Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time with obscure Youtube videos. Most of them star some maniac or other, alone in a bedroom, probably late at night, with the camera cropping out the face. The creepiness of that particular cropping is (slightly) lessened when you realize that these videos are all about what’s resting in the star’s lap: a guitar.
I’m looking for a new electric guitar—the rockabilly-flavored Gretsch I’ve wanted for years—and such things cannot be entered into lightly. They require research. Guitar videos are often the only resort when you’re looking for a guitar that isn’t readily available at the local music store. Non-guitarists often think guitar players have lost their minds when they claim to hear the differences between semi-hollow and hollowbody guitars, aluminum versus titanium bridges. But, like anything, such stuff is a matter of familiarity. Once you’ve heard such differences, you can’t stop hearing them. It’s all about a slippery holy grail: “tone.”
That word gets thrown around a lot when it comes to guitars, and especially electrics, where much more has to happen before a sound is produced. It refers to something that’s on the one hand quantifiable through understanding what equipment provides what sound, and on the other hand nearly magical, a combo of the happenstance of electronic circuits interacting with the way a player hits the strings and places the fingers on the fretboard. Bad tone can ruin even technically proficient guitarists (see Carlos Santana and “wasp in a tin can” distortion), and good tone can smile upon hacks, though it only adds a pleasant depth to otherwise bad notes.
Tone is often the difference between playing chords and hearing mere party sounds (“Louie, Louie”) or hearing iconic masterstrokes that find their way onto soundtracks in perpetuity (“All Along the Watchtower,” Jimi Hendrix). Something about the crunch and warmth of that Hendrix Stratocaster bears endless listens, and embodies coolness like little else.
All these matters of tone were on my mind when I received a CD called Travel On by The Jime, the vehicle for Danish rockabilly maestro Vince Gordon. Gordon is a masterful player and a tone connoisseur with few equals, devoted to recreating sounds whose subtleties are often lost on modern six-string shredders. His rockabilly guitar Web page (www.the-jime.dk/Rockabilly_Guitar.htm) is an in-depth examination of the elements that produce the tones of early rock and roll (and especially helpful if you’re looking for a Gretsch).
In the case of Travel On, much of the record exists in symbiotic relationship to a guitar modifying project Gordon undertook to conjure the tone of one of the most important guitarists in rock ‘n’ roll history, a guy named Scotty Moore. Moore provided some of the earliest sounds dubbed “rockabilly” underneath the vocals of a young Elvis Presley (“Mystery Train” is Moore at his finest), and was among the seminal creators of the lead guitar role in rock.
Like few CDs, Travel On is a showcase for a very particular guitar sound. On tracks like “Minor Moonlight” and “Never Kissed A Girl Like You,” Gordon demonstrates a deft sense of song construction and a penchant for bringing old sounds into new contexts, at once rockabilly and modern, the kind of tone-driven innovation he’s evidenced on several CDs with The Jime.
I asked Gordon about the importance of the Moore tone to making Travel On. Some of what he has to say is insider baseball for guitarists, but revealing nonetheless. “I only chose songs that I knew would fit that guitar sound,” says Gordon. “The intro for ‘Go-Go!’ was made with that particular sound in mind. I remember experimenting quite a lot, because the pickups were new to me.
“I would like to mention the ballad ‘That Was It,’ with the surprise ending. You could never get that groove going like we have in the end without those Alnico V [pickups].”
What he learned in recording led him to change the electronics of his guitar to hone in on that all-important sound.
As for why guitar tone is so important, Gordon says, “Most licks just won’t work without the right tone. This is where Chuck Berry’s standard licks are so unique. They even work on a Spanish guitar around the campfire!”
For most every musician, such concerns are central, if not always given prominent play. It’s one of the joys of the Internet that, for whatever particular sound you’re after, you can find fellow travellers, people like Gordon who’ve devoted themselves to divining the mysteries of tone, to dialing in the sounds that provide that elusive coolness you can’t just buy.
