The Four Attributes of Tone
This was written back in 2010 and posted under a different title. Updated and edited.
Every sound or tone has four basic attributes. These are attack, consistency, relaxation, and color.
These four attributes give us the tools to shape our sound to achieve the effect we want in our playing.
First, the attack.
The attack describes the initial onset of a tone. It can range from an imperceptible attack (a whooshy attack) to a sharp percussive attack (a bam).
The attack determines the level of intelligibility of a tone.
Intelligibility here refers to clarity. Just as clearly articulated consonants make speech more intelligible, clearly defined attacks produce greater clarity.
What kind of attack you use depends on context.
If you’re playing a stream of fast sixteenth or thirty-second notes, you’d need to produce a stronger attack to allow the notes to speak more clearly.
If you’re playing a slow melody, you’d need to minimize the attack to make the notes sing more expressively.
The key is variety – too much of one attack can quickly lead to listener fatigue.
For example, if you play only with whooshy attacks, you risk sounding unintelligible because your notes will lack definition.
And if you play only with sharp percussive attacks, it will also begin to grate on the nerves after a while.
Consistency is the second quality of sound. It describes the sound in relation to other sounds.
No sound exists in isolation, it is always part of a larger group of sounds.
The trick is to control the dynamic level of each sound so that it blends in with other sounds around it, so that it sounds as part of a larger group (as in a phrase).
On the guitar, I’ve discovered that control over consistency exists at a very tactile level right at your fingertips.
Just pluck the strings, feel the release and you should be able to tell from the release if the notes are even.
When you develop this strong tactile connection, you don’t even have to hear yourself play to know whether you’re playing evenly, you’d be able to know just from the physical sensation at your fingertips.
The best way to develop tactile control is through the tremolo technique.
The tremolo never lies. To play it well, you’d have to produce perfectly even tones on one string with three fingers.
Once you develop a good tremolo, transfer the same sensation to the rest of your playing.
Once you can produce the same sensation in your arpeggios and scales, they’ll assume the same consistency too.
I’ve described this in greater detail in the AOV for guitar.
The third quality of tone is relaxation.
This is one tonal attribute that has not been talked about much, but to me it’s a crucial element of tone.
Tonal relaxation is all in the fingertips and how much give you allow in the finger tip-joints.
If you want a tighter steely sound, stiffen the tip-joint and play closer to the bridge. If you want a more relaxed sound, relax the tip-joint and play further from the bridge.
How much relaxation you want in your sound is a matter of personal preference.
My own preference is for a sound that is light, relaxed and yet has a certain amount of tension in it. I like to think of it as a smoky woody kind of sound.
To produce this sound, I hold my thumb over the lower edge of the sound hole and my fingers just below the sound hole.
I find that this particular position gives me just the right blend of tension and relaxation in my sound.
Color is the fourth attribute of tone.
For some reason, tone color, specifically one particular tone color, has suddenly assumed a dominant role in guitar pedagogy and became the yardstick by which guitarists are measured these days.
These days, it’s all about having a warm full sound.
I’ve never understood this preoccupation with one particular family of sound.
It’s as if suddenly, the only colors that are allowed in paintings are warm reds and orange and cooler colors like blue and green are considered bad and to be avoided.
Color is a neutral element.
It’s all part of the universe of sound, part of the full palette of colors that nature has given us to provide contrast, variety and context.
When considering tonal colors, it’s instructive to look at orchestras.
Every orchestra has a full complement of widely divergent sounds. From the warm sounds of the flutes to the more edgy colors of trumpets to the pure noise makers, the percussion.
Imagine an orchestra that consists only of flutes, or an orchestra that consists only of percussion. (Actually in the latter, you don’t have to do much imagining. All you need to do is listen to Varese’s ‘Ionisation.’)
The four tonal attributes provide you with a full complement of tools to shape and create your unique vision of what you want your music to express.
Under your fingers, you have the entire range of sound possibilities at your disposal, to create any sound you want, capture any effect you hear in your mind’s ear.
When you take advantage of their full capabilities, your music will come alive with vitality, energy, and most importantly, variety.