Articles about guitarists inevitably take a turn toward describing their “rigs.” It’s usually in connection with discussion about their “tone.” When I was first learning to play guitar, I remember reading articles and feeling like I should understand what “tone” was – and knowing I didn’t. Not really. So I took the authors at their word about what strings or picks or whatever I should buy in order to make my guitar sound good. And I pretended it made a difference.
A tacit assumption behind the obsession with guitar “rigs” is that the tone derives from the hardware they use and the ways those various pieces of hardware are connected and set. That’s wrong. But it makes sense that people would believe it. Guitarists talk about chasing their tone and most spend years – perhaps their entire lives – trying to perfect it. They talk, in excruciating detail, about every nuance and iteration in the chase: trying different magnetic materials in the pickups, different windings, different string gauges, different fretwire, wood species, effects pedals, electronics gurus, endless lists of brands… The designer who worked with Eddie Van Halen to develop his signature brand of amplifiers said Eddie didn’t want any plywood to be used in the speaker cabinet, because he wanted the sound of solid wood. The designer thought that was over the top, so he put plywood in a hidden part of the cabinet purposely – believing it was impossible to hear the difference. Eddie did hear it though. And made him change it.
Guitarists describe it as a quest, fueled by dissatisfaction with what they hear. Or, perhaps more accurately, a mismatch between what they hear in their heads (Eddie called it jape) versus the sound actually produced by the physical materials they have at their disposal. And the epic storyline that is evoked, very naturally leads the story’s audience to conclude that a successful guitarist’s rig is the result of successfully completing that quest. It seems to be the end itself: the place they finally found their tone.
There are two problems with that storyline . One is that any guitarist’s tone changes throughout their lifetime. Many talk about how it changed from one album to the next – sometimes because their hardware changed, but often because their tastes did. The other problem is that tone involves hardware, but it cannot be “in” the hardware. I recently watched a YouTube video of Billy Joe Armstrong’s guitar tech talking about his rig. The interviewer expressed surprise that there wasn’t much to it and the tech replied that most of Billy Joe’s tone comes from his fingers. Lots of guitarists have talked/written about this, but Jerry Cantrell illustrates it really well:
I remember hearing stories of Van Halen opening for Ted Nugent, and Nugent going out to watch Eddie, saying, “What is this guy playing through?!” Then he went and plugged into Eddie’s stuff, and he sounded like Ted Nugent. I have first hand knowledge of that: When we toured with Van Halen, sometimes I’d be late getting to sound check and Ed would be on stage playing with my band, plugged into my stuff, and he sounded like Eddie Van Halen. And when I played through his stuff, I sounded like me. So gear can only get you so far with tone and sound adjustment, but basically at some point, you are who you are, and that is literally in your flesh. You know, it’s not the car, it’s the driver.
Dweezil Zappa has even more empirical evidence to make the point. He experimented with numerous guitarists’ rigs – as in, he had access to lots of guitarists and created opportunities for himself to play their guitars, through their actual rigs, which had been set-up for recording. His was an extensive and rigorous – if self-indulgent – field study involving Eddie, Vai, Frank Zappa, and countless others who have contributed parts to a now apparently a more than 70-minute song he has been recording for decades. And he concluded that, no matter whose equipment he was playing through, he always sounded like Dweezil.
It is true that you can’t get a good sound from bad hardware, so the hardware does matter. But not as much as the fingers. It’s not the guitar, it’s the guitarist.
It took me a while to figure out what all of this means – all this talk of “tone.” I still remember the first time I recognized a guitarist by his tone. I was 19 years old and walking down the hallway of my dormitory when I heard music coming from a friend’s room. I didn’t recognize the song and it was at an instrumental section, so there were no vocals that would help me identify the band by a singer’s voice. Still, I knew the sound of the guitar. I stuck my head in the door and asked “who is this?” knowing the answer, but not being confident enough to say it. My friend frowned at me and asked “you don’t know?” He, too, knew that I knew. It was Eddie, of course, playing a solo at a live concert. I can’t articulate how I recognized his tone. I had only been listening to his stuff for a year or two at that point, but that was enough. I still have no idea what he meant by “jape” – but I recognize it when I hear it.
There are certainly guitarists who replicate the sound of others. This is why there are so many articles about so-and-so’s rig. And so many YouTube videos about “the right way to play yadda-yadda song.” To sound exactly like another guitarist, you must duplicate their hardware as well as their physical behavior in playing. And lots of people work really hard to prove they can do this. It is what tribute bands do – and lots of YouTubers whose names I don’t know.
