Do Guitarists Rely On Gear Too Much?
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- Опубліковано 21 лис 2023
- Will buying gear help you make better music and is gear really that important if you want to be a great guitarist and musician?
I've always had a perhaps unconventional relationship with gear when it comes to guitar. I see a lot of people buying masses of pedals, guitars, amps and it can be such a joyous part of being a guitar player. I've always pushed back against this somewhat because for me, the joy of playing guitar is in the music it enables you to play, not so much in the gear associated with the instrument.
I'd love to know your thoughts on this in the comments!
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My name is Chris Harvey, I'm a UK-based Guitarist, Guitar Tutor, Session Guitarist and Content Creator. I've been playing guitar for 15 years and have a Degree in Music Technology.
My channel is all about creating content for the modern-day guitarist. I want to provide you with everything you need to know to improve your knowledge of the guitar and the guitar industry. I'm also a videographer so I aim to make my videos as visually appealing as possible!
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Thanks for watching folks! What's your relationship like with guitar gear? 🎸 Do you enjoy collecting gear, or do you prefer a more minimalist approach?
As a beginner guitarist, I'm not creating my own songs, but learning to play the guitar classics and a large pedalboard allows me to recreate their sound and have more fun. I love new equipment and my pedalboard is already starting to get out of hand 😅, but I always try use as few effects as possible to practice because it's too easy to hide mistakes. It also seems to me that using too many pedals at once also makes the guitar sound like a collection of effects, taking away the soul transferred by the musician.
This is the same journey I been through. Thanks for this video
Yes they do
One other thought on your comment about cheap gear. I was at an open mic a couple of months ago, and a guy walked in with a parlor acoustic guitar, a magnetic pick up and a little Ibanez practice amp. He played some searing blue solos, and had the place rockin! Everybody there absolutely loved it.
Dude probably got his whole rig for less than 200 bucks at a pawnshop. It’s the player that counts!
Dude, I love that! Cheap gear can have so much mojo in the right hands! 👌🏻 I bet that guy knew his rig inside out!
Amen brother! This video should be required viewing before watching any other gear videos :)
One thing I do is force myself to play a certain combination of gear for a number of weeks. It forces you to really learn it and you get a lot of satisfaction without driving yourself. Crazy with decisions.
I am also a big fan of practicing with no pedals at all. People don’t realize there’s a huge variety of sounds you can get from just how you play the guitar pick up settings, knob settings, etc. Pedals also tend to hide mistakes which you need to know about when you’re practicing.
Ah thanks man, really appreciate you watching!
Yes yes yes, that is a great exercise! I think so many guitarists are quick to disregard certain pedals or combinations of pedals because they don't take the time to understand how to get the best out of them!
I love that approach of just removing pedals altogether and understanding what your guitar is doing and how to get the most out of it! At a recent gig, I just set my amp pretty loud and set my overdrive on the edge of break up as an always on pedals and just decided to ride the guitars volume control and it was dynamic and expressive. SO many more tonal possibilities and far more controllable!
I've been running the same type of board for years now! I've found that it works much better for me. Happy to see you taking the same direction 🎶
Hey man, thanks for watching! Been enjoying your tones lately, your approach to gear is the same as mine! 👌🏻
I agree. I'm going out tonight with a Nano board containing a Carl Martin Rock Bug, Boss reverb, tuner and a clean boost.
Love it David! Nice and simple and great options! Thanks for watching bud! 🙏🏻
Most of us have been down the gear rabbit hell hole , every week theres a new klon, or ts , its so ridiculous now that influencers are getting their own pedals and guitars just for influencing while the majority of top pro players maybe have a couple of old boss or mxr pedals at most...consume consume consume
Oh man, the amount of overdrive pedals flooding the market these days is utterly ridiculous! I love seeing original circuits and innovative designs in overdrive pedals but these companies that are just creating another tubescreamer or klon replica are not really for me!
Several years ago I was playing a festival at a time when I used to take a big pedal board out and I had a catastrophic failure of the whole board which I couldn't fix in time and couldn't delay the gig any longer so I ended up just going straight into the amp on a clean setting for everything... I felt so freed up to just express myself as much as possible through my fingers without half my little brain being taken up with which pedals need to be pressed when 😂
Nowadays I normally take a mini pedalboard out (a pedaltrain Nano) with basically pedals that give me a reverb, a delay, a little bit of grit & a bit more grit and that's normally everything I need.
Oh man, my worst nightmare! Thankfully that hasn't happened to me and *touch wood* it never will! It's out of fear of those situations that I like to keep it simple! 😅 Your nano board sounds perfect though, and i'm sure having a shorter signal chain will also help the tone too! Thanks for watching mate, really appreciate it.
It will be interesting to how the next few years shakes out, with the introduction of all the new modeler units (helix, tone master pro, etc), I’ve always felt those type of units were super distracting and too fiddly. I prefer to plug in, maybe run a pedal or 2 and get on with focusing on my chops, vs twisting dials and downloading latest patch. Etc etc. technology can easily become a distraction
Being a session guitarist, i've had an internal struggle about units like the HX Stomp, I always think they' can be powerful studio tools if you need a certain sound, but then I never pick one up because I just see them as a bit of a 'Jack of all trades, master of none'. I'd much rather use a plugin in post than get lost in menus during a session - it's just wasting time if you ask me.
