I'm right with ya.
The Age-Old Question Is The Wrong Question!
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Juan Luis Vidal
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jamjam1
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I don't agree. I'm sure David Grissom and John Mayer spend a lot more time playing than they do obsessing over tone. I guess you could say it's a question of relative time spent.Nope. You're conflating the important question of tone with the important question of skill. They're both valid - and separate - things to talk about.
The tone question is as valid for a virtuoso as a less skilled player.
Highly skilled players still obsess over tone. They're two different topics.
My brother is a visual artist (whose work was shown at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery this past summer). He has always bought the best paints and brushes, and for a long time has mixed his own paint to his liking. I don't mean mixing two colors you bought in tubes. I mean, he gets the materials paint is made from and makes his own freaking paint! He's obsessed with color.
I doubt you'd go tell him he needs to spend more time practicing his painting than mixing paint colors, because both are important things. This is one of his oil paintings, it's not a photograph:
Nor would you tell David Grissom or John Mayer to stop worrying about their gear and practice more. So it's a bit too facile to recite the "shut up and play yer guitar" thing. Lots of people want to both practice AND sound the best they can.
And whether one can only play whole note phrases and not 1/32d note phrases, ya might as well at least sound good.
As for your brother, no disrespect meant, but there are many very successful artists who didn't use the best paints, Rothko for one. I'm sure your brother can make photorealistic paintings with off the shelf paints, he doesn't need to mix his own. There are many photorealistic painters out there who do exactly that. The issues with lesser quality paints are twofold: lesser quality paints have less pigment, so you need to use more (not really such a terrible problem) and two, they degrade 40-50-100 years later. Not really an issue for quality of painting in the near term. In fact, you might be proving my point in a weird way...your brother's skill as a photorealistic painter is in the skill of mixing the right colors, not using better materials. Anyway, not sure that's an appropriate analogy as making paints isn't that much of a time suck as worrying about gear and tone. chasing.
Nope. You're conflating the important question of tone with the important question of skill. They're both valid - and separate - things to talk about.
The tone question is as valid for a virtuoso as a less skilled player.
Highly skilled players who practice until their fingers bleed still obsess over tone. They're two different topics, and focusing on one doesn't eliminate the other.
Here's an analogy:
My brother is a visual artist (whose work was shown at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery this past summer). He has always bought the best paints and brushes, but for a long time has mixed his own paint to his liking.
I don't mean mixing two colors you can buy in tubes. I mean, he gets the materials paint is made from, and makes his own freaking paint like artists did in the Renaissance!
He's obsessed with color.
I doubt you'd go tell him he needs to spend more time practicing his painting than mixing paint colors, because both are important things. This is one of his oil paintings, it's not a photograph:
Well, I'm obsessed with color, too. Tone color. In fact, as someone who gets very well-paid to play guitar - keep in mind I'm not as good as most of you, my main instrument is piano - I'd say it's mandatory to play with good tone.
Nor would you tell David Grissom or John Mayer to stop worrying about their gear and practice more. Lots of people, even the virtuosi, want to both practice AND sound the best they can.
Whether one can only play whole note phrases and not 1/32d note phrases, ya might as well at least sound good. So sure, practice, play as well as you possibly can. But when your hands get tired and you can't play another note? It's OK to obsess over tone.
The tone question is as valid for a virtuoso as a less skilled player.
Highly skilled players who practice until their fingers bleed still obsess over tone. They're two different topics, and focusing on one doesn't eliminate the other.
Here's an analogy:
My brother is a visual artist (whose work was shown at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery this past summer). He has always bought the best paints and brushes, but for a long time has mixed his own paint to his liking.
I don't mean mixing two colors you can buy in tubes. I mean, he gets the materials paint is made from, and makes his own freaking paint like artists did in the Renaissance!
He's obsessed with color.
I doubt you'd go tell him he needs to spend more time practicing his painting than mixing paint colors, because both are important things. This is one of his oil paintings, it's not a photograph:
Well, I'm obsessed with color, too. Tone color. In fact, as someone who gets very well-paid to play guitar - keep in mind I'm not as good as most of you, my main instrument is piano - I'd say it's mandatory to play with good tone.
