I’ve always been obsessed with speed and this has caused an occasional existential crisis as a guitarist.  Clean, consistent, reliable speed is hard to develop and maintain.  Sometimes I’d like to give up.

Another source of crisis is hearing disparaging comments about shredding by guitarists who claim that shredders are on the wrong track by being concerned with speed or that their playing is unmusical.  I’ve heard every insult imaginable directed at shredders from other guitarists.  Guitarists who, quite frankly, suck.  That’s right, I’m in the mood to give back today.  I believe that Al Dimeola stated something to the effect that those who don’t like playing fast are jealous because they can’t (I’m taking a broad liberty interpreting something I read in a Guitar Player interview).  I agree.  I’ve studied the guitar for a long time and not just heavy metal shredding, which I’ve always liked.  I’ve studied classical, jazz, and everything in between.  I’ve concluded that guitarists should play fast and should work hard to perfect clean speed.

My conclusion is not merely based on aesthetics.  There are reasons based on the physics of the instrument that require speed.  The physics has to do with attack, sustain and decay, the stiffness/elasticity of the body, strings and other components of the guitar system.  How you initiate the movement of the string determines the harmonics present in the initial sound.  For an acoustic guitar the physics of the top and the rest of the body will alter the frequency distribution driven by the string.  After being plucked the sound eventually decays.  What might not be common knowledge is that higher harmonics decay faster than the lower harmonics.  After some time only the fundamental remains.

Stringed instruments that are bowed (i.e. the violin family of instruments) are constantly being driven, having energy put into the string to maintain movement.  The nature of the bow-string connection determines the harmonic content of the sound and is replenished in time.  This is similar to woodwind and brass instruments having air pumped in them.  For the guitar and other stringed instruments that are plucked or hammered the sound cannot be sustained.  To help create the illusion of a sustained sound guitarists have developed tremolo techniques.  This is basically what Eddie Van Halen does in Eruption when speed picking the melody to violin Etude No. 2 by Kreutzer.  Classical and Flamenco guitarists invest quite a bit of time developing good tremolo technique, and so do the rest of us (at least I think we should).  Speed sounds awesome, speed creates feeling.  Speed is the right thing to do.  Guitars need to be played fast, they were made to be played fast!

To begin, this is a discussion about my experiences with and opinions regarding the use of effects in electric guitar playing.  There is a lot to say and it may not be well organized.  In the end it’s not a judgment in favor or against effects, just my take on them.  I’ll state up front, I don’t like them.

I’ve been playing guitar for many years.  I’ve played acoustic, classical and a variety of electric guitars.  I’ve even built a couple electric guitars when I was younger.

One thing I never got into as much as my guitar playing friends was the use of effect pedals to “shape” my sound.  I prefer a clean sound, the cleaner the better.  Sure I may have used distortion once in a while, wah wah pedal, etc, but I never understood the use of phasers, flangers, chorus, echo or delay loops, etc.  Using these types of effects always seemed to me to take the pleasure out of playing guitar.

There seems to be a consensus among some guitarists that these effects hide mistakes, or cover up sloppy playing or make the guitar easier to play.  I’d like to take a few moments to address these points.  Based on my own experience this is not true.  Many effects use the signal your guitar produces to create the effect.  So in theory if you play a bunch of sloppy crap the effect will amplify the sloppiness and crappiness of your playing.

For some folks a gritty sloppy fuzzy sound is what they are going for, they want effects rather than melodic phrasing as a representation of their musical vision.  If this is what you’re going for then you don’t have to be a great player anyway.  You are probably treating your guitar and effects as a sound/noise machine.  I can appreciate this as there is no pretense to promote one’s self as a virtuoso of any sort.

However there are many guitarists that use effects to cover up mistakes, or at least think that it does, or make the guitar easy to play.  As I’ve mentioned above effects typically amplify mistakes!  So why use them?  I think in many cases it’s a folly of youth and inexperience or bad advise from others.  Guitarists experimenting with pedals for the first time are probably to engrossed with the special effect they’re creating to focus on their playing.  Also, hearing the details in a guitarist’s technique is like tasting flavors in a wine or coffee, you have to be trained to hear the details.  So in some sense when playing for the masses you can get away with some wild crazy fuzzy slop and pull it off.  Perhaps only the other guitarists in the audience will hear through it.

So, as a method for covering mistakes don’t do it, practice more.  Though I will say this, I am not anti-effects I am anti-(bad reason for using effects).  A note to young or new guitarists out there: if you want to use a variety of pedals to shape your sound go for it, but be prepared to practice practice practice.  Depending on the sound you choose you may need more practice than average to avoid making a mess.

As a method for making the guitar easier to play, I haven’t much to say about this except this is simply wrong.  There is a connection in the mind between the feeling in your hands and the sound you hear come out of your system.  If your guitar is really hard to play or sounds like shit through the amp clean, then you should get it adjusted by a professional or get a new, better, guitar.  The guitar should feel comfortable and easy to play.  A hard to play guitar is just fighting you and that’s not worth anything.

Here is an even bigger myth.  If I practice with a clean sound and get really good I’ll be great with effects on.  No no no!  This approach might mess you up beyond repair.  As I mentioned in the last paragraph there is a mental connection between the feel of the guitar in your hands and the sound you hear.  There are delicate adjustments we make to achieve a good clean sound.  For example do you float your picking hand or rest it on the strings?  Your answer may be related to comfort and what you think is easier for speed picking.  Another driving factor is whether or not you are going to excite open string resonances.  On a clean guitar some open string noises are not noticeable while on a HOT guitar any open string glitch will stick out like a sore thumb, overpowering the lick you’re trying to play.  Of course you could do like many shredders and put some tape on the strings, as one does for two hand tapping, to avoid this but the point I’m making is that you will adjust your playing one way or another to accommodate the sounds your system creates and the sensitivity of your system to tiny perturbations in hand placement etc.  The development of your touch is highly dependent on the feedback you get from your ear.  So it is crucial that you find a sound that you like and practice with your system set up for that sound.

For me, I like they way my guitar sounds with little or no effects, so I play that way.  It happened gradually, partly because I started getting more and more into jazz, and jazz guitarists typically play with a clean warm tone.  But I also just found that I couldn’t hear and appreciate the music I was trying to play when effects were being employed.  It is true that in some cases when I want to replicate the sound of another guitarist when playing in a cover band I will try to identify the effects being used and employ them.  That’s my job.  Lately I’ve been avoiding those situations.  I just don’t care to be in a band that’s trying to recreate Rush, Zep or any other band’s sound so well that the audience is impressed with our copy cat abilities.  Most guitarists I like to listen to play fairly clean, not a lot of effects that I can hear.

Now for a philosophical 180 degree turn.  I’ve been promoting what I call a “clean guitar sound” throughout this blog and to tell you the truth I couldn’t define “clean” for you.  As I gradually developed a clean, effect free, sound over time I did so by turning off the overdrive, reverb, chorus, etc, leaving only the amplification and tone adjustments.  But those are still in some sense effects.  You see, what I began to realize as I converged on a minimalist approach to my tone is that the electric guitar is one big effect.  All the physics behind the sound is in the electronics and the strings, as opposed to the body, and its construction.  Les Paul proved this when he made the stick, which was initially rejected by Gibson for looking ugly.  There is little or no physics in the body (Parker being the exception).  Furthermore the effects don’t necessarily start in the amp.  There is a large variety of pickups and coupling combinations that can create a variety of sounds coming from the guitar with no effect boxes attached.  The electric guitar is not organic like an acoustic guitar.  You are not relying on great craftsmanship, high quality materials and manipulating the acoustics of the instrument to create the perfect sound.

In theory if you buy a guitar with hot internal electronics you may need a ton of effects to clean it up!  Ironic.

So, I move from the concept of clean to pure.  Here is what I can say about my sound expectations.  I know how the physics of the strings work and I know what to expect in terms of overtones or harmonic content in the sound as a function of where I pluck the string, near the bridge gives you a twangy treble sound, near the center produces a warm more pure tone.  I know to expect that the harder I play the louder the sound gets, at least up to the point where the guitar can no longer comply with a linear response.  I know that my 335 sounds nice when played acoustically and I want that tone amplified when I play through an amp.  When the use of additional effects changes these expectations it is the wrong approach for me.

copyright 2014 David R Bergman

I own two Gibson guitars, a Flying V and a 335.  In the course of my life I’ve had a chance to play almost every brand out there and have owned the following brands, Gibson, Fender, Epiphone and Jackson.  There are several reasons why I continue to like Gibson over all other brands.

One is the tone, the tone is amazing even through a crappy amp and no effects.  You don’t have to “shape” the tone to get a good sound out of a Gibson.  Next is the quality and durability of the hardware.  My V is about 30 years old, I got it in 1984.  It has been through all sorts of weather, temperature differences and humidity changes, I can take it out of the case and it’s right in tune every time.  The same holds for my 335.  I don’t know what “stock” parts are like at the Gibson factory but I get better performance out of them than expensive high end custom hardware.  It might not be the hardware alone but whole platform, a sort of Gestalt that comes about when Gibson puts it all together.

The pick ups also seem to be pretty good.  The tone I mentioned earlier is there even acoustically, they have great tone and sustain.  But I’ve noticed that when I go to open mic nights and plug my 335 into someone else’s gear it screams, blowing the other guitar away in volume, without changing the settings.  It just seems to have more balls.

There is one thing I have to gripe about.  Gibson doesn’t seem to take the cleanliness of the fingerboards very seriously.  At times I will pick up a Gibson off the rack and it looks like a kid worked it over with rough sand paper.  It’s little details like this that count when you charge 3k$-4k$ for a new guitar.  It may not make a difference in the playing or tone but when you pay that much for a guitar I think you should be able to get details like that taken care of.  I’ve seen beautifully finished detailed fingerboards on 300$ guitars but they sound and play like crap.  It may only be cosmetic but it counts and I wish they would do better.  When I brought my 335 I got a free set up and fret dressing from the store that sold it to me and they finished up some of the details for free.  That was nice of them.

I still play guitars in music stores across the country and around the world and nothing matches my Gibson in terms of sound and feel, so despite my complaint about sloppy fingerboards I would buy Gibson before any other brand.

So far.

copyright 2013 David R Bergman

I recently had some work done on my Gibson 335.  It hasn’t been adjusted in over 10 years and has been played for about 18 years without any fret work.  There were some large pits in the frets, the instrument buzzed and was so out of tune that octaves drifted close to a major 7-th as you moved up the neck.  Guitarists know what I mean.  It was ugly.  So, I brought it in to Raritan Bay Guitar Repair in Freehold NJ.  They did such a great job on the instrument that I keep telling people I got a new guitar.  I find myself telling my wife “this new guitar plays great”.