To generate critical discussion on this topic—and, hopefully, self examination—GP sought the counsel of über-legendary engineer/ producer Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Peter Frampton, Buddy Guy); post-modern visionary—and former Be Bop Deluxe guitar hero—Bill Nelson; multi-instrumentalist/artist/producer Butch Walker (Pink, Sevendust, Donnas, Fall Out Boy); rock producer Joe Chiccarelli (Raconteurs, White Stripes, Shins, My Morning Jacket); producer/Groovemaster Studios owner Johnny K. (Disturbed, Plain White T’s, Black Tide); and sonic wizard/orchestration genius Tony Visconti (T. Rex, David Bowie, Coheed & Cambria). Please add your voice to the dialogue by contributing to the Guitar Player Forum at guitarplayer.com.

How has the current commercial climate prompted so many guitarists and bands to deliver such uniform guitar tones?
Walker: The cause is simple. People follow the formula of whatever worked before them. You have no idea how many people will say, “I want to sound like this because it just sold a million records.” My day job is making some of those records. Sad, but true. I can’t support my family by just producing “arty” records that would be more gratifying to create.

Nelson: Yes—in some ways, you could say there’s creativity, and then there’s the day job. And if you’re looking for commercial success, you don’t want to frighten the horses. The record industry has traditionally followed a “more of the same” routine. The commercial marketplace is hardly a breeding ground for cutting-edge music, and it would be naive of us to expect it to be otherwise. Despite the rebel image rock music often projects, much of today’s commercially viable music seems safe, predictable, and market-driven. In such a climate of conformity, it’s no great surprise so many guitarists are content to measure their worth by the degree to which they can emulate so-called “classic” or “historic” guitar tones, rather than thinking about finding their own individual voice.

Kramer: If one tracks the curve from the mid ’90s up until now, you have to ask yourself if the advent of Pro Tools—as well as the fact recording technology became easily available to the average person—started averaging and dumbing down our sound. That’s the big question. Is it not the case that because all sounds are so readily available—either through a plug-in or through a pedal—we’ve made it so easy for the kids to create a Hendrix-type sound? You sit at a computer, and it’s all there at the push of a button. You don’t have to dig in and search for a unique sound, and, as a result, the prefab tones, by their nature, all start to sound the same. And then those sounds become acceptable—maybe even expected—and the producers, the band, and the record company are all sort of in cahoots together.

Chiccarelli: Another factor is the radio “loudness” wars from about ten years ago. Competitive radio stations needed to play the most ear-catching music possible, so they used multiband compression and processing at the radio transmitters. I think our ears became accustomed to that hyped sound, and it very insidiously found its way to the ears of the producer, engineer, musician, and record label. We basically began to emulate what we heard on the radio. It started with heavily processed mixes, and it trickled all the way down to modern high-gain guitar amps and higher-output pickups.

In this environment, is it possible for an artist forge a unique and individual guitar sound, and still break through to the mainstream?
Johnny K:  Creativity comes from the artist, and not all artists are equally creative. It takes someone with the talent and desire to be different and successful. But so much ground has been covered already that it becomes more and more challenging to create a fresh guitar sound. Some may say that bands such as the White Stripes and Wolfmother have borrowed their sounds from classic rock, but, in the current landscape, those bands sound different.

Chiccarelli:   Ironically, the artists who use vintage tones and less processing are the ones who stand out on the radio today. In fact, to my ear, they sound inventive. I also believe that choosing to record on analog tape is a decision that can help you stand out. The warm midrange and softer transient attack of analog tape really steps out when it’s heard against tracks that have been heavily processed in the digital world.

Nelson: One would like to think this is still possible. When they first emerged in the ’60s, the guitar tonalities of Hendrix, Beck, and Clapton had little in common with the commercially acceptable guitar sounds that preceded them. For many conservative listeners and players, it wasn’t just Jimi’s flamboyant stage image that freaked them out—it was that magnificent bonfire of a guitar sound that caused them such outrage or distress. Guitars just weren’t supposed to sound like that! Thankfully, some of us got it, and, almost despite the odds, those sounds became commercially acceptable, and have now become firmly embedded within the everyday language of the instrument. You might say that, in the modern day Guitar Church, the holy trinity of Hendrix, Beck, and Clapton still provide the source of all rock-guitar wisdom. Whether this is a good thing for a 21st-Century guitarist or not is open to debate, but it’s impossible to ignore the continuing presence of that particular period’s innovation when considering today’s guitar sounds. Which leads us to ask whether our reverence and respect for the tones of 40-odd years ago is obstructing us from seeing the potential for a more personally relevant, contemporary approach to the instrument.

