Introduction: How to Get the Best Electric Guitar Tone for Rock Music

Series Summary

Rock music of the last 50 years has been largely inspired by one of the most versatile stringed instruments yet produced—the electric guitar. Adolph Rickenbacher introduced it to the world in the 1930s and started a musical revolution. And with a large array of sounds at its disposal, the electric guitar is almost the perfect companion for rock music and all of its subgenres, lending itself to the sounds of the soul and the imagination. It is no surprise, then, that electric guitars have driven rock music in some very diverse and powerful directions, helping great artists like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, and Eric Clapton develop into icons that are still speaking to entire generations of people.

In these free music lessons on video, learn what equipment you need to sound like a rock guitar hero. Get tips on what amplifiers to play through, like the classic Marshall JCM Series, and what electric guitar settings work best for that raunchy, crunchy rock or metal guitar tone. Find out what an effects pedal might offer you for other distortion sounds. Watch these videos and learn how to sound like a rock star!

Video Transcript

"Hello this is Bill Macpherson for Expert Village alright this series of video's we're going to be talking about getting the perfect rock tone. We can start by talking about the amplifiers which is pretty much the important thing. You can use pretty much any guitar that you want really doesn't matter cause the amplifiers end your stomp boxes will be getting all the sound. Right now we're going to start with an amplifier that's called dual rectifier and it's a very dirty amp, so you really don't need any stomp boxes. You can just really play with overdrive I usually keep it around 7."