Flat6Driver
Poster Extraordinaire
He Seems to have touched a nerve with some of you all. I’m sure the way my ears are shaped something doesn’t sound exactly the same to me as it does to anyone else.
TDPRI gets a shout-out: Jim Lill on tone
- Thread starter Peegoo
- Start date
Swirling Snow
Tele-Afflicted
You're making laugh, here, and you raise some good points.Lill’s videos and their responses here always hit home for me because i’m a science teacher and what plays out is something i think about a lot. If there’s a failure it’s not in the science but in science communication. Here’s a picture of what i mean:
Many players, especially on the gear internet, want a theory of tone. It gives us a shared language and helps to understand and predict the world. ‘Turning the volume knob clockwise will probably do this’ and lo! It does. And hundreds of other things about tube types and wire and transformers and magnets and pickup winding and picks. Jim Lill recognizes that some parts of the Theory of Tone are nonsense, and crafts these demonstrations to show that. But disproof is easy and there’s an asymmetry there. One cheap demo, scientifically, can call a whole theory into question. But i see reader after reader say words to the effect of ‘well if our theory of tone is wrong, what’s jim lill’s?’ And that’s one of the rubs—knocking down a theory can be cheap and quick and still be scientific. Putting up a new one can be extremely time consuming and expensive. No one’s going to do that for clicks on youtube. Some people respond poorly to the unfairness/asymmetry of that, like jim lill owes you a new theory cause he broke your old one!
So you see the points he makes, often phrased negatively like “the different rectifier doesn’t…” “the different phase inverter doesn’t…” and you see his audience inverting these statements into a new, positively phrased here’s where tone comes from according to Lill, and of course it’s full of holes and a reader who’s motivated to disagree w/ lill can feel comfortable rejecting the new evidence that doesn’t fit the old theory, write lill’s whole project off as unscientific.
But regarding Mr. Lill's scientificness... have you replicated any of his "experiments"? Reproducibility is the keystone of any scientific experiment, is it not? He's not communicating enough information for it to qualify as "science". When I see a white paper in the AES publication, I'll take him seriously, but we both know that will never happen.
Junkyard Dog
Friend of Leo's
I've never been obsessed with tone. I really don't care at all how whomever got that tone on whatever. I might really like it but I don't need to see how it happened. I'm only concerned with my tone and I've never found it hard to get one that feels right to me.
Blrfl
Friend of Leo's
I'd have to imagine that members of the AES don't need anyone to publish a paper explaining that the path between the microphone and a listener's ear makes enough changes to the signal that it isn't going to sound like it's "in the room."
That's really Lill's point here, and he's right: when most people say, "I like Joe Guitar Player's tone," they really mean "I like Joe Guitar Player's recorded tone." Unless they were part of the process, they have no idea whether the guitar sound they're hearing went through with as few changes as possible or someone added 3 dB at 500 Hz during mixing to make it sound fatter.
Swirling Snow
Tele-Afflicted
The part I'm stumbling on here is the idea that recorded tones sound better than the real thing.
willjoe123
TDPRI Member
I may be over-charitable, but I think that's nitpicking a bit and unravelling something that was meant as hyperbole. I'm sure it would be more accurate to say 'for the most part we listen to and discuss tones that recorded or, if live, still mic'd eq'd and variously processed', but that would take longer and be less provocative.
kind of like if i said everyone in town came to the town hall meeting. clearly everyone didn't because old mrs. jackson is a shutin and she didn't come, and many of the teenagers dont give a flip about the town hall meeting and weren't there, and john had to work second shift... but you know what i mean.
by and large the guitar tone we experience from others is recorded. but like i said, maybe im over-charitable. it has happened before!
good policy
Swirling Snow
Tele-Afflicted
Gracious! The general tenor of TDPRI is that of a bar after midnight, and you waft in like a southern gentleman, speaking softly and using complete sentences.
<--( looks more like Marylin on a steam vent, but please pretend it's a curtsey )Welcome to the forum, and very pleased to meet you.
First of all, yes he's right. We discuss known quantities. We both went out to a bar last night, but we live live 2000 miles apart, so we saw different bands. Let's talk about the Beatles. However, by skipping a step like that, he moves the discussion from "tone in the room" to "tone on a record" which is way more limited in range, dynamics, and detail. And, it endorses his YouTube videos as being authentic.
I know I'm under-charitable. Jim just rubs me the wrong way. I guess you could say he doesn't meet my standards of journalism. If his favorite tones are on records, they better be records cut in Nashville.
Flat6Driver
Poster Extraordinaire
This place is more like Golden Corrall at 5pm, IMHO.Gracious! The general tenor of TDPRI is that of a bar after midnight, and you waft in like a southern gentleman, speaking softly and using complete sentences.
Welcome to the forum, and very pleased to meet you.
First of all, yes he's right. We discuss known quantities. We both went out to a bar last night, but we live live 2000 miles apart, so we saw different bands. Let's talk about the Beatles. However, by skipping a step like that, he moves the discussion from "tone in the room" to "tone on a record" which is way more limited in range, dynamics, and detail. And, it endorses his YouTube videos as being authentic.
I know I'm under-charitable. Jim just rubs me the wrong way. I guess you could say he doesn't meet my standards of journalism. If his favorite tones are on records, they better be records cut in Nashville.
I don't love all Jim's videos, there's often too much going on too quickly but I'm really curious why he rubs people the wrong way. Seems like the kind of well reasoned resource this place could use. Maybe he's touched a nerve or onto something
Blrfl
Friend of Leo's
There's this thing that happens where people make their beliefs part of their identity. Anything that proves their beliefs wrong is an attack on their identity. People hate that.
Whether he's right or wrong doesn't matter. I think the point of his video is the story based on his own experiences, and to suggest some different ways to think about how we perceive what we like and dislike. Nowhere does he suggest his assertions are Tha Holey Gospel, because there are holes if your experience differs.
You can get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Lame by flying to Cleveland. Or you can make a road trip out of it and drive there in an old beat-up pickup, or a brand new Cadillac Rolling Office Building, or perhaps you'd prefer to thumb your way there. Maybe even hike overland. But you get there.
Not that I'd wanna go.
You can get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Lame by flying to Cleveland. Or you can make a road trip out of it and drive there in an old beat-up pickup, or a brand new Cadillac Rolling Office Building, or perhaps you'd prefer to thumb your way there. Maybe even hike overland. But you get there.
Not that I'd wanna go.
Throttleneck
Tele-Afflicted
This made me think of this video with Billy Gibbons tech. Starting about 8:40 mark he says that the EQ everything so no matter what guitar Billy is using it sounds like Pearly.
Lou Tencodpees
Tele-Afflicted
I do find the assertion from Wayne Moss interesting that amps were most often close mic'd even back in the day.
I think having one's beliefs merely questioned can be just as threatening as being proven wrong.
sax4blues
Poster Extraordinaire
What about recorded guitar tone which is double/triple tracked with different amps/guitars/settings? We've all heard isolated tracks which sound very different than the sound we hear in the final production. How are you going to get an "in the room" sound from one guitar/amp/effects to match that?
Nogoodnamesleft
Tele-Afflicted
Yes, one of the most fragile things.
That's true. In the studio you can tweeze all the stray eyebrow hairs out and get it picture perfect.
But conversely there's a thing that happens when you're in a small club and the band is burnin', and there's an energy in the room that contributes to the experience, even when things are not perfect. It's the Best Show You've Ever Seen. There is no way to capture that in a studio.
Have you ever heard a bootleg recording of a live event you attended and thought, "DANG, I don't remember them sounding that bad..."
The compromise between live energy and studio perfection is a thing called "sweetening," which is taking a recording of a live performance with all the cheering and band banter with the audience into the studio and adding or fixing things and releasing it as a live album. Almost every live album ever released has been treated this way.
willjoe123
TDPRI Member
I try to save my bar-after-midnight-brawler-mode for matters of life and death, or for people i know irl
gitold
Poster Extraordinaire
I don’t trust anyone under 40!!!
