The three key elements to a great rock guitar tone.

I guess I was fortunate, seeing as I spent a small fortune on equipment that didn’t do what it promised in the adverts. The pure heart stopping distortion that the ART SGX 2000 advert promised it would deliver, turned out to be the one purchase that would teach me the hard way to getting the sound I wanted.

The situation is no different nowadays, guitar effects processors consistently disappoint me at first, only to wow me later when I’ve learned their secret.

I think it’s a given that most guitar effects processors are mediocre at best when you listen to the factory presets.

The first key to great rock guitar tone.

You have to plug a decent guitar in first, it’s just an unavoidable fact, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m just going to assume that you’ve got that sorted out.

The first key element is the basic distortion characteristics. A sound might be thin and uneventful, but if the underlying tone has the right character, it can be made into something great.

To illustrate this point, I’ve got a no-name brand overdrive-distortion pedal that was recommended by a friend.

It’s called a Ken Multi multiple effects MME-7. See, I told you it was a no-name brand. This thing has the right tonal character but sounds terrible through the wrong amplifier.

This is because many amplifiers are missing the other two key ingredients to a great rock tone.

So that basically for me, is the first step towards your dream rock guitar sound – A great sounding guitar into something that distorts the signal the right way.

The tricky thing here is that it’s difficult to determine if step one is correct until you’ve got steps two and three down.

How to eq a good rock guitar sound.

There are two main frequencies that I look at when trying to get the right distorted tone. These are the bass and upper midrange frequencies.

Maybe you’ve experienced this before, where you get a great sound on your amplifier, then take the same amp to a friends place only to find that for some strange reason it just doesn’t sound right anymore.

Chances are that it’s an open back combo, but not necessarily. The only difference is that it’s in a different room, and each room has a different frequency response.

If I’m using a guitar amp with an open back speaker cabinet, I like to have the amplifier set up close to a wall for added bass. Depending on the speaker though, this isn’t always needed.

If you have a good amp with great distortion then you don’t need to worry too much about frequencies and tweaking, but if your amplifier has one of those horrible fuzzy distortions that don’t sound like the tube amp it’s supposed to emulate, then here are the critical areas you need to look at.

Does your guitar amp have an effects loop?

If so you’re in luck, cos now all you need is a small graphic eq. One of those regular 10 band eq pedals will do the trick, but you can also try a 7 band graphic for this.

The 10 band graphic I would recommend is the MXR M108 10-Band Graphic Equalizer Pedal seeing as it’s the one I’ve used myself, and has all the right frequencies.

Bass frequency: Here I tend to favor the frequencies around 100 hz . I find 250 hz sometimes makes things sound a bit too boxy, but it’s always an option to add just a little, depending on the sound that’s already coming out.

Upper midrange: The crucial frequency here is 4 khz. If the sound is too fuzzy, I take down everything above 5 khz, and I mean right down. I replace whatever high end is missing with 4 khz.

If the sound gets too piercing, easing back on the 4k and adding back a bit of the top end frequencies can help balance things out again.

These are basic principles that work, whether you’re playing through a guitar amp or recording direct.

The true power of a distorted rock guitar power chord.

I remember it well. The guitar player magazine that ended my first marriage. It was an ad for the Art SGX 2000, a new guitar multi-effects processor with a valve preamp and digital effects.

It only took three words for me to know I just had to have it. Wanna know what they where?

Sure, they mentioned all the features, but that wasn’t what hypnotized me to buy the thing, it was those three words in bold and larger than the rest of the writing that stood out at the bottom of the page.

“Pure Heartstopping distortion!”

Isn’t that what every rock guitarist wants?

If you’re just getting started learning how to play rock guitar, there’s nothing more motivational than having a great distortion sound to crank out those power chords.

Power chords are the foundation of most rock rhythm guitar.

So what is a power chord?

A power chord is made up of the root note of a chord, and the 5th, so seeing as it’s only really two notes, it doesn’t really qualify as a chord.

The cool thing about power chords is that you don’t have to worry about majors and minors, seeing as it’s actually the 3rd note in a chord that determines whether it’s major or minor.

