“The sounds of pretty much nine out of ten guitar players are very similar”: Adrian Vandenberg on how to make your guitar tone stand out
Former Whitesnake guitarist Adrian Vandenberg has argued that less is more when it comes to making one’s guitar tone stand out.
In a recent chat with American Musical Supply, the Dutch rocker shares his thoughts on how modern guitarists tend to overdo it with distortion and compression — often at the expense of character and clarity.
“It doesn’t cut through anymore if it’s too much gain and too much compression going on,” says Vandenberg [via Ultimate Guitar]. “The sounds of pretty much nine out of ten guitar players are very similar.”
READ MORE: “I’m still chasing that sound”: Kirk Hammett thinks his best-ever lead tone was on this Metallica album
According to Vandenberg, it’s important for guitarists to leave some “space” in a mix and let your music breathe instead of cranking everything up.
Explaining that contrast is key, he says, “It would be different when you would have one guy that plays, like, a more distorted guitar, and the other one plays like an almost clean one.”
The musician also cites Angus Young and Malcolm Young as examples of guitarists with good tone, saying: “For instance, a lot of people don’t realise that, in AC/DC, those guitars are not very distorted. But it smacks you in the face because they are not so distorted. It had a lot of punch instead of getting compressed because of a lot of gain and stuff.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the Dutch guitarist also opens up about the culture shock he experienced being in the heart of the LA rock machine in the ’80s.
Describing his first exposure to the Hollywood rock scene as being “thrown into the Sodom and Gomorrah of Los Angeles”, Vandenberg shares that he felt out of place amidst the prevailing ‘shredder’ culture of the time.
“It’s not necessarily when I joined Whitesnake, being in the band,” he says, “but [to] suddenly get thrown into this Hollywood thing coming, out of Holland, where everybody’s going [makes shredding sounds], you know? I wasn’t really aware of that, in Holland.”
“Because, up to this day, I still mainly listen to the musicians who inspire me, and that’s not really that many guitar players.”
The post “The sounds of pretty much nine out of ten guitar players are very similar”: Adrian Vandenberg on how to make your guitar tone stand out appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
