How to Dial in the Right Guitar Tone for the Right Situation

Unlock the secrets of guitar tones that can elevate your playing to new heights. Have you ever wondered how the right tone can transform your sound, making it perfectly suited for different musical contexts? Join us as we explore the art of selecting tones, from the classic Fender crunch to the powerful lead tones with added gain. We reveal how simply adjusting your guitar's volume knob can act as a filter, shaping your sound in more ways than just loudness. Through practical demonstrations using backing tracks in keys like C sharp minor and E major, we offer insights on how you can adapt your tone to fit the mood and style of any musical piece.

Get ready to enhance your guitar techniques with simple yet effective adjustments to your instrument's controls. You'll discover how transitioning from a soulful tune like "Little Wing" to the heavier riffs of "Master of Puppets" can be seamless with the right settings. We emphasize the power of simplicity; you don't need a complex setup to achieve great results. By experimenting with your guitar's controls—like the volume, toggle switch, and pickup selector—you can craft a sound that perfectly matches your musical vision. Plus, we spotlight the importance of continuous learning with resources such as the Guitar Zoom Academy to keep your skills sharp and ever-evolving.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:00 Importance of Tone in Guitar Playing
• 11:20 Enhancing Guitar Tone and Techniques

Transcript

Steve: 0:35

Hey, steve, here, thank you so much for joining me. Today we're going to be talking about the importance of choosing the right tone for the job. Now, there's a lot of things here that are variables depending on what it is that you like and what you're going for. You know there's no right or wrong to this, but it's being aware that there's more to it than just turning your volume all the way up and then you know putting your pickup selector on your bridge pickup and then you know going to one setting on your amp and then that's what you use for everything. There's a lot of different stuff in there that you could really explore and try and figure out how to make something sound more appropriate to what you're trying to jam over. So what I want to talk about I've got three different examples of some backing tracks here that I want to play and just kind of show you what I'm going to work with here.

Steve: 1:21

So I usually run two, maybe three different channels when I play. I don't have a bunch of different things, I just run the same kind of thing. So I always like to have something that's a little more in the Fender-ish kind of sound, just that kind of thing that I can use whenever I want something. It's just more a little crunchy, but, you know, a little broken up, but that's about it. And then what I can do is I can move over and then I get into my standard rock distortion tone.

Steve: 1:58

Okay, so more distortion, obviously, and then if I have another channel, I could have one with maybe it's my lead tone, so there's even more gain on there To make things a little bit easier for, like, legato playing or whatever it is I might be doing. But even if I had two channels, I usually set it up as a bit of a crunch and then more of a rock tone, and then I can always use my volume, which is what I wanna talk about. So if I go back to my standard rock tone here, okay, one thing that I can do is I can lower back. For instance, I could go into maybe the middle position. You have two pickups, you might have three pickups, just something where maybe you go a bit more single coil and lower down your volume a little bit and you get in that territory. So I'm going from here to this, so it's a little more than my.

Steve: 3:06

Fender-ish kind of tone, but it's still not that. So I'm a big advocate for learning how to roll your volume off and on, and please always remember that your volume is not really a volume like on a car stereo or a home stereo or something where you're just turning down the volume. It really doesn't work that way. The volume knob on a guitar is almost like a filter, because if I turn it all the way up and I turn it back a little bit, you can hear that some of the distortion is going away. There are other frequencies and stuff going away as well or getting minimized. There are other frequencies and stuff going away as well or getting minimized, and then I can pick a little softer and I get a completely different sound.

Steve: 3:51

So the point I'm trying to make is that you could change channels on your amplifier to get more drastic changes. But then what you can do is you can use your volume and your toggle switch to switch on that particular channel so you might have a little more, a little less, whatever it might be. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to play a track here. This one is in C sharp minor, and I'm going to go back to my kind of Fender-ish crunchy kind of tone right there and I'm just going to play a little bit over the top of this. So we're going to see if this sounds a little more appropriate. Now again, there's no right or wrong, we just want to talk about how it sounds. Thank you, Okay, so that's my first track. Then what I want to do is I'm going to turn that down just a little bit. Then what I'm going to do is this time I'm going to go over to my kind of rock channel. I'm going to play a little bit there. So now it's going to be more aggressive, but it's still. You know, for me the tone I'm always looking for in my distortion is something that's a little more kind of creamy. It's not edgy and raw. Although some people really love that tone and I think that's wonderful, that isn't really what I tend to look for in my tones. So now I'm going to play a little bit same sort of idea.

Steve: 5:31

Okay, so you have to kind of decide for yourself. Okay, so you have to kind of decide for yourself. Well, did you like the first one better, or the second one? Now, what I'm going to do is the same thing. I'm going to stay right where I am. I'm just going to drop my volume back a little bit. Okay, so here we go.

Steve: 6:30

Thank you Okay.

Steve: 7:15

So was that a little bit better? Not enough, like for me. I kind of feel like this would be fine on that rock channel, turned up a little bit and then maybe, when it gets really quiet, you know, I could back off a little bit, but it just depends. So now let's say I go to the next one here. This one's going to be an E major. Let's take a listen to this one a little bit. Here I'm going to go back to the kind of Fender-ish crunch.

Steve: 7:55

The.

Steve: 7:56

Okay, that's pretty nice. I kind of like that. Okay, now I'm going to move over to the rock channel and just kind of see how that sounds. So I'll start just back a little bit. Much more aggressive, right, but I could back that off, right. So again, I think they're both perfectly fine. But if we go to the next one, this is a more rock one, right.

Steve: 9:50

So now, if we listen to this, now, if I was down here on the crunch channel, okay, sounds good. You know, it's kind of cool in a funky way, but it's really hard to get over the top of this, even if I turned up my volume a little bit. This might be a case where I really do want to kind of push the level a little bit in terms of the gain so I can get above that and get a little edgy with it, see. So that might be one where it's a little bit better to try and get over the top of that with more gain, like I've got right now, get a little more aggressive with my playing. But it all depends on what you like. So my point is is that don't just think about, you know, here's my guitar and I turn everything all the way up and turn my amp in one channel and then I do everything with that channel. Now, if you only have the one channel and you love it, there's nothing wrong with it. I think that's wonderful.

Steve: 11:21

Then explore more of what you can do with the volume, the tone control, the toggle switch, pickup, selector right, any of that kind of stuff, to make it more applicable to the jam or the music that you're trying to play over. Now, if you were playing over something like Little Wing and then all of a sudden you're playing you know, I don't know something by Metallica Master of Puppets, obviously it's going to be a little bit different in the setup, so you might drastically want to change those presets or you'd want to just subtly try and change some things on your guitar. But it's worth looking at because oftentimes when I get into conversations with people or when I'm doing a lesson with somebody you know and they've got their gear and we're talking about stuff, they really don't do much for changing tone. And I again, I don't believe that you need 15 different you know channels and five amps. If that's your thing, that's perfectly fine. But you can get away with just doing a lot of manipulation with just a few different things.

Steve: 12:14

So, anyway, take care, stay positive. Do me a favor If you're looking at trying to elevate your guitar playing at hyper speed, what I'd love for you to do is check out the Guitar Zoom Academy. It's a thing that we've got that is just amazing. People are loving it, people are learning a lot. We've got a wonderful community and, again, if you've been struggling with playing and it's time to get out of that struggle, check out Guitar Zoom Academy. All right, thanks, talk to you later.