Tone Discriptors

[StarryNight]

It is, of course, impossible to precisely quantify these "tone descriptors." Nevertheless, it would be a very interesting project for some group of smart people to take a list of descriptors and associate with each one a few canonical examples. A ToneWiki.

It's funny how limiting language is. Are there any universal descriptors to describe the timbre of Page's solo in Heartbreaker?

It's interesting to note that guitar is probably one of the instruments with the most varied amount of sounds. An oboe sounds like an oboe and a symphonic composer would write a part for an oboe because it has a certain nasal sound that other instruments don't have. It has one sonic role as an instrument. Guitar has become so complex with its identity in popular music, it's hard to define what a guitar is. I wonder if trumpet players have this same problem?

[Mark Hammer]

A friend of mine has published the functional equivalent to what we're talking about...except it's for wine.

The Frugal Oenophile's Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms, Richard Best, Book - Barnes & Noble

Certainly if someone can do it for wine-tasting, they can do it for pickups and guitar tone-tasting.

[ShannonH]

just for fun...

It is, of course, impossible to precisely quantify these "tone descriptors." Nevertheless, it would be a very interesting project for some group of smart people to take a list of descriptors and associate with each one a few canonical examples. A ToneWiki.

We could include sample of the bad... Farty, burpy, blatty, tubbly, screechy. Oh wait that was the other five dwarves that got kicked out (I have young children, sorry.)

[Billy Bones]

I don't know how to make a wiki, but I like the idea of a wiki that has a list of words that we use to describe tone, and if there were some way to put a description and a sample it would be a good start to a conversation. I doubt there would be a way to get everyone to agree on what the terms mean, but it would at least set out some parameters. If there were different people using the words differently, and putting up examples of their use of the word, or their interpretation of the word we could have a conversation that sounded like, "No, I mean "twangy" in the sense that Shannon was using it, not like Billy meant.

I'll bet when Sam Johnson started writing a dictionary, people thought "That's stupid, no one is ever going to agree on what those words really mean." But he wrote it down, and it became the standard.

Billy

[David Schwab]

We could include sample of the bad... Farty, burpy...

"farty" and "burpy" are often used to describe desirable bridge pickup tones on basses.

For neck pickup tones you might have buttery, creamy, syrupy, and even chocolaty.

So clearly the neck pickup does all the eating, while the bridge ... well, you get the idea.