Electric Guitar - Dynamics

Wow! Lots of verbage on this topic. I will be short and to the point. A tube amp just on the verge of distortion will respond to your touch the best IMHO. Not that I play here all or even most of the time, but this is where I find I have most controll over my dynamic range. That said, I play classic rock and I use too much compression/distortion and likely lack dynamic range. :lol: In the Who's movie, "The Kids are Allright" I believe Pete Townsend states that there music really doesn't have any quality. I believe I resemble that remark somewhat. :? But I have fun playing guitar and I like to rock!

Wow! Lots of verbage on this topic. I will be short and to the point. A tube amp just on the verge of distortion will respond to your touch the best IMHO. Not that I play here all or even most of the time, but this is where I find I have most controll over my dynamic range.

As I believe Ric said somewhere above (or maybe in another thread?), that would be the onset of dynamic compression. So from a techie PoV, playing on the edge of saturation truly begins to limit dynamic range. However, I agree: That is a point that is touch sensitive in that the timbre can change radically right from the fingers, pushing the tonality from nearly clean with fewer harmonics to not-so-clean and harmonically rich. The "aggression" get channeled into an obvious tone change without as much of an actual peak volume difference as one would get at a more linear or clean operating point.

hmmmm......

maybe it would be wiser to just spend the year doing a series of 'dictate Scrybe's tone/dynamic range' features where each month a member can give me settings to test, and by the end of it (hopefully) I'll have a clearer idea.

Yup, I think I'm stuck in the camp of I-want-it-all-but-am-not-a-pro-with-a-guiatr/amp-tech-on-salary(-and-call-24/7*) for now. Some vf. goo dand interesting comments, though, I'll see what I can incororate/mess with. 8)

I still think that for dynamic variation, quieter the (TUBE) amp the better (solid state, ime, don't give as much range, and louder generally = less range, maybe more 'control' but that's what I want my fingers to be doing! I call it 'limitation' not 'control', lol). For tonal variation, its hard to beat a tube amp on the verge of distorting, imho. (subject to change, pending testing comments in this thread and/or at any other time, especially if I can just persuade Blackstar into doing a pedal/amp/both/please endorsement deal with me...........)

* Anyone eager to apply for said post, be it in-house or long-distance, just PM me. There's no pay, just the personal satisfaction of being an ambassador for Scrybeaid (a registered charity set up to help young Scrybe everywhere) and potential although higly unlikely proxy-fame-and-posterity. Did I miention the higly unlikely bit? Good, just checking.

miention is, of course, a word. Anyone who read for three years at Oxford Univeristy would immediately spot the etymology. :roll:

I still think that for dynamic variation, quieter the (TUBE) amp the better (solid state, ime, don't give as much range, and louder generally = less range, maybe more 'control' but that's what I want my fingers to be doing! I call it 'limitation' not 'control', lol). For tonal variation, its hard to beat a tube amp on the verge of distorting, imho. (subject to change, pending testing comments in this thread and/or at any other time, especially if I can just persuade Blackstar into doing a pedal/amp/both/please endorsement deal with me...........)

Well.... The thing is, that with the guitar volume on ten; that's really limiting you.

Basically you have two volumes to set: Amp/Guitar.
I don't advocate setting your guitar's vol to ten, then setting the amp up to be on the verge of breakup.

For one thing - with guitar vol on ten, the difference between volumes when playing soft and pushing hard are quite large.
If you turn the volume down to say 7/8/9 on the guitar, you can push into overdrive and have more of a tonal change
than a volume change.

And then, you can still turn the volume up at the guitar to leave the quiet realm, and have pure overdrive.
You can also increase the volume.... for those times toward the end of the song when your heavy handed drummer starts
to get Fat, Dumb, & Happy and ends up going Bonzo on a bluesy ballad.

So, I say; turn down the volume on the guitar THEN set the amp up to be on the edge of breakup.

In the end, niether amp NOR guitar should end up being on ten :wink:

Ken

But this amp goes to eleven ....... :mrgreen: My amp actually goes to twelve, thats even one more than eleven and two more than ten. Yes, you open up even more range by having your guitar's volume turned down a bit. I could not agree more.

Using an overdrive or turning up the amp gain usually takes away from dynamics. If you're on the edge of "saturation," changing your attack will increase or decrease the amount of clipping giving dynamic variation in the tone, but the volume will stay relatively constant. Dynamics (volume, that is) that you can control by your playing technique require playing clean.

I dunno if that was direct response to my suggestion about the Keely Tube Screamer, but to clarify - I use it with 0 gain. Hence the signal remains absolutely crystal clear no matter how hard I strum, but it then has a punch which facilitates much better dynamic control (especially over volume), than without it.

so then, in effect, your pedal is acting as a compressor somewhat.

hmm. I dunno. I've always thought compressors tend to remove dynamic flexibility, as anything played soft will be amplified to a degree, depending on how much comp' your using. Essentially they even out your signal. My Keeley, used as a clean channel, does the opposite - it makes for much greater dynamic range than the amps stand-alone clean signal...So much so I turn off the Keeley when doing chord strumming, otherwise every individual note leaps out the amp and bites your head off lol. :) But I rarely play that kinda stuff so...

This is going to sound stupid it is so simplistic, but...

YOUR GUITAR IS GOING TO SOUND THE WAY YOU PLAY IT

As simplistic as that sounds, it is completely true. If you want your guitar to whisper, then you have to fret light, and pick light. If you want your guitar to scream, then you've got to use some muscle on those strings and really attack with your pick.

I agree with other posters here, you have to have your amp cranked up. I crank my amp so loud that it actually scares me. It is making all kinds of noises. Then I will turn the guitar volume down for rhythm. For solos, I just reach down quick and max the guitar volume. That's it for me, I am not one to constantly adjust volume.