Kramer: The wonderful thing about Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and all great guitar players is that they have this clear, distinct vision of their sound. Maybe it took them ten years to find that sound, but they knew they were looking for it. I don’t know—and your readers are at liberty to make me aware of something that I’m not—if there’s that sense of adventure and discovery happening today.

When you’re producing an album, what are some methods you might utilize to encourage or cajole a guitarist to develop an individual sound, rather than follow his or her influences too closely, or ape what is currently popular?
Kramer: First of all, I get every vintage amplifier I can lay my hands on in the studio— right down to tiny, semi-blown, tweaked-out tube combos with 8" speakers. When young guitarists who have been working in home studios solely with digital models hear those sounds, it blows their minds. There’s a visceral feeling of standing in front of an old Fender Bassman or Showman top plugged into a Marshall cabinet. It’s the same with an original Vox AC30, or a 50-watt plexi Marshall. Those things scream! They put the hair on the back of your neck up, and that fires all kinds of creativity and inspiration. The next thing is that I will go through all that stuff with the guitar player, trying to identify a direction. Hopefully, the guitarist has come to me with a direction more or less in place, and all I need to do is to take what he’s giving me and expand upon it in order to help him get to the next level. Now what is that next level? Well, it’s all about knowing what choices you have, and also knowing very clearly in your head the sound you’re going after.

Johnny K: I allow the music—and the player’s style—to guide the tone. The guitars must be the right fit for the mood of the song, so I’ll have the guitarist play his chords or riffs, and then find a tone that flatters the performance. I’ll also take the time to capture a great performance, because so much of a player’s tone is in the hands.

Chiccarelli: Illustration and comparison. I try to encourage every guitarist to forge his own path. It’s part of the producer’s job to understand what is singularly special in each artist and their music. In terms of guitar players, sometimes it is as simple as offering them a couple of different amp or guitar choices to see what they gravitate toward. In other cases, it’s a matter of saying up front in preproduction that you want to try something different than the last album. For example, if the last album had lots of multitracked guitar parts, I might take the less-is-more approach for the new record, and try to get parts, arrangements, and tones that carry more weight in the initial tracking. Hopefully, this will eliminate the need for triple-tracked guitars.

Walker:  The obvious tones are a safety net, so I definitely try to make the players use guitars and amps they aren’t used to. Sometimes, I will even make someone else in the band play a certain part—which makes for some interesting mayhem that wouldn’t have occurred if we recorded the part the traditional way.

Nelson: It’s a producer’s job to guide and encourage, rather than to control in an absolute sense. It’s extremely difficult to change an artist’s deeply imbedded attitudes during the space of a mere recording session. I think it’s a matter of firing up imaginations, and helping musicians to exploit the potential for something more personal than simply emulating their contemporaries or heroes. The history of popular music often holds a tremendous attraction for musicians who were not even born back in the day, but for those of us who were teenagers at that supposedly “golden” time, it would have been unimaginable for us to emulate the sounds and music of an era 30 or 40 years previous. We need to give today’s artists the confidence to tell their own story, and encourage them to build their own guitar universe. So rather than planting yourself firmly in the tube, analog, or digital camp, why not load up your palette with lots of colors, and let the music and your imagination direct the choice of tones, rather than convention, fashion, or gear? In any given recording situation, there are obvious choices for guitar tones, but also less obvious ones. For example, it can be interesting to set vintage guitar tones in a quite different context from their original one. Given a different framework, even the most familiar guitar tones can take on new life. It’s all up for grabs, and the only limitation is our imagination—or lack of it—and our fear of rejection. Now, here’s an unexpected admission: While I’ve always advocated an open-ended approach to the guitar, I’ve rediscovered the beauty of a relatively unadorned guitar tone. Clean, clear, piano-like. It’s just a phase, of course, and I’ll soon be screwing up my sound with every form of torture known to guitar science. But how wonderful it is to be able to act on a whim—and without permission—to not be a slave to convention.

Visconti: I have no real secrets to bestow about guitar tones. I take each guitarist with a fresh view of how to record them. I don’t impose any signature sound of mine on them. Instead, I make sure I draw the best from them in terms of creativity, tones, and technique—in other words, their uniqueness. That’s what modern producers don’t do. With younger musicians, I encourage self-discovery. I don’t know how to teach that, except the way I learned—which was hours and hours of twiddling. I still think a guitarist’s most important tools for tone
production are the brain and fingers.