Nor would you tell David Grissom or John Mayer to stop worrying about their gear and practice more. Lots of people, even the virtuosi, want to both practice AND sound the best they can.
Whether one can only play whole note phrases and not 1/32d note phrases, ya might as well at least sound good. So sure, practice, play as well as you possibly can. But when your hands get tired and you can't play another note? It's OK to obsess over tone.
PS - sorry, I edited my post before you posted and created a new one, so you got ahead of me, but it's essentially the same argument.
It's not a question of equal time spent, is it? Where did I say the majority of one's time has to be spent at it?
It's a question of spending the amount of time you want to as an artist. So yes, relative time. We agree.
It's not a question of 'necessary'. It isn't a binary choice.
It's a question of what is important to the artist, isn't it? And it's important - to him. If it helps him with his creativity, that's a good thing.
It certainly hasn't hurt. As for artists who choose off the shelf paints, it works for them, so nothing wrong with that. Respecting one doesn't mean disrespecting the other, at least for me.
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Incidentally, when I use the term, 'artist', I mean everyone, all of us, as well as all of the recording artists we respect for their playing.
Every time we play music - whether we consider ourselves good or not - we're creating art, and I call that being an artist.
Tone isn't a substitute for playing well. It's an adjunct to playing well. One feeds off the other, as far as I am concerned.
I just think it's pretty important, no one else has to.
Of course, if practicing is so much more important than gear, why are we all wasting even one second here? I can only speak for myself, but I find shooting the breeze with other players both fun and enlightening, and (for me) it's an important part of being a musician.
Every time we play music - whether we consider ourselves good or not - we're creating art, and I call that being an artist.
Tone isn't a substitute for playing well. It's an adjunct to playing well. One feeds off the other, as far as I am concerned.
I just think it's pretty important, no one else has to.
Of course, if practicing is so much more important than gear, why are we all wasting even one second here? I can only speak for myself, but I find shooting the breeze with other players both fun and enlightening, and (for me) it's an important part of being a musician.
jamjam1
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It's a good question. The funny thing is people talk about gear and we hardly know what genres and types of playing people are doing. You probably see people with vastly different styles and skill levels comparing gear when they probably need completely different things.
Anyway, back to your point. I kind of see them as different things. I could spend hours with ambient tone pedals because I grew up with a keyboard and did that kind of thing. But I see my guitar skills as working well with different tones and my time better spent improving them. Maybe I'll change my mind when I start to plateau.
On a relevant note, I'm a realist painter also and don't like using student grade paints. They take more work to translate what you want onto the canvas. But interestingly I find better paints have a different sort of problem...too much pigment...and so then you're spending a lot of time toning down the color to create the realism you're after. Like with guitar I personally paint without thinking about the specific paints I'm using. I let my eyes pick from the paints I have and I'm able to create incredibly realistic paintings that way...maybe that's similar to guitar in that you can get what you're after with almost any gear.
I guess a good analogue is that all the great paints out there you can find now are a lot of fun and so I find myself with ones that are incredibly vivid and unique but that I can't find a use for because I just don't need that color. Gear is fun, I won't disagree there.
veinbuster
Zombie Three, DFZ
I never really thought about guitar or amp this way, but the reality is that I played for over 20 years before I spent more on a guitar than the amp. I might have been delusional, but my thinking was basically as follows:
I just need an instrument that will stay in tune and will ring every note. It’s my fingers job to make the song sound right. I need an amp that will let people anywhere in the room hear what I am playing. I paid about 3x for each of the amps I bought than my instrument. I paid a bit more for materials to build my dream cabinet than I had paid for the instrument.
So...to sort of answer the almost right question: I would rather hear what I am playing and believe that to do that, I have to pay more for the right amp.
I just need an instrument that will stay in tune and will ring every note. It’s my fingers job to make the song sound right. I need an amp that will let people anywhere in the room hear what I am playing. I paid about 3x for each of the amps I bought than my instrument. I paid a bit more for materials to build my dream cabinet than I had paid for the instrument.
So...to sort of answer the almost right question: I would rather hear what I am playing and believe that to do that, I have to pay more for the right amp.
Bogner
Redwood Original - Pure Blood
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Now You Tell Me...(Shakes Head).
andy474x
Knows the Drill
I made a lot of mistakes buying the wrong gear for what I was trying to achieve over the years, especially early on. Pickups when I should’ve bought an amp, an amp when I should’ve bought speakers… I don’t even want to think about it!
