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Hi, I recently saw the playing of Martijn van Iterson on this video:
I'm not quite sure how to describe the his sound because I'm not a native English speaker , words like "heavy attack" "trumpet like" "not very thick sound, but warm enough" would come into my mind when I try to do that. I just really like his sound, I'm not quite big fan of the dark thick sound of Pat Martino... I can feel something unique in Martin's playing, but I don't know what exactly is that.
Since I own a Gibson jazz box too, so I transcribed the solo and recorded myself playing it (with the head though):
I wouldn't say I dislike the sound of mine, but it's definitely not the sound that I pursued ...
Could someone please give me some hints? It's the picking technique? the left hand technique? the guitar? the pick? the strings? (I'm use
ing the Thomastik Bebop BB112)
Thanks!
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01-16-2024 04:44 PM
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He's got a P90 pickup and you have humbuckers. They sound different, you can try putting your pickup selