Adrian Vadenberg, best known for his work in Whitesnake, explained that most guitar players often tend to make one error while shaping their tone which, ultimately, makes them all sound way too similar.
To get it out of the way — ultimately, there’s no “right” or “wrong” when shaping your guitar tone. It comes down to what you’re aiming for. Of course, when conforming to certain genres, you’ll tend to alter your guitar tone parameters in a certain way, especially if the audience expects that. However, there’s always room to make yourself sound somewhat unique.
According to what Adrian Vandenberg said in a recent interview with American music supply , most guitarists tend to push the gain knob to high levels which comes with its set of problems. When the interviewer mentioned how, while making music, it’s a good idea to leave some “space” and how most guitarists often tend to unnecessarily fill everything up, Adrian replied (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):
“That’s what I love. And also, the sounds of pretty much nine out of ten guitar players are very similar. It would be different when you would have one guy that plays, like, a more distorted guitar, and the other one plays like an almost clean one.”Of course, not everyone loves to make things too distorted and compressed, but it’s also not far from the truth to say that a lot of guitar players often do exactly that. On the other hand, the former Whitesnake guitarist suggests that we should look up more to guys like Angus Young and Malcolm Young if we want to make our guitar tone stand out. Vandenberg added:
“For instance, a lot of people don’t realize that, in AC/DC, those guitars are not very distorted. But it smacks you in the face because they are not so distorted. It had a lot of punch instead of getting compressed because of a lot of gain and stuff.”Or, to put it simply, “it doesn’t cut through anymore if it’s too much gain and too much compression going on,” he concluded.
Adrian was a member of Whitesnake when they saw significant commercial success. David Coverdale partly owes this success to Adrian since he co-wrote all of the songs on the 1989 album “Slip of the Tongue.”
A few years before that, he joined in during the recording sessions of the self-titled album, also known as “1987,” putting his musicianship to good use for lead guitar parts on the reworked version of the band’s old song ” Here I Go Again.” Reminded of this tune, he said:
“The solos in ‘Here I Go Again’ and the early Vandenberg song ‘ Burning Heart’ are usually seen as my trademark solos for me. Second Vandenberg album made a song called ‘This Is War’ and that’s probably one of my favorite solos that I thought, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool. I didn’t realize at the time. I only realized it years later that that was actually pretty cool and stands for what I do.”
“But just like you mentioned, ‘Here I Go Again’ has got all the little bits and pieces that are, I suppose, my style or trademark, or whatever.”
Leave a Reply