# What does a tight guitar sound mean ?



## coffeeflush (Oct 1, 2014)

I hear the word thrown around a lot, I used to think it means playing right on beat, starting and ending the note on cue and have it co ordinated well to a beat. 

But people use it in lot of contexts. 

So, what does it really mean ?


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## hairychris (Oct 1, 2014)

Tight playing means precise playing. Especially in a band where rhythm is important it means that you're all in synch.

A tight guitar sound is a bit different. It normally implies a fast attack, and upper-mid heavy (bass frequencies react slower than higher ones).

Getting your tone right is trading off between how you naturally play, how your guitar & pickups react, and what goes on with the amp.


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## Shimme (Oct 1, 2014)

Where the amp is both very responsive and you don't notice delays between your playing and that the bass is controlled enough that it doesn't sound muddy or overally thick. Some extreme examples to compare it to would be Sleep's "Dragonaut" for a loose sound and The Faceless' "Prison Born".

To put it in visual terms, a "loose" amp might be like an action movie that uses slow-motion punches for everything, while a "tight" amp might be something like Matt Damon in The Bourne series, where every punch is immediate and savage. 

Also, calling a band "tight" because they play well together is totally correct! Isn't English dumb?


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## wat (Oct 1, 2014)

tight:


not tight:


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## Der JD (Oct 1, 2014)

It's also very popular these days to throw the word "tight" around when talking about tone. Essentially, it means less low end. It's one of the primary reasons why a lot of people throw a boost pedal in front of an amp. The pedal shaves off some lows from the signal before it hits the amp. More low end results in a looser feel and can potentially be muddy. Not good for fast or technical styles. On the other hand, tightness wouldn't be what's needed for styles such as doom or a lot of old school stuff.


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## DarkWolfXV (Oct 1, 2014)

Non tight sound - crank resonance to 10 on an amp, and that's what a non tight sound sounds like. Not necessarily the bass control itself. On 1 resonance, even 8 bass setting can sound pretty tight. And yeah, like people before said, Dopesmoker is a good example of a non-tight sound. I'm speaking tone-wise, of course.


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## hairychris (Oct 1, 2014)

Der JD said:


> On the other hand, tightness wouldn't be what's needed for styles such as doom or a lot of old school stuff.



Lots of old-school stuff has a ridiculously tight sound.

AC/DC, for instance. Malcolm Young's rhythm tone was almost completely clean and just punched, and he plays very precisely.

Not quite the same, but look at Tool's sound. When they need it their guitar fills up loads of frequencies, but by controlling his picking & palm-muting Adam Jones can make his tone much sharper and more punchy*. He's another person who plays like a machine (playing tightness).

* he uses a Marshall Super Bass and a Diezel VH4. Vintage Marshalls are unforgiving, and the Diezel also is very touch-responsive, but along with that can give a "fat" sound when played right.

Also, go back and listen to old thrash. A lot of it was tonally tight but the playing could be really sloppy. Nuclear Assault are a prime example of this!

It's a dark science.


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## PlumbTheDerps (Oct 1, 2014)

It's more about how you play than the actual tone. If you actually listen to the rhythm guitars on Conquering Dystopia's album, Merrow's tone is a surprisingly flubby, low mids-heavy 5150 (relative to your average tech death/metalcore guitar tone), but he's such an accurate player that it sounds a lot tighter.


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## Given To Fly (Oct 2, 2014)

I've been on a Tool listening spree as of late and I would say Adam Jones tone is not tight at all, but his playing is spot on!  The result is a huge guitar tone that he controls through single note rhythm parts that are usually palm muted. He can then add intensity by playing chords, letting them ring, or a mixture of both. I'm about 8 years late on 10,000 Days but Jambi is my new favorite Tool song.


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## decreebass (Oct 2, 2014)

wat said:


> tight:
> 
> 
> not tight:




I like these examples; Sounds like the dude in the second video (not tight) is using a Big Muff Pi or similar - elt that be another lesson: Big Muff Pi = not tight  It's got rich creamy tone, but tight it is not.


