[distressed_romeo]

Had an interesting revelation tonight...
I watched that sevenstring jazz video someone posted this morning, and feeling suitably inspired, turned on my clean channel, rolled off the tone control, and spent about 20 minutes playing some jazz licks. Great fun.
Anyways, later that evening, when I went back to the guitar, and sat down to do my daily chops workout, still with that flat clean tone. 2 hours later I was feeling really bummed out, as my tone sounded like shit when I played all my usual shred licks that sounded great when I played them with a smooth distorted sound yesterday.
Spent most of the evening muscling it out with the clean tone, figuring it was me at fault, only to realise later, once I switched back to my usual lead tone (which before anyone points the finger, only has the gain set between six and seven) that that tone had been forcing me to work waaaaaay harder, and that my technique was a lot more clean and accurate than before.
The point being, conventional wisdom is that you should always practice with a dry clean tone, and that distortion covers up mistakes. Although practicing with different sounds is a good thing, I really believe that we almost learn to 'play' our tones, and develop our touch and style around them, and that in light of that, it's better to practice all your licks with the tone you're actually going to perform them with.
What does everyone think about this?

[Ancestor]

Yes, I agree totally. The strategy of playing with a clean tone to develop a clean technique is erroneous. A person ends up picking too hard and getting away with not controlling string noise or feedback.

Best practice is standing up at full performance or rehearsal volume.

[bostjan]

There are two sides to this coin. I think we need to practice using effects, clean and dirty channels, techniques, and whatever else to become great guitarists.

Practice clean? Yes
Practice dirty? Yes

[Drew]

Originally Posted by distressed_romeo

Spent most of the evening muscling it out with the clean tone, figuring it was me at fault, only to realise later, once I switched back to my usual lead tone (which before anyone points the finger, only has the gain set between six and seven) that that tone had been forcing me to work waaaaaay harder, and that my technique was a lot more clean and accurate than before.

I don't follow - playing clean forced you to work harder to get everythign right, and when you went back to distorted you were suddenly cleaner than you were before.... so it's BAD to practice clean? I thought that was a reason to, lol.

I see it both ways - different tones bring out different issues in your playing. Clean forces you to be VERY even (although I've found a VERY low gain crunch sort of tone is actually the least forgiving, as its touch-sensitivity augments the differences between a soft note and a louder one), at the same time practicing with the gain up will REALLY draw attention to any muting issues you may have.

Also, Chris got me started on practicing picked runs with the delay up as sort of a "feedback" system - if your timing wavers, with all those echos you'll hear it.

All that said, as long as you're practicing intelligently, you'll make progress. There's a few exceptions - practicing legato with the gain cranked won't do you much good building articulation, and sweeping with a clean tone can REALLY hide muting issues - but generally it's the quality and quantity of practice that makes the most difference.

Honestly, I do most of my picking practice clean, but click on and off the footswitch every now and then just for kicks.

[distressed_romeo]

That was my point; a short session with the clean tone made a lot of difference, but doing it all the time would be counterproductive.

[Drew]

Originally Posted by distressed_romeo

That was my point; a short session with the clean tone made a lot of difference, but doing it all the time would be counterproductive.

Ahh, lol. Gotcha.

Excuse my idiocy and let me just say I agree with you completely.

[strychnine]

there is 2 sides of this

when you practice runs or w/e on a clean tone you really have to hit the note to make it sound...you cant just rub the string with your pick like you can do sometimes with distortion and the note will be reproduced with all the gain and stuff...

the other side is, if you practice your distorted stuff on the clean channel and switch over, you might start having parasitic sounds appear that werent there before due to the distortion...
like, some strings might be ringing open and with distortion they are more noticable rather then when you did it with your clean tone and they just werent noticable...

I think it all depends on what aspect your trying to work on because in essence, you could do all your excercise with and without distortion as a part of a practice routine =)

[distressed_romeo]

True...there's no reason not to incorporate both into a practice session. I'm sure if you spent just a few minutes with a totally dry tone each day it would make a huge difference.

[Vince]

Originally Posted by Drew

(although I've found a VERY low gain crunch sort of tone is actually the least forgiving, as its touch-sensitivity augments the differences between a soft note and a louder one)

YES!! the Paul Gilbert instructional video tone! That's what I practice with almost all the time

[Drew]

Originally Posted by desertdweller

YES!! the Paul Gilbert instructional video tone! That's what I practice with almost all the time

He does that? Damn, i thought it was a Drew Peterson original.

Brilliant either way - I've been keeping Channel 2 on my Nomad at a very low gain crunch sound that sounds nice for chording, but is still essentially clean for single note stuff. I've been dropping into that a lot while doing picking practice of late.