Having written a few articles on technique so far, I thought it might be nice to spend some time talking about more general musical ideas that may help you become a great musician and not just the guy who can pick the fastest (you know who you are). I want to talk about other styles of music than rock and blues, I want to talk about other instruments and their conventions and I even want to just talk about how to act profesionally as a musician.

Ok, so let's be honest here. We all know what being a rock guitarist is like, eh? We turn up to the gig and then we really turn up the amps! After all, we buy great big 50 Watt or 100 Watt Marshalls because the rest of the band want the big rock sound. We buy the big cabs for the projection. Play a power chord through the rig and everyone is clamping their hands over their ears shouting "You've got to turn down we can't have it that loud!"

Taking egos out of the equation, there are two reasons to be loud. The first is simply to be heard over the rest of the band. If this is really the case, then they haven't got much cause for asking you to turn down until they do. You may find that you can cut through the mix at a lower volume with a slightly different eq setting however. Many guitarists who play in big bands often use an extremely trebly sound that would sound too harsh by itself but cuts through the mix perfectly. The other main reason for us guitarists not wanting to turn down is due to the fact that these big amps can sound pretty lame at low volumes.

I remember that I used to have two Marshall amps, a 10W solid-state practise amp and a 50W JCM 900 played through a 4x12 cab. At quiet room volumes they both sounded pretty much identical. There are a couple of reasons why the meat of your sound disappears when you get really quiet so I'll look at them now.

Tube amplifiers have the biggest problem here because their sound is made up using gain. The old tube amps simply had one volume which increased the gain aswell. Nowadays we have gain and master volume. Unfortunately, although we can run the preamps really hot, the sound will not really fill out until the power amp starts to soak as well. The other main problem is that higher volumes allow the speakers to play better. Finally, our ears respond to the sound differently when its louder, emphasising the high and low frequencies more.

Well there are several solutions but realistically they are likely to end up costing you money. Firstly, buy the right amps for the gigs. If you are playing in small bars and clubs then look for something like a 30 Watt combo which should give you a killer overdrive sound at a fairly low volume but still be loud enough to do the gig. Of course at home, consider using a practise amp or headphones.

Finally, for the guitarist who needs the power to play the concerts but doesn't want to consider getting a second amp for smaller venues, you can buy a powersoak. Marshall make a powersoak that they obviously recommend for use with their amps, however I am currently using a Hotplate from THD Electronics which came highly recommended. This way you can run the power amp and still keep the volume low. Obviously this runs the tubes a bit harder (as they're always going at full whack) but it seems a small price to pay.

Some guys just use power amps and then use rack mounted preamp gear with effects units to get their sound but this is extremely expensive and I've never been particularly fond of the kind of sound most of these guys get. Obviously Larry Carlton sounds amazing but his rig is the price of a good car...

Well personally I think it's worth being able to get a great tone at pretty much any volume. It's just so useful and flexible. Also, many studio engineers aren't particularly fond of recording at 100 Watts if they can avoid it. In fact, some engineers have said that the sheer volume can have adverse effects on the microphones ability to record well. Secondly, PA guys really hate guitarists who insist on cranking their backline amps and completely flooding the stage mix. As I was saying at the start of this article, it's all about being able to get on with the other guys and act professionally as a musician. There are more guys involved than just the guitarist and it pays to remember that.