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Looper's Delight
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Me personally, I wasn’t trying to make a value
judgment of any kind, just stating an aesthetic preference. I like overdrive
more than fuzz or distortion. Perhaps my older, more ear damaged ears prefer
the soft clipping of overdrive, either natural amp or pedal or better yet, an
exciting mélange of the two! Yummy, talk about secret sauce, Boo! Ya!
……..Also I find a good overdrive is more use-able throughout its
distortion range, whereas many distortion and fuzz pedals reach a point of
saturation well below the potentiometers full range, where they don’t
seem to give you any more distortion, but they add noise and mud and so much
compression that you cease to have any dynamic range. As far as the issue of
hiding behind a wall of distortion to hide bad technique……..Hey I
used to do that J obviously, different
styles require different instruments and string gauges. A shredder dude would
have difficulty adjusting to the kind of strings a jazzbo uses, and vice versa .
I’m always amused when a shredder dude picks up my strat or tele strung
with heavier strings and tries to do the speed thing, its equally amusing when
a jazz guy picks up a metal guitar with ultra light strings and can’t
handle the mushy response. I would agree that playing clean will help ones
technique to become cleaner, but from what I can tell, a guy like Steve Vai has
exceptionally refined technique, and also has developed an extremely light left
hand touch, which is valid technique no matter what style you play. Principles of
good technique apply no matter what guitar you are playing or what gauge of
strings. I actually encourage young students to pick up the electric guitar
first if that is what excites them. I am not convinced that one has to start
with acoustic before moving to electric, although that is the conventional
wisdom. From what I have seen in my nearly 30 years as a private teacher is
using the “ you gotta start on clarinet if you want to play saxophone”
model can just as easily destroy a young students desire to learn, as it can
motivate them. I’ve never had a student who started on electric and
really got bitten by the music bug, fail to show interest in picking up the
acoustic guitar at some point in their development. Bill |