"DON'T GET MARRIED to your effects." "Effects are no substitute for playing well." Over the years, guitarists have made these and similar comments in music magazines (even in the pages of Guitar Player). For his part, Reeves Gabrels is having none of it.
"Effects sometimes get a bad rap, and I don't know why," he says. "Effects can be marvelous tools to express yourself, but you have to use them creatively. I think the problem comes when guitarists don't apply them with a sense of imagination. Copycatism is the real issue, and who wants to be a copycat?"
Thus far, nobody has had the nerve to suggest to his face that he relies too much on effects, but if such a scenario occurred, Gabrels imagines he would handle the situation in one of two ways: "If it was somebody I liked," he replies, "I would say, 'I think you're wrong, but why don't you watch the show tonight and tell me what you think?' And if it was somebody I didn't like, I'd say, "Well, then you must be a fucking idiot.""
1 YOUR GUITAR AND AMP ARE ONE INSTRUMENT
"People tend to spend a lot of time playing their electric guitars unplugged. I do it, too, but the fact is a guitar is designed to be put through an amplifier. Anytime you're playing it unplugged, it's calling out for its better half. It comes down to this: If you choose to play the electric guitar, play the electric guitar.
"There are practical reasons for this. How many times have you practiced something on an unplugged electric guitar, and the minute you plug in, it feels like everything is different? Until you're plugged in, you don't really know how the pickups will change the sound or what the amp's speaker is going to do, how the notes will bloom and sustain. You might
This story is from the June 2024 edition of Guitar Player.
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This story is from the June 2024 edition of Guitar Player.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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