I think we live in a golden era of guitar gear, in a sense, because there are guitars and amps available for a fraction of the price of high end gear, that get a lot of the tone (or feel, playability, etc.). I’ve never really thought about gear in terms of saving money here, to spend more money there, to an extreme. For example, if you gave me $2500 to buy a guitar and amp, I wouldn’t buy a $500 guitar and $2000 amp. I’d probably split the money a little more equally, with a mind toward acquiring gear that’s more reliable. You can get a version of almost anything at any price point.
The “expensive this and cheap that” mental exercise is, IMO, more of a YouTube clickbait inspired gimmick, than a real question that most of us consider - again, at least to that extreme.
In summary, I agree - one should think about what they’re doing to determine where they’re spending, but most of us are gear whores so bad that it’s a non-issue.
I think we live in a golden era of guitar gear, in a sense, because there are guitars and amps available for a fraction of the price of high end gear, that get a lot of the tone (or feel, playability, etc.). I’ve never really thought about gear in terms of saving money here, to spend more money there, to an extreme. For example, if you gave me $2500 to buy a guitar and amp, I wouldn’t buy a $500 guitar and $2000 amp. I’d probably split the money a little more equally, with a mind toward acquiring gear that’s more reliable. You can get a version of almost anything at any price point.
The “expensive this and cheap that” mental exercise is, IMO, more of a YouTube clickbait inspired gimmick, than a real question that most of us consider - again, at least to that extreme.
In summary, I agree - one should think about what they’re doing to determine where they’re spending, but most of us are gear whores so bad that it’s a non-issue.
Like you, I'm in the arts, in my case making my living composing for TV ads and documentaries, etc., for 30-odd years.
We fundamentally agree, so I realize I'm preaching to the choir, and I'm also splitting hairs to a degree. But I have a certain passion about the various aspects of things, as I'd imagine you do.
What makes this place great is the interaction of our various points of view. It's also great fun to have conversations with folks who are (mainly) of like mind!
Agreed. It's more of a thought experiment than anything else, but it can help people focus whatever interest they have.
jamjam1
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It definitely is. Especially in the arts since that's not so easy to find. I'm glad I found this community.
I decided to think back to when to when I had much less disposable income. Where did I put my bigger money? Well, my first PRS was my high dollar purchase. I always had nice, good sounding gear but I put it into the guitar first. It was only a matter of time (4-5 years) before I sunk an equal share into an amp.
Wyzard
Untied Kingdom
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Timing/ADSR are derivatives of the equations you're solving as you play; "texture" results from the interplay of touch and gear, so that is part of the flow.
Yeah, that's it.
[nods sagely]
I'd say that both skills and gear are inseparable parts of our individual musical expression ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[shakes head, breathes deeply, and goes back to listening to PMG: "The Way Up"]
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tiboy
New Member
To me it’s all about talent. I joined a band in 8th grade. I had a Five and Dime guitar and amplifier. B had an expensive SG and any equally good amp. He sounded so much better. Must be the gear, right? We switched. He made my cheap rig sound good while I made his expensive rig sound bad. He would go on to make his living as a studio musician. I would go on to become a midlife and eventually senior guitar hack despite having both the best guitar(s) and amp(s) money could buy. In truth he was a better player in 8th grade than I am now despite the expensive gear and thousands of hours of practice and playing.
Jason Penn
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you still have my old dgt?
Granted, my question assumes a level playing field in terms of talent, so there's that, but there's truth in the fact that some folks are born with an innate knack for musicality that can't really be quantified. It applies to any form of the arts.
I have kind of a thing with music; my brother is a fantastic painter; my son is better at music than I am; my granddaughter started doing professional musical theater at 10, and two years later is still getting serious roles in adult productions. And you should hear her sing a pop tune, it's staggering.
So something's at work here, maybe a mysterious combination of nature and nurture that makes it all click, but I have no idea what it is.
As I said, however, regardless of skill level, ya might as well sound as good as you can.
henryjurstin13
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YESSAH!!!! It ain't going nowhere! It still gets plenty of attention!
Hope all is well with ya!