I see I’m going to have to explain myself further.

What is a third and a fifth? and for that matter, what’s a root note?

The root note is the lowest sounding note of a chord and it’s the one used to name the chord, so if you’re playing an F, then you know that the lowest sounding note of that chord is an F, simple enough.

To understand what a 3rd and a 5th is, you need to know the note intervals of the major scale. No need to panic, it’s quite simple.

If you’re playing an F, for example, the scale that tells you what the third and fifth are, is the F major scale.

I just need to add here that if you’re not too interested in the theory, and you just want to play the things, I’ve put a page up on my main website, and it’s simply titled Power Chords

But I would stick around a bit cos this is good theory to know. Okay, back to the F major scale.

All major scales follow the same pattern, and that is, going from the root note, or Tonic, which in this case would be the F note, the second note would be a whole tone up, in this case G, the third note would be a whole tone up again – A, then the fourth note would be a semitone up A# (A sharp) and the fifth note would be a C, which is a whole tone up. The sixth note would be a whole tone up which is D, the seventh note would again be a whole tone up which is E, and then the octave, which is a semitone up again, is F.

So in terms of the guitar, a whole tone = a 2 fret interval, and a semitone = 1 fret interval

so in terms of the guitar fretboard, the major scale goes 2 frets, 2 frets, 1 fret, 2 frets, 2 frets, 2 frets, 1 fret. And in terms of 3rds and 5ths and 7ths and all that, it’s simple 1234567 and so on.

If you’re playing a major chord, the notes that make up a major chord are the root, third and fifth of whatever major scale the chords root note is.

In the F example, the notes that make up the F major chord are F, A, and C, but if you’re playing an F Power chord, you only play F and C.

Here are some pictures that show where the third and 5th are in relation to the root note. These three notes are called Triads.

Now the really cool thing about the guitar is that everything works in patterns, or shapes if you like.

If you were to look for the G major Triad, the shape remains the same, you just move it up 2 frets, and so on for any other Major Triads.

Okay, so now you definitely know where to find the third and the fifth on your guitar.

Sorry I had to take you on that major detour (Pardon the pun) just so you could understand what I mean when I say power chords are made up of the root and the 5th.

The most commonly used power chord in rock music.

This would be power chords made up of the root note, the fifth, and the octave. The added octave just makes it a little fuller sounding. Here’s a picture of a G power chord to illustrate the point. The little X’s on the nut mean that you shouldn’t play those strings.

The G power chord could also be called a G5 chord

An F power chord could also be called F5, but don’t press F5 on the keyboard and expect help with power chords.

Just to hammer home a point, all the power chords played on the E, or 6th string will keep the same shape, so an F5 power chord will look like this.

There are many more places on the fretboard where power chords can be played, so now that you’ve got a better understanding of what makes a power chord, at least I hope you’ve got a better understanding of power chords, you should pay a visit to my main page on power chords at play-electric-guitar.net

Power chords in dropped D tuning – The beginner rock guitarists short cut

When it comes to beginner electric guitar lessons, this has to be the quickest and easiest short cut I know of to fast track to playing power chords on the guitar. Especially if you’ve only just recently started to play the guitar and your fingertips feel like they really need a break.

To be perfectly honest though, when I first started learning how to play the electric guitar, no-one told me about this, and I think it’s only recently that a lot of guitarists have started to do it.

Here’s how you do it.

Detune the 6th string E down to D, so instead of the tuning being EADGBE it’s now DADGBE, and by the way, the 6th string is the thickest one.

It should be quite easy to tell when the 6th string is tuned to D, cos it’ll sound like the open 4th string except it’ll be an octave lower – same note but half the frequency.

With this alternate tuning you can play power chords using only one finger. The strings you play are the 4th 5th and 6th strings. Try not to let any of the other strings on the guitar make a sound.

You place your finger flat across the fretboard, preferably just behind or at least in the middle between the frets, and then you strum the 4th 5th and 6th strings.

Here’s a picture of the fretboard, and most of the power chords you can play with dropped D tuning.

I know it looks like you have to use three fingers, but you only need one finger.

