Chords for Sierra Hull - 5 Tips on Tone

[G] _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ [F#] _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ [G#] _ [Dm] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ [E] _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ [D#m] _ [Bm] _ [A] _
_ [D] _ _ _ [N] _ _ Hey everybody, Sierra Hole here and I want to give you five quick tips on tone.
It's probably the number one question I get as a mandolin player and a guitar player.
Can you give me any tips on getting better tone?
So I want to give you five quick thoughts.
Number one, you want to have a thicker pick.
It really does matter.
You don't want to pick that moves a whole lot because you're going to hear that pick noise.
Sometimes that sound can be effective, but for the most part, I always see the pick as
simply being a tool to help produce sound.
I don't actually want to hear the click of the pick.
So you don't have to have an expensive pick.
This is a blue chip TD-60, but any pick that's really thicker will do. _ _ _
You just basically want to do a little test on it by trying to pull on it like this and
make sure that it doesn't do that easily.
So that's number one.
Number two, the pick hold and the pick grip really do matter.
So here's the way I quickly tell people that I hold the pick personally.
I will take the left hand and hold the tip of the pick, which is the part of the pick
that I play with.
Some people use the rounded edge.
I use the point.
So hold the point of the pick in your left hand, hold your right hand out like you're
going to shake somebody's hand and then relax that inward.
Take the pick in your left hand and kind of put it at a slight angle over the right first
finger so you don't want it to be sticking out a bunch.
Essentially it's going to look kind of like this, _ _ not like that, but more like this.
And then the thumb comes down and this will look different because everybody has different
hand sizes, but in this case, that's what it looks like for me. _ _ _
So just a little bit of an angle.
Again, not like this, but more like that.
And of course you want to have _ a tight enough grip on the pick that if I pull on it with
my left hand here, it doesn't actually slip between my fingers, but you really don't want
to have a grip that's too tight or that will also affect your tone if you're putting too
much tension into your right hand.
So you really want to have a relaxed wrist. _
_ So kind of like that.
That's number two. _
Number three, the angle in which that you place your arm on the instrument really does matter.
But thankfully for us, we can kind of just let gravity do its job because really if you
want to achieve great tone, you want to have a slight angle on the string.
So _ if you really just lay your arm down the way that you would normally rest when holding
the instrument, you're probably on the right track.
It's a little bit more difficult to think about having the string be flat, the pick
be flat on the string.
So this is the string you want to have just the slightest angle with the pick.
_ So that's number three.
Now going back to number two real quick, I want to say you have to try different things
and see what works for you as far as the pick hold and the angle, it's all going to look
and feel different because we're all unique [G] individuals and you basically just have to
try things and see what works for you.
But listen to the difference in this.
If I have about this much pick, which there's still plenty of pick there, but I'm choked
on it a little bit more _ than this.
So that's using a ton of pick, which I don't normally do.
Something more like this.
Let me play.
_ [C#] _
_ _ _ _ [G] _ _ [A] I don't really [G] hear it.
_ _ _ [C] _ [A#] You hear the notes, but not really the pick so much.
Now let me change that real quickly. All [C#m] right.
This is using quite a bit more pick.
So what's the difference?
I know it's a little bit hard to see, but if I use [G] more pick, listen to this. _ _
_ _ [F#] _ _ [Em] The _ [C] _
[G] _ tone gets thinner and you actually hear that kind of sound on the string, which is
what we're trying to alleviate.
So _ that's three quick tips. _
Number four, the placement _ of the pick between the bridge and the neck of the instrument
actually does matter a lot because you've probably played long enough or experiment
with your instrument to tell the difference between the sound back here closer to the
bridge, which is definitely _ a little bit more harsh.
And then as you start to move up toward the neck, it gets more and more mellow, more and more soft.
So I typically live somewhere in this range, just on a standard day of playing a song.
That's where I _ _ tend to find the best tone on this particular instrument, but really
most any instrument, it's somewhere within this range.
Now _ it's amazing that we can create so many different sounds on our instrument, both on
mandolin or guitar or whatever the instrument is.
The closer you get to the bridge, typically the more harsh the sound, but sometimes that's super effective.
So I'm playing an opening piece here, [F#] _
_ [D] _ one of my [G] songs.
[Am] _ [G] _ _
_ Okay, [D] so that's, I would live somewhere right in there to play a piece like that.
But let's say I want to play a Bill & Roe tune and I want to play something a little
bit more bluesy.
It can be really effective to actually scoot the pick back toward the bridge a little bit
and be able to get a little bit more gritty tone.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[B] _ _ [G] _ _ [F] _ _ _ [E] _
[G] _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ _ [A#] _ [A] _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ [Am] _
_ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _
So I think having a lot of different sounds in your palette tonally is really important.
So play around with that and see what works and be prepared when you're playing to use
all kinds of different sounds.
All right, finally, number five, _ we can't ignore the left hand.
The left hand is just as important as the right hand.
I know [N] the _ pick is, I mean, you know, it's important.
Don't get me wrong.
And the _ flexibility of the pick, having a pick that's thick enough, the angle of the
hold, where you're placing your hand and all that stuff, so important.
But it does no good to do one through four if _ your left hand is not working in sync with
your right hand.
My computer's buzzing here.
_ So you really want to make sure that you're playing clean notes with your left hand.
_ And one of the big things that a lot of people don't realize when they especially first start
playing mandolin is that in order to get a really clean sound, you actually want to be
almost on top of the fret.
_ So if I'm trying to play the second fret of the mandolin, I don't want to be somewhere
in the middle or I don't want to be back near the first fret.
I want to be almost on top of the fret itself.
_ _ [B] _ _ [D] So I don't know if you guys [C#m] can really see that. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
I'm almost right on the fret.
So the closer you can get to the fret, the cleaner the sound's going to be.
And then if I were to offer one last thought, I would just say tuning really makes a big difference.
I think a lot of people underestimate just the value of being really in tune.
It's the difference in _ [C#]
maybe [D] _ _ _ _ [A] a little extreme.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ [A#] _
I mean, it makes such a big difference in the overall sound, the intonation of your
instrument, just to simply check in every once in a while and make sure you're in tune.
So anyway, there's five short tips for you and happy playing.