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## cGoEcYk (Oct 2, 2014)

I also think the term tight tone is often in the context of modern styles where people are tuned really low and it's a challenge to have a well-defined tone (IMO that's the point of the "tight" tone). In the earlier days of down tuning (say Sepultura, Korn) these guys were *really* loose. I mean it sounds like their strings were wobbling around, and I bet they were! People were still figuring out the technologies and approaches to get a great drop B or drop A sound. 

Two examples, both in around the same ~A/Ab tuning:

Not Tight



Tight


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## 7stg (Oct 3, 2014)

Here is some interesting info - "damping factor" - This is a spec for power amps and it has a part in how well the speakers diaphragm motion is controlled. from wiki - "a driver with a voice coil is also a current generator, since it has a coil attached to the cone and suspension, and that coil is immersed in a magnetic field. For every motion the coil makes, it will generate a current that will be seen by any electrically attached equipment, such as an amplifier. In fact, the amp's output circuitry will be the main electrical load on the "voice coil current generator". If that load has low resistance, the current will be larger and the voice coil will be more strongly forced to decelerate. A high damping factor (which requires low output impedance at the amplifier output) very rapidly damps unwanted cone movements induced by the mechanical resonance of the speaker, acting as the equivalent of a "brake" on the voice coil motion (just as a short circuit across the terminals of a rotary electrical generator will make it very hard to turn). It is generally (though not universally) thought that tighter control of voice coil motion is desirable, as it is believed to contribute to better-quality sound."

First, this impacts response to transients especially the low end. There are 3 factors controlling speaker damping, The first 2 are solely the speakers responsibility and the 3rd the amplifier has some impact.

Mechanically &#8211; By the friction resistance in the cone and suspension.
Acoustically - By the resistance of the air set in motion by the cone. This is a relatively small factor.
Electromagnetically - By the voice coil moving in the magnetic field.

Second, a higher DF minimizes deviation in the frequency response +/-dB caused by the output resistance. This factor calls for a higher damping factor than speaker damping than above.

While some amps have an ultra high DF, As the links below show, it's more about the whole system when considering the damping factor seen by the woofer. If the amps Damping Factor is reasonably high, due to diminishing returns as DF approaches infinity, other specs are more important in making a final decision, Definitely use short and thick gauge 10AWG or better speaker wire with low resistance and low capacitance, just making a good choice here will improve things and not be very expensive. If the setup allows, each cab should have a cable to the amp, avoid daisy chaining.

http://www.crownaudio.com/media/pdf/amps/damping_factor.pdf
The lower the amplifier's output impedance, the higher the damping factor, and the tighter the sound is. A damping factor of 1000 or greater is considered high. High damping factor equals tight bass.

EAW: Eastern Acoustic Works | Amplifier damping factor: More is better! (....or is it?) - EAW: Eastern Acoustic Works
In live sound reinforcement systems, damping factor is really driven by the length and gauge of our wire and the impedance of the loudspeakers we connect at the other end. Since damping factor mostly affects low frequency, we should endeavor to keep our subwoofer loudspeaker lines as short as possible and/or use larger gauge wire. We should keep the impedance of the connected load as high as possible by connecting only one transducer per wire instead of two.

Damping Factor: Effects On System Response | Audioholics
What can be seen from this analysis is that the frequency response +/-dB dependent attenuation due to the amplifier's output resistance is more significant than the effects on system damping. More importantly, these effects should not be confused with damping effects, as they represent two different mechanisms.

Damping factor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Speaker Wire - Cable Resistance
Cable Resistance Too High?
What happens when the resistance gets too high? First, there is power lost in the wire and the speaker will not play as loud. More important, as the resistance in series with the speaker increases, it makes the amplifier look more like a current source. This means the speaker frequency response will tend to follow the rise and fall of its impedance curve. The greater the impedance variation, the more noticeable the response changes will be. If the speaker has constant impedance versus frequency, the only change will be reduced output.

Effect on Loudspeakers of Amplifier Damping Factor
Goes through the calculation of total damping factor, example shows how big a role speaker cable plays.

ProCo - Cable Anatomy I: Understanding The Speaker Cable


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