Poweramp vs. Preamp Saturation - the KEY to Stevie’s Tone

If you listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, you know what I’m talking about.

That huge overdriven guitar tone that so many

people really want to have. You need 3 things to make it happen. A Fender

Strat, an A/B tube amp and either an empty house or people who don’t care how loud you are.

Reducing and Eliminating Buzz and Noise

Have you ever plugged your guitar in and:

a) no sound comes out?

b) there is a huge amount of buzzing with very little sound at all from your guitar?

c) Chinese men come into the room and try to kill you?

Well I can’t help you with the Chinese men, but there are many factors that can affect how much noise your rig will produce. They are as follows in order of what should be checked first:

Writing Songs

-Matt Williams

A lot of great musicians have trouble in the area of creation especially if they are used to covering songs. After this short theory lesson, the issues of writing songs and figuring out the key of a song will be much easier for your average guitar player. A lot of guitar teachers will tell you just to use trial and error, and that sucks, so I’m going to share a few truths about the theory behind writing original material.

The first thing you have to understand is that any chord progression has a key to it, whether it be minor, major, diminished, or even sustained. I will mostly deal with the major scale because it is the basis of most non-metal rock (I’ve seen interviews with personalities such as Metallica’s James Hetfield who admit to having no theory base whatsoever, so if you want to write metal, that really is trial and error).