It’s always more impressive when some dude pulls out a cheap guitar and shreds it to bits, vs some other guy who pulls out a 5k dollar guitar and can barely hold a basic rhythm
Yeaahhhh man, i'm totally with you! I love seeing quirky, old, crumby guitars in the hands of real pros - they have so much mojo in the right hands! Unique tones, a bit of a fight 👌🏻.
I've gone from 20 guitars and 80 pedals to 4 guitars and maybe 20 pedals (3 boards). Still too many amps though. But yeah, having more choice didn't make me more creative, it just made me more distracted. I've given up watching gear reviews, because I've not added to my rig in the last couple of years and have no desire to do so now.
Getting to a point where you're happy with the gear you have is the end goal! I'm sure you've got some excellent options! Do you feel like you're focussing more on your playing now that you've stopped accumulating gear?
@@ChrisHarveyGuitar I'd say so! I recorded 2 albums and 3 singles in the last year, after nothing since 2016. When you spend more time reading about gear than playing it, it's no longer the playing that's the hobby. Which isn't necessarily bad, but for me, I needed to get back to my roots.
Very informative bro as always ❤️👌. Thanks for sharing 🙏🏻
Thank you so much mate! Really appreciate you checking out the video!🙏🏻
I've forced myself to stop buying gear. I don't need anymore guitars. Recently I've been recording using only one pedal direct into my interface, and everything else is done with plugins. It just simplifies everything. The process is so much quicker getting the work done.
Thanks for watching and commenting! It's great to hear that you're adopting a simplified approach too - great choice using plugins - they're so powerful and accessible these days, it's a no brainer! 👌🏻
I will be creative but first of all I have to buy tons of stuff to increase my options ... the greatest self-deception among guitarists (I'm talking out of self experience) 😊
😂 Exactly! Ultimate self-deception! I'm glad you're with me on this! Thanks for watching man! Really appreciate it!
@@ChrisHarveyGuitar my pleasure ;)
I saw Gary Moore up close 2006 Wembley Arena. Guitar,amp and one pedal. Was two cranked marshalls though.The pedal was a bluesbreaker or guvnor couldn't make it out but was madhall thing .
Wow Mark, what an experience that would have been! Would have loved to have seen Gary live! Bet the sound was biblical! 🤘🏻 Thanks for checking out the video man!
@@ChrisHarveyGuitar It was indeed . He is sorely missed. I was a contractor working there . I was at the backstage passage and this bloke says can I go in here ?I says yeah go on then . Found out later it was Brian Downey the Lizzy drummer! Pinched myself for ages after . I did ask the guitar tech to show me the greeny Les Paul. Told me to @#£& off .Don't blame him for a minute . Thank you for the channel , as you said less is more sonically .
I have far to much stuff but that’s been accumulated over a lifetime and in reality other interests have come and gone
Now I’m downsizing my guitar side and upsizing my synth side
Luckily there’s a lot of gear cross over so that’s beneficial
That synth journey sounds like a fun one! And always great when you can use the same piece of gear in multiple applications! Thanks for checking out the video, I really appreciate it! 🙏🏻
It's interesting, Chris. There's a lot of what you've been saying recently that chimes with my own conclusions during my journey back to guitar. I've spent a long time pouring over You Tube gear reviews, and the conclusion I've come to is that basically I'm being sold to. This or that new thing will solve all your problems.
If I just had one of those, or this multi-do-it-all, I'd be set for sonic perfection. I accept that to be creative one needs tools, but really do I need a pedal board the size of a large wardrobe costing thousands of pounds? A multi amp set up? One of every 'essential' breed of guitar? No. If I want to be good, I need to play. I have a couple of decent guitars (a strat I bought with my first wages in 1978, a pretty good Epiphone Sheraton, and an OK acoustic), Back in my band days I played inventive fusion jazz/rock with just that old strat, a few boss pedals and a little Roland amp. I never felt held back.
So all my attention right now is on my playing, and I could do with a decent practice amp for home which also might enable me to jam with others (plenty of options here these days which needn't cost the earth). I want to work the guitar to get the sounds I'm after not press a button. I'm no technophobe (I'm a Software Engineer by profession) but I know I'll be staying away from modellers. A year ago I saw Derek Trucks live. A guitar, a 'Fender (clone)' amp and one or maybe two pedals that he hardly used and he held every soul in that audience entralled for two hours. He didnt get to be that world class wasting his time not playing.
I don't consider your video a rant at all. If I really got going on this subject I could show you a rant for sure, but that guitar is calling...
Thanks for sharing your experience Pete, it's great to hear your approach mate! I think you've got some good bases covered with the guitars and a small practice amp can be really versatile, I love amps like the Fender Pro Jr, great for playing at home and can be cranked live etc! I've definitely become more fond of manipulating the guitar, during my last gig I set the amp and the Tumnus overdrive to be loud enough for a solo and then just used my volume control to go between clean and edge of breakup and it was a liberating experience. No need to step on a pedal at all and super dynamic and expressive!
I'm glad you didn't consider the video to be a rant, I think most guitar players probably have strong feelings about this subject! 😄
@@ChrisHarveyGuitar Yeah Chris, I think most guitar players have plenty of opinions One of the reasons why I give the forums a wide berth! It's like the wild west out there 😂