Forging one’s unique musical path isn’t a cakewalk. This month we asked an artist with an unmistakable voice—Melissa Etheridge—to join us in giving pointers about finding and staying true to your own vision.
Melissa Etheridge — Guest Picker
What advice would you give to young players trying to find their voice?
Make sure you’re doing what you love. If you’re just doing what you think others are gonna like, it’ll get old fast. So play what you love, and then be open. Listen to other music and to what people tell you: Look at them and see the reaction. Are they enjoying what you’re playing? It’s a group effort, this music is to be shared. If you can combine the love and someone else feeling that, that’s where you start to have success.
My current obsession is: I started playing 12-string when I was 14 because this kid at church camp had one and it just sounded so beautiful. I was so happy with it and I still am.
Andy Ellis — Senior Editor
What advice would you give to young players trying to find their voice?
Forget about being a guitarist. Become a musical explorer, travel far and wide in search of sounds and styles. You'll encounter rhythms, techniques, and timbres that will amaze and delight you. Using your guitar as a “sonic camera,” document and study these discoveries, and then share them. It’s a personal odyssey, so your audio travelogue will be unique.
My current obsession is: Palm levers on a lap-steel guitar. There’s a Duesenberg Multibender or Bigsby Palm Pedal system in my future, I can feel it.
Joe Gore — Senior Editor
What advice would you give to young players trying to find their voice?
1. Make a list of five guitar skills you’re really good at. Don’t be modest.
2. Rank the skills according to how common they are. (1 = unique, 5 = everyone does it.)
3. Consider how your playing would sound if you did #1 and #2 twice as often and #4 and #5 half as often.
My current obsession is: The epic early Ellington on this season’s Boardwalk Empire. If there were any justice, the face of America’s greatest composer would grace the dollar bill.
Tessa Jeffers — Managing Editor
What advice would you give to young players trying to find their voice?
Don’t overthink it. If whatever you’re doing in music is from the heart, it’ll happen naturally so keep doing what you’re drawn to because that’s the reason for the season. People respond to authenticity.
My current obsession is: Alt-J’s This Is All Yours. I’m in love with what they do: A majestic rock band that sounds like chillaxed Chemical Brothers compositions performed by Beaker the Muppet.
Jason Shadrick — Associate Editor
What advice would you give to young players trying to find their voice?
It’s not about the gear. Forget about what the latest gizmo or gadget is and focus on connecting with the instrument. Once you get that going the gear becomes secondary—as it should be.
My current obsession is:
Bruce Hornsby’s band circa 2000. His live album, Here Comes The Noise Makers, is absolute proof that a piano can rawk.
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Vox’s Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
I spent a day workshopping ideas in my studio using just the Vox Valvenergy Smooth Impact compressor and Tone Sculptor EQ, and a dash of amp tremolo and reverb to taste. In the process, I produced more arresting sounds than I had heard from my guitars in many days. There were radical direct-to-desk-style Jimmy Page/Beatles distortion tones, sun-sized, cosmic electric 12-string, Bakersfield twang that could burn through crude, and many other sweet and nasty colors. Most decent EQ and compressor combinations can achieve variations on all those themes. But the Smooth Impact and Tone Sculptor also reveal interesting personalities in unexpected places.
The individuality and energy in the Vox Valvenergy pedals is attributable, in part, to the Nutube vacuum tube used in the circuit. Though it looks little like a vacuum tube as most guitarists know them, the thin, wafer-like Nutube is, in fact, a real vacuum tube like those used in fluorescent displays. Fluorescent display tubes have limitations. A maximum operating voltage of around 40 volts means they aren’t useful for bigger power tube applications like a 6L6, which has an operating voltage of about 400 volts. But it can work quite well as a preamp tube in concert with an op amp power section, which is how the Nutube is used in the new Valvenergy pedals, as well as older Vox products like the Vox MV50 and Superbeetle amps.
Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
When you think about “cinematic” effects, you likely imagine big reverb or modulation sounds that create a vivid picture and feeling of space or motion. But narrow, hyper-focused EQ profiles can evoke very different and equally powerful images. Radical EQ settings can add aggression, claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts more evocative of Hitchcock’s Psycho than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Any of these moods can be summoned from the Valvenergy Tone Sculptor. Six sliders cut or boost 10 dB frequency bands spanning 100 Hz to 5.6 kHz. A seventh slider cuts or boosts the master output by 12 dB. This platter of options might not sound like much. But you can use these seven controls together to very specific ends.
“Radical EQ settings can add aggression, near-claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts.”
For example, bumping the high-midrange and the master output produces narrow cocked-wah-like filter sounds with enough push to produce extra amp overdrive—effectively turning the Tone Sculptor into a buzzy, almost fuzz-like filter effect. But unlike a wah, you can carefully scoop high end or add a spoonful of bass to blunt harsh frequencies or give the tone a bit more weight. You can also broaden the palette of an amp/guitar pairing. I matched a particularly trebly Jazzmaster bridge pickup with a very hot and toppy Vox AC15-flavored amp for this test—a recipe that can be spiky on the best days. But with the Tone Sculptor in the line, I could utilize the same sharp, fuzzy, and filtered Mick Ronson wah tones while shaving some of the most piercing frequencies.
EQ pedals exist on many points along the cost spectrum. And at $219, the Tone Sculptor lives on the high side of the affordable range. Does it offer something less expensive models can’t deliver? Well, for one thing, I found it relatively quiet, which is nice whether you’re shaping toppy high-contrast effects or performing more surgical adjustments. And the sliders feel nuanced and nicely tapered rather than like a dull axe with a few basic frequency notches. But in many situations I also liked the color imparted by the circuit—generated, presumably, by the Nutube. “Color,” in audio terms, is a broad and subjective thing, and one should not necessarily expect the warm, tube-y glow of a vintage tube Pultec. Still, the Tone Sculptor has many forgiving, flattering qualities—typical of studio EQs—that enable fine tuning and experimentation with more radical and creative applications of the effect.
Valvenergy Smooth Impact
As with the Tone Sculptor, the Smooth Impact’s use of Nutube engenders certain expectations. It’s easy to surmise that because Smooth Impact has a vacuum tube in the circuit that it will behave like a little Teletronix LA-2A leveling amplifier. That’s a big ask for a $219 stompbox. On the other hand, the Smooth Impact exhibits some appealing characteristics of studio tube compression. At lower compression levels, it works well as a thickening agent—adding mass without much additional noise. And at higher compression levels it can sound snappy, crisp, and tight without feeling like you’ve bled every trace of overtone from your signal.
The Smooth Impact’s controls aren’t totally atypical. But because it lacks some familiar features like variable attack and release, yet is more complicated than a 1-knob DynaComp, you have to trust your ear to navigate interactions among the controls. The most unfamiliar of these is the 3-way vintage/natural/sag toggle. The first two are defined by preset attack and release settings: Vintage is slow attack and long release, and natural is the opposite. The sag mode’s compression is more like what you get from tube saturation, and it’s useful for adding thickness and complexity to a thin amp tone at modest compression levels.
Though the vintage and natural modes certainly have a different feel, they don’t always sound worlds apart. And like the sag mode, the thing they have in common is the way they enrich lifeless amp output at low to medium compression, with a bit of grind from the tube gain and a little extra makeup gain from the output. At the most aggressive settings, the tube gain can get a little crispy. And really crushing the compression can flatline your tone without adding much in the way of extra sustain. These are limitations common to many compressors with similar features. But unless I was chasing very ultra-snappy Prince and Nile Rodgers fast-funk caricatures, I enjoyed the Smooth Impact most in its in-between ranges, where mass, mild, harmonious drive, and low noise showcase the pedal’s sometimes studio-like personality.
