"I get compliments on my tone all the time"

[honeyiscool]

Why do people say this {censored} like it means something? I mean, seriously.

You ever been drunk at a show? Everything sounds great, and then you'll meet the guitarist afterwards and tell him how great it is because what, you're drunk, so obviously that opinion means nothing. We all know, the only people who really hear what you sound like won't ever tell you if you did poorly or sounded like {censored}.

I'm just saying, having seen how local bands work, you're lucky to get the same couple dozen people to come to your shows. To get these people to come, you have to go to their shows and play nice. The last thing you want to tell your friend after a show is that his amp that he saved up for and spent his dear cash on sucks. Or that he was too loud and had no balance, or that he doesn't know how to control his EQ. You just think this to yourself and say nothing. If you want people to keep coming to your shows and if you want to maintain your reputation around town, you just keep your mouth shut.

Even when I've been in a band with a guitarist that I thought sounded bad, I didn't even tell him to shape up. I just quit. That was a lot less drama than I was willing to deal with.

So all I'm saying is people say "I get compliments on my tone all the time" like it's meaningful and it affirms how great their gear is. No, it doesn't. It just means you're not friends with any assholes. It doesn't validate your gear choices, and you might not sound that great.

The only things that really matter are 1) whether the critic inside you is truly happy with how you sounded, 2) whether the audience validates it through smiles, hollers, and cries for encores, and 3) whether venues and bands start calling you up with show offers. If you play to an empty crowd where people are all absently sipping drinks 30 feet from the stage and then later coming up to you and telling you that you rocked, and you're still finding it hard to get gigs and even your fellow members don't seem that into it, you probabably weren't that good.

[kayd_mon]

Well, now that I know I suck, I can continue with my day.

[GreatDane]

Good post and very true IMO.

[jimash]

All true enough.

On the other hand I am never drunk and when i compliment someone on thier sound or playing I mean it. Else I wouldn't bother.

Recently people have come up as I was leaving the stage and asked if they could use my guitar for their set.

These people had guitars, I can only conclude that they thought mine sounded better.

[Dougy]

People compliment me on my tone all the time.

 

"You're really loud."

"My ears are ringing."

"The guitar was ridiculously loud!"

"What?!?!? My ears are still ringing from your set."

"Christ on a bike, how loud is your amp?"

 

And so on.

[GilmourD]

---

honeyiscool wrote:

 

You ever been drunk at a show?

Actually, no. In my 33.5 years of life I've actually never been drunk or even tipsy. It's not for lack of trying, but now I'm just straightedge.

[xrleroyx]

HIC,

 

Why so cynical lately?

[kulardenu]

I never talk to people...

[BeanoBoy]

Tone is subjective. It's great to get compliments on tone or performance. Isn't it part of the reason we play? For every guy who digs your/our tone, there's another who didn't. Compliments from people are to be taken with a grain of salt. Many nights I thought I was rippin', I never heard a word from the audience. Other nights when I thought I was struggling and my sound sucked, people told me it was the best they ever heard me play. The only folks whose compliments/criticism I gave any credence to ( although I appreciated them) were people who I thought knew what they were talking about, fellow musician or astute listener. I've been to a few shows where I've told a musician, be it guitarist or bassist, that I dug their tone. I had nothing to gain, I was just letting him know someone was listening. 

Oh Yes, one more thing, lighten up dude! Try to enjoy your time in the spotlight.

[wankdeplank]

Trust me, your tone sucks dude.  Now your timbre, that's something else entirely.

[kayd_mon]

I've gotten many complements on my vocals (as well as gig offers and tips, etc.) and occasionally a guitar player will come up and scope out my gear. Rarely will they say anything about tone, but they will sometimes say they enjoyed the way I played. More often than not, an audience member will tell a bandmate of mine if they thought I was good, and I'll get feedback on the other guys in the same way. When my cover band plays, we usually do pretty well tips-wise, and people will dance, so I'll take that as the crowd liking us. We are not a great band, but we have fun and tje audience often does, too.

 

With my original band, we often get good feedback from the crowd, frequent offers to play with other bands on the bill, and we've even gotten tips - for playing originals. We are not amazing, but we enjoy it. Any complements go a long way for our self-esteem as a band, so we appreciate it. We're supposed to be entertaining people, so when they say they enjoy it, we've done our job.

