HughesJB4 wrote:
BaldFriede wrote:
HughesJB4 wrote:
This topic is perhaps getting off a bit topic, but in regards to Baldfriede's post, I want to chime in here. I cannot really agree with your statement on newer production reducing the "distorted sound" of guitars in newer recordings. I can name many bands of today that sound far more distorted than say, Yngwie Malmsteen's guitar did back in 1984. Why is this? A lot of it comes down to the actual guitar gear used. Guitarists, like myself and many others, pick their gear (budget dependent though) to please their own quest for what they think sounds good, not what the audience think will be a good tone. Malmsteen's tone is deliberately very clear and clean sounding, yet he using a Marshall Plexi Super Lead Head on 10, combined with an overdrive pedal for more gain, so he is actually using a lot of gain to achieve his guitar tone. Same with Eric Johnson, but even more so, by using a guitar rig that features multiple overdrive pedals, and is highly compressed, yet sounds smooth as butter, and he has sounded like this since the 80s, and sounds like this now with the "newer production". A lot of high gain players, with the exception of the doom metal scene etc, like our high gain, but yet with good clarity, and generally we don't go for the buzzy, "distorted sounding" tones some lower gain players prefer.
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Well, if this is true, all I can say is: And you guys wonder why so many people say the prog-rock of the 70s was better . I can't for the life of mine understand why someone would want to sound like a toothless terrier. (Shaking my head incredulously).
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I wasn't referring to modern versus older prog at all. I was talking more about the modern high gain guitar tone in general, which has it's applications in metal, shred and jazz fusion (the 3 primary genres that come to mind right now anyway). Not every modern guitar tone is buttery smooth, there are still many players utilising the more rough edged and mid range scooped tone. The tone goes hand in hand with the musical context. If you're playing jazz fusion, you're not going to use a molten heavy metal guitar tone, instead you will be using heaps of gain (in the case of the more technically orientated bands anyway), rolling off some high end and it will give it the smooth buttery character. For metal, you can use a smooth lead tone, but when it comes to heavy chugging rhythms, that smooth tone sometimes just doesn't cut it, so you boost the high and low end, cut mid range and that gives the tone a more gnarly harsh feel to it. "I can't for the life of mine understand why someone would want to sound like a toothless terrier" You won't sound like a toothless terrier, you're just getting the tone you need for the application. You say "I can't understand" but you're exactly right, because you're not the one chasing the tone, we, the guitarists are the ones that can understand what we want to sound like so we chase those tones as a result. Every serious guitarist can testify they would rather get a tone for themselves rather than who is listening, because in the end if you want to express yourself in the way you want, getting your own tone is what liberates you (the guitarist).
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For fusion I would think that guitar tone is adequate, but for metal and shred? No way! As I have said in another thread, metal bands simply sound too clean for the aggressive music they play. The sound and the music don't go together, in my opinion. Instead they resort to double bass-drumming, as if that would make the music more aggressive. It does not at all; those bass-drum thunderstorms only manage to flatten the sound. I really love aggressive music, but sadly prog metal is anything but that, in my opinion.
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