Improve your touch and your tone

I am not a good guitar player, but I can sound like one for a little while.

Between understanding what is going on inside the equipment and being lucky enough to have watched numerous pro players at very close range, I can summon nice tones out of unfamiliar gear in mere seconds. That, said, don't ask me to play a whole song; testing gear has reduced my playing to a series of short snippets that check one technical feature or another.

Point is, while it can take a while to learn about the under-the-hood electronics part, you can sound better in under 3 minutes by improving your touch.

When a pro player comes to the bench to try out a new guitar, amp or pedal, I see a touch that is 1 confident, yet capable of subtlty and nuance, 2, strong enough to get full dynamic range from the pickups, in-tune bends and crisp hammer-ons and 3, precise enough to make more notes than noise, to mute unwanted sounds, fret cleanly and stay in tune.

When a non-pro comes to the bench, some are pretty good. The ones that are not often lack touch. Their address to the instrument is either too brutish - wrenching notes out of tune, playing everything Forte with strings and frets buzzing from abuse, or they barely brush the strings making a quiet, weak little noise.

One common thing the too-loud and too-quiet players share is practicing way beyond their skill. While we have to push ourselves to get better, it builds tone to practice below your skills once in a while. Give Stairway and Crazy Train a break tonight and pick something dead easy to practice. Then make every note and every chord clean, precise and confident. Slip in that little flourish, since you are not struggling to just keep up.

So, I call on everyone to practice touch and tone in the same way one might practice chords or scales. Pick an easy number and put a little extra into it, rather than playing almost good enough on a complex tune. Make every sound clean and confident while muting everything else. Hit the strings hard enough to get rich tones, but not so hard that they slap frets and buzz. Vary your touch from gentle to muscular. Change you pick position to change your timbre. Try this for 3 minutes per day and you will hear the difference in no time.

Ok, end of the soapbox speech. I see a lot of people spend big bucks on gear that really just need to improve their touch. Don't be that guy, Chordians.