 

As for your original gripe, which is I guess a reaction to others validating their gear/sound/whatever by strangers' complements - I say, if they're unsolicited, then it's a complement. If you asked for feedback, then you can be cynical about the answer.

[sammyreynolds01]

So someone told you that your tone sucked huh?

[photon9]

OP made me laugh out loud.... For realz!

[warriorpoet]

Usually when I get compliments, it's on my voice.  Any drunken monkey can make my rig sound better than I do, and some pretty exceptional guitarists have really made it sing.

 

You want awkward?  How about "I love how you make my gear sound; it's really full and chimey and warm and detailed and... sorry, just never was able to make it sound like that myself."

 

[DaveAronow]

Well, I had GOD himself tell me that my tone would be the tone he would make if he ever got around to it but that there was no need now because I had already done it.

 

Then he started begging me for lessons, offering me bribes like eternal happiness, that kind of thing.

 

It was actually a little embarrasing.

 

Im pretty sure he was stone sober too, what with being God and all.

[gardo]

When did you meet Obama?

[thecornman]

If I tell someone at a show that I like their tone I do it, because I like their tone! No alternative motive. If I don't like it I don't say anything. If someone told me they liked my tone I would say thanks.

[Mo' Cowbell]

Yeah, I hate it when people compliment me. It deprives me of the opportunity to demonstrate my intellectual superiority and maturity with an arrogantly condescending reply.

[Dougy]

{censored} "tone".

 

 

All you need is VOLUME!!!!!1!!!

 

 

 

 m/ :robotmad: m/

[Grant Harding]

What if someone regularly gets compliments from studio engineers and guys like Lindy Fralin? Are they the assholes you're acting better than in your first post?

[Special J]

I think some of you have some reading comprehension issues. HIC isn't saying it's bad to get compliments, or blasting those that give compliments or receive them. He's saying it's silly to hold this up as proof that you really do have great tone.

 

As someone mentioned it's all pretty subjective anyway, but I see this a lot on the pro sound forums. Someone will have a the wrong tool for the job or just a really cheap system and say "but I get tons of compliments on my sound". It just sounds as if you're defending your choices with the opinions of strangers who are most likely drunk. And yes being drunk impairs your judgement. Not sure why that's even being argued here.

[kayd_mon]

Also remember that honeyiscool will occasionally post these well-written yet thinly argued rants that get us riled up. It's his trademark troll - I would wager that he might be mildly annoyed by the phrase in the OP, but the majority of it is clever trolling.

[scolfax]

"Occasionally"? 

[honeyiscool]

 

---

kayd_mon wrote:

 

Also remember that honeyiscool will occasionally post these well-written yet thinly argued rants that get us riled up. It's his trademark troll - I would wager that he might be mildly annoyed by the phrase in the OP, but the majority of it is clever trolling.

---

 

Heh.

 

 

 

Special J wrote:

 

I think some of you have some reading comprehension issues. HIC isn't saying it's bad to get compliments, or blasting those that give compliments or receive them. He's saying it's silly to hold this up as proof that you really do have great tone.

 

 

 

As someone mentioned it's all pretty subjective anyway, but I see this a lot on the pro sound forums. Someone will have a the wrong tool for the job or just a really cheap system and say "but I get tons of compliments on my sound". It just sounds as if you're defending your choices with the opinions of strangers who are most likely drunk. And yes being drunk impairs your judgement. Not sure why that's even being argued here.

 

Yeah, that's mostly it. I think the thing to remember is that most people who have negative opinion of your sound will not give it to you because most people are trying to be nice. I'm not saying people who positively comment on your tone are lying, because they're not. But they might not know any better. All I'm saying is that the first year of my playing, I plugged my HM-2 straight into an interface and I thought I had a pretty righteous sound... because I didn't know better. I listen back now and everything just sounds awful. Nobody told me it sounded bad, though.

That's why at some level, I think it's only the people that pay you, and people you pay to judge how you sound, these are really the only opinions you can trust, because they will be willing to say negative things. If a venue guy says you sounded great and gives you a fat check at the end of the night, then you can trust that. If a recording or sound engineer says you sounded great, then you can trust that. If other guitarists drool over your tone and want to steal your guitar, that probably is meaningful. But your average John or Jane, it's important to be gracious and take their compliments well, but you can't then take that back to your Internets and tell people how great you sound.