A friend once asked me to learn Dust in the Wind, because he thought it sounded cool. I figured out the chords and the finger-picking pattern. It didn’t feel right in my fingers or sound right in my ear though, so I worked with it until I found a way of playing it that felt natural to me. The differences were minor, but I liked my way better. When I played it for my friend, his response was ‘that’s pretty good, but not quite right.’ I just blinked at him for a moment, unable to respond, and completely unsure why I was so infuriated. In retrospect I can see he wasn’t interested in hearing anything of me in my playing. He just wanted me to reproduce what he was used to hearing – like a radio. He didn’t see me as a musician – he just wanted me to be a replicant.
But I don’t see myself as a replicant.
Imitation is not the same thing as inspiration. The world is filled with people who can play just like a famous musician, but are not themselves famous – at least partly because they don’t have their own voice. In the same way, good forgeries of famous paintings look like the originals, but lose their value as soon as they are exposed as forgery. The difference between finding one’s tone versus replicating someone else’s tone is like the difference between playing music versus playing the notes on the page.
This is not to say imitation is inherently bad. Mimicry is the starting point for developing skill. It is how a person learns and perfects the basic techniques and quality standards of their craft. But, for artists – for craftspeople in general – imitation is not an end in itself.
I’ve watched Kenny Wayne Shepherd talk about other guitarists that influence his playing, demonstrate licks that perfectly replicate the sound of those guitarists, and then suddenly integrate the musical concepts and techniques he had been demonstrating into a new lick that is 100% Kenny. Same guitar. Same set-up. Same take. He demonstrates a Stevie Ray Vaughan lick and it sounds like Stevie. Then he demonstrates an BB King lick and you hear BB. Then he demonstrates a way to put the two musical ideas together and suddenly it sounds distinctly KWS. If you couldn’t see the video, you would swear all three guitarists were there. Then he adds a Clapton lick and Clapton seems to be in the room too. And suddenly Kenny launches into an improvised solo that is even more KWS. Kenny learned to imitate SRV and BB and Clapton – and Albert Collins and Albert King and Muddy Waters and probably a countless other great guitarists. Then created something new with the ideas he had learned from them. I think it is incredibly telling that, like Eddie, Kenny can describe very specifically the experiences he has had with other guitarists from which he learned – and how he innovated with/on those ideas. I also think that is what BB King was talking about when he said “I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.”
Paul Davids is an interesting counter-example. He also replicates what other guitarists do, but for the purpose of instruction. He meticulously breaks down the minutia of noteable solos or riffs to demonstrate what the originator is doing, so viewers can also learn from them. In addition to the guitar, he plays several other instruments expertly. When he publishes compilations like this one, he often re-records all the tracks for whole sections of a song himself, presumably to avoid automated detection by YouTube’s copyright protection system and the danger the video might get taken down. His re-recordings clearly are not intended to exactly match originals. However, unlike KWS, Davids does not seem to have a distinct style of his own. He is really good at demonstrating what other guitarists are doing, which makes him a good instructor. But his arrangements lack expression. The notes are all correct – melody, phrasing, rhythm, etc. are spot on. But there is nothing of Davids himself in the music, so it feels a bit lifeless. A car with no driver. Unidentifiable voices in the crowd.
Paul Davids’s YouTube videos are very distinctive though. The camera angles, lighting, editing, writing… everything about them is crafted to convey his tone as a teacher. They are fantastic learning resources! And I enjoy watching them. He always surprises me with details I hadn’t noticed or considered about familiar songs. And he is a lot like Frank Howarth as a videomaker. They work in different mediums, but I love to watch both as much for the stuff I learn from them as to be entertained by them. Both are engaging and a little bit silly. Both have developed bits that regular viewers recognize as inside jokes – but newcomers can also appreciate, because they stand on their own. I feel like I have a personal relationship with both of them. So I don’t think it is a bad thing that Davids doesn’t imbue music with his own tone. It might obscure his carefully crafted tone as a teacher.
What is tone? I don’t know. I mean, I do know. But I can no more articulate how I recognized a guitarist’s tone than I can explain how I can pick out a familiar voice in a crowd. It is just what comes from that person. It is not the car. It’s the driver. Know what I mean?