The three open strings are a D power chord. Once you’ve got your finger flat across the fretboard you can basically just slide it back and forth to get to whichever power chord you want. Simple isn’t it?

If you need more info on tuning the guitar and other beginner guitar chords you can browse the main site play-electric-guitar.net

Tips to help make it easy to learn to play electric guitar online.

Tip no 1 – find a friend who has already made some progress on the guitar.

This will help make it a lot easier to learn. When it comes to online guitar lessons, especially electric guitar lessons, I’ve noticed a tendency for most of them to be a bit too advanced for the beginner guitarist. This seems to be especially true for the free lessons.

Electric guitarists tend to be fanatics, and get carried away with showing all sorts of cool stuff to learn on the guitar. This is great for when you’ve advanced a little on the guitar, but it sure doesn’t help someone looking for easy to learn electric guitar lessons.

Tip no 2 – Make your guitar easier to play.

One of the main causes of beginner guitarists not having an easy time of it, is that their guitars aren’t set up properly for maximum playability. Whether you buy a brand new electric guitar or you’re learning to play on a second hand, hand me down, there are things that can be done to an electric guitar that will vastly improve its playability.

I don’t want to get into the whole technical aspect of guitar setup here, so I’ll just leave it at one simple solution. Get a guitar builder, or repairman to have a look at your guitar and set it up for you.

Now you’d think that a new eletric guitar would be set up automatically to be easy to play, but they’re not. The reason they’re only given the most basic of setups at the factory, is that it would take too much of their production time.

Tip no 3 – Buy a guitar lessons book.

Guitar instruction books are quite cheap. Sure, I know this is about learning to play electric guitar online, but here’s the plan: You buy a good guitar book with all the theory, pictures and information you need to learn how to play, and then if you want to learn more, or get more information on how to do a certain lesson, you do a search on that lesson and “video”.

That may seem like the long way around, but really, just getting all the materials together and then getting stuck in is a solid approach to learning how to play electric guitar.

Another option is to buy a physical book like the “For Dummies” guitar book.

There are some basic guitar lessons on my main site – Play-electric-guitar.net and those will be developing over time to become as comprehensive as possible.

Outside of these points, I think that’s a wrap for making it easy to learn to play eletric guitar online. Last but not least, just keep working at it. It may seem hard at first, but one day it all just falls into place.

Having worked in the music production and backing track industry for the last 12 years as a guitarist come music arranger, one thing has become quite obvious to me.

Playing lead guitar to a backing track definitely makes a big difference to how well you play guitar solos. I often have to stop myself from just soloing endlessly over the backing, when I know I should be concentrating on finishing the backing track. Customers waiting and all you know.

But anyway, here’s the thing. Sometimes I’ve wasted too much time, and the song is due yesterday already, so I skimp on copying the exact guitar solo that’s in the song, and make up my own. This is quite easy to do when I’ve spent some time on just jamming to the track.

If you want to play guitar solos that are meaningful and fit into the song, it’s a good idea to have practiced with the same kind of rhythm and chord structure. Backing tracks, or “Jam tracks” as they’re sometimes called – Jam tracks being more specifically created for playing guitar over, are an excellent way to improve your soloing style.

Sitting in your bedroom and running over scales and learning guitar licks is all fine and well. You do improve on your soloing skills a lot when doing that, but when it comes to making up your own guitar solos, and getting it to sit well with the song, getting some decent Jam along tracks to practice to is a major help.

If you can – Start a band.

The reason I say this, is because way back, when I first started to play lead guitar, I learned most of my guitar scales and lead runs sitting on my own in the bedroom, with no interaction with any other musicians. I thought I was doing alright but…

Later when I joined a band and started playing lead guitar to a whole lot of different songs, it took a lot of work to actually really get into the songs. I spent a two month stint down the coast as the lead guitarist for the band, and when I came back home I realized that my playing had improved radically.

For the first time ever, when I played a solo, it worked as if I’d taken it straight off the record.

Playing with a band for a good while, or failing that, some decent guitar backing tracks, just kicks your solo guitar style up a few notches.

Later then.