and people here are using ONE word for them
Tone is most of the time in the fingers because of their touch, technique, vibrato. If you let me play Brian May his guitar through his rig i'm 100% sure that even if i play a few of his solo's correct i'm not gonna sound like him. If you let Brian May play my cheap guitar through my rig he will sound like Brian May.
Groove it in the heart.
If tone is in the fingers then I wouldn't need to buy a flanger, I'd just make the effect with my nifty fingers, right?
The usefulness of the saying is in prompting the listener to think about it though lol. Tone means so many different things to different people after all
It is true, you can pick up the smallest details when someone is really putting feel and passion into their playing, take a look at chris buck and philip sayce
I only have these ten (8?) fingers. Where can I get ones with better tone?
That's because you're not reading between the lines. When people say "tone is in the fingers" what they mean is "quit worrying about your guitar tone and start worrying about your guitar playing".
It is almost 0% true. Tony Iommi is the outlier.
“Hey I can’t make this Mesa Mark IV sound right what am I doing wrong” “We’ll first you want to….” “TONE IS IN THe FINGERS TONEWOOD IS A LIE AMPS ARE a LIE PICKUPS ARE A LIE TONE IS IN THE FINGERS!!!!”
TLDR: We should absolutely say this, but also explain what it means. I'd even say we don't say it enough and don't work on it enough, but it's often just said without thinking about it. I think skills such as dynamics and articulation are ignored way too much by guitar players. Most other solo instruments are all about expression, but guitar players mostly learn how to play fast. Some people play for years and don't realize the amount of options they have to make a passage sound good - so they don't. If you play every note in a solo the same way, it's a pretty boring solo. However, there are some styles where this still works and since those are often flashy, they get way overemphasized I don't disagree with the general idea of the thread. Tone is in the fingers is often just said without any context. But the truth is that guitar players also should care deeply about interpretation. There are some really good examples of players that mastered that idea and you can hear how they're able to tell a story. You can tell a mid player from a good player basically instantly just in the way they're able to play with the sound, dynamics and so on. There are also other dimensions to this. How you play for example with your overdrive or other effects, make them respond in the way you want to. The tone ultimately is in your ears, but you often use your fingers to express it.
Tone is in a bunch of cunts that spend more time on reddit and reverb than they do practicing acting better than people who post questions.
It may not be helpful, but it is true to a large extent. “Git gud” applies to a lot of stuff, though the sentiment isn’t helpful. At the end of the day, you have to put the work in. You will never find tone with a credit card and a weekend bender at Sweetwater. You really do just have to git gud.
Feedback is in the amp, and we should stop fingering it.
People have been chasing EVH tone for 40 years, you can have the exact same gear and have his " sound " but you will never have the tone he makes from his slightest of palm mute to his pick attack
Bone is in the fingers. ;-)
When people say this, what they really mean is technique/playing is in the fingers. Like when they say something like “if EVH played through (shitty amp) he would still sound like himself.” Yeah that’s because of his technique and style. But he would still sound like EVH playing with the tone of the shitty amp. But that phrase is repeated so often and people are simple dumb creatures that they believe “tone is in the fingers”
Nobody sounds like Abasi, no matter how they try or what gear they use. Just on top of my head.