I also think tube amps are best for this, although BB King uses a solid state amp and he is about as expressive as it gets. But tube amps will break up and distort more with heavy attack, and clean up with light attack.

As one poster said, you have to practice playing loud. It is really scary at first. Everybody is going to hear your mistakes. But you just have to have a "crash and burn" attitude. You can't worry about mistakes or try to be too careful when you play. When you do that you will sound rigid. So you just have to dig in and make that guitar scream. You gotta really pound on it, and you are gonna break plenty of strings. :D

It would be difficult to beat Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan for dynamics. That is what made them stand out over other players. Watch Stevie play Voodoo Chile. Look how he puts real muscle into his playing. That is how he made it scream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSpbuFSr2o

Playin like this is not for the faint of heart. :twisted:

I love around 2:50 or so how he plays just with hammer ons and pull offs, no picking. Can't do that at low volumes, fer sure.

I love around 2:50 or so how he plays just with hammer ons and pull offs, no picking. Can't do that at low volumes, fer sure.

Fer sure, you can do that at low volume. But you can't do that quite so well without dynamic compression of some sort -- either overdrive or compression or distortion or saturation (now that might be high volume) or a combo. And we all know SRV used a tube screamer for input overdrive. That's exactly what enables him to play with hammer-ons and pull-offs at something close to the same volume as the rest of the performance. Being at high volume is not required for that bit of fingerplay.

A couple things you might try...

With a pick: grip the pick very lightly. Get used to the way that feels across the strings, and make that your standard p or mp volume level... with a very light grip, the pick is deflected by the string, and your fingertips absorb most of the energy.

As you increase the force on your pick grip, you'll find you get increasing levels of sound - the force of your picking hand is transferred more directly.

Once you combine that with the obvious increase in speed/force of picking, it's pretty simple (although simple doesn't mean easy - takes a bit of practice) to get a fairly wide range of dynamics without touching the volume knob.

With the fingers: there are two main attacks in classical technique, tirando and the apoyando. In tirando picking, the finger clears the plane of the strings after striking the note - it's also called a "free stroke". This makes the string vibrate more or less in line with the plane of the strings. In apoyando picking, also called the "rest stroke", the finger comes to rest on the next lower string after striking a note. That makes the string vibrate more or less vertically against the plane of the strings (or at least, more vertically than with the tirando). When a string vibrates vertically, the bridge saddle actually flexes slightly in response to the vibrations - and that means the energy is transferred more efficiently to the top of the guitar. You get a louder sound with apoyando... you get more sustain with tirando. In addition, you can play with different angles of the nails to have control over the sound.

But that applies to acoustic guitars, where most of the sound is generated by the top. You'll get slightly more volume from an electric using apoyando, as the string passes closer to the pickup, but it's not as striking a difference as with an acoustic.

ah, sweet one Noteboat! That description is brilliant, especially seeing as I play acoustic and (very feebly) classical, too. I'm gonna print that one and stick it to my walls. The pick trick is one I've messed with a bit but wasn't sure how effective it was and/or how trainable it is.

I'm thinking regular scale + metronome practice with these, moving uptempo as I progress and adding more variation into the runs as I progress, too (i.e. play a scale quiet, then getting louder, then months later trying to alter the dynamics more from note-to-note than between two bigger runs), should reap some measurable rewards.

I think for the fingers-on-electric guitar approach, a combination of the classical stuff you mentioned,some palm muting (and other muting) work and as much as I can steal from Jeff Beck as possible should have some interesting results by this time next year! :mrgreen:

props to everyone else who posted, too. esp. Wes, yup, I needed to hear that "work harder, damnit!" blue sentence. seriously, though, some good stuff in this thread and plenty for me to be getting on with. thanks guys!

and anyone who wishes to further discuss the comparative loudness of guitar/amp settings, please do so. I'm looking forward to it. :wink:

actualy, I might just do a 'compare' for this. record me trying to mess with dynamics now (and note guitar/amp/etc settings), then record again in 6 months or so and see what, if any, difference (improvement, improvement, improvement) occurs.

Here's the one tip I have (as a beginner who's far more worried about getting the right notes than dynamics right now):

Try playing REALLY REALLY QUIET sometimes.

I spent a week on vacation with my Gretsch hollowbody, which is almost an acoustic and can be quite loud even without an amp. I practiced every night in the hotel room after my wife went to sleep, and between her and the neighbors, I had to be very quiet. Surprisingly, I found that I could play just about everything at very quiet volumes if I wanted to. Light picking and a bit of palm muting.

The quieter you can play, the better your dynamic range...

One more thing: I found my fingers didn't hurt at all after quiet practice. I seem to push harder on the frets when I'm playing loud... This was also a valuable lesson, since fretting "quietly" works just as well with loud playing...

Here's the one tip I have (as a beginner who's far more worried about getting the right notes than dynamics right now):

Try playing REALLY REALLY QUIET sometimes.

I spent a week on vacation with my Gretsch hollowbody, which is almost an acoustic and can be quite loud even without an amp. I practiced every night in the hotel room after my wife went to sleep, and between her and the neighbors, I had to be very quiet. Surprisingly, I found that I could play just about everything at very quiet volumes if I wanted to. Light picking and a bit of palm muting.

The quieter you can play, the better your dynamic range...

+1 Dynamics is about the ratio of Softest to Loudest (pppp -- ffff, as Sara puts it). Playing softer (fingers/hands -- not turning down the guitar's volume control) and really grabbing the audience with nuance is a lot harder than turning up and playing through the various tonal changes through compression/saturation. Play it loud; play it soft, and do both from the fingers. Without both there is no dynamic range, only loud or only soft.