Tone is one of the more important aspects of playing. If your tone is crap people just arn't gonna wanna listen to you. Play around and find what you like.

Tone is not about the audience.

Sure they can tell when your tone is absolute grbage. But from ok to great there are a great many subtleties that have more to do with you, the player yourself, rather than the audience. Because if you like your sound you are inspired to play better.

i saw Van Halen and Black Sabbath in 78/79.

thank you Lord.


Tone is for real in your technique. but good equipment helps as well.:)

Tone is really important. It's like the heart of the music. You have to work with both technique and equipment. Certain equipment settings can only work with certain playing styles. If you have a nice, clean, full sound maybe you got using an equalizer, then you throw a little reverb on there just for good measure, you can't start playing like you were freakin Dethklok. And vice versa if you have some ungodly distortion going on then you can't go and play like you were Pat Metheny. It's all about cooperation of parts. Use your head, and you will sound like a fine bottle of Courvoisier.

Good stuff, trussler. The tone subject is so vast, when it comes to the solid body electric. So many frets, so may stomps, so may amps. The whole thing becomes such a hobby. But then, out of the blue, you nail a solo that makes you weep. If only *they heard the same thing.

C

The most important things in music is tone, rhythm and then the correct note, in that order. It's nice to hit the right note (don't get me wrong all three of these things are really important), but if the note is out of place, then whatever its pretty useless. Now regardless of what rhythm or note you are playing, if it sounds good, every note precise and intentional, then you can pass off many mistakes. Worst case, if you're screwing up so much that you bands drops out, then you'll get a pretty, tonally beautiful solo (and possibly fired but you'll go out with a bang :-P). Now the ultimate best if if you can combine all of these facets of playing, then your a great player.

Tone wasn't a factor that occurred to me much early on. I was only 9 or 10 when I started playing the guitar, and the only thing I wanted to do was just that...play. However, my dad invested good money into getting me quality equipment so it sounded pretty good regardless. Within the past few years though, I've been highly concerned with tone, and everyday I discover a new tone to use. I want to become fluent in switching between different tones and textures as opposed to having one, recognizable tone.

As was mentioned earlier good tone inspires you to play better and let the music flow through you. If my tone sucks I do play worse because the part of my brain that should be focusing on music is focusing on how crappy the sound is coming out of the amp. Of course good tone to me does not mean good tone to another guitarist. In some ways it's like hearing the sound of your voice... you know when it's right. If I started talking with someone elses voice I would wonder what was up and it would distract me.

I think I've spent more time on articulation than tone... It's an aspet I've always been obsessed with.

Players like Vai, Gilbert, Satch, Morse, Johnson, Malmsteen, Emmanuel, Gatton, Atkins, Petrucci, I love how their technique and playing styles help define their sounds.

That said, I agree with everything said in the previous posts. Having great gear helps, too...

I used to pull my hair about tone until I got better equipment, and now I'm bald!! LOL. I'm an abuser of pinch harmonics and once I got the gear to really let them stand out, I actually have to hold myself back when it comes to using them but I can't resist...hearing that Lynch-like squeal really gets people excited...and sometimes causes small animals to hide.

Dethklok rule! But so does Metheny...

There's a jazz dude, Kenny Berrell (I think). He has tyhe most awesome tone ever

Sorry guys... THE most awesome tone. It's about 6 degrees celsius in my room at the moment, so the keyboard is owning me a bit...

Kenny Burrell...yes his tone is amazing!

To me, tone is important...but in the end it's all a conduit. Its purpose is this:

YOU create the tone YOU like. The fact that you like it makes you more comfortable with your own playing...surely you've noticed the difference in performance energy on nights that you thought your tone was awesome versus nights it sucked. Good tone gives you confidence.

I think, however, that lately the concept of "good" tone has become stagnant. There don't seem to be a lot of people experimenting with "out there" guitar tones, like they did in the 60's and 70's. Each genre has its own "ideal" tone...Metal has its scooped wall of thundering guitars. Blues has that spanky attack with the thick sustain. Pop is polished and tends towards lower-wattage class A amps (vox, etc). You get the idea.

Where are the guys pushing the boundaries? and not just "getting some weird sound" for the bridge or chorus of a song? Why not make it a trademark? (Seriously, if you know of anyone pioneering tones in any genre PLEASE tell me...it'll be interesting to find new material.)

Just my 2 on that...back to importance of tone...Tone that is good to YOU helps you perform better, and it makes you more able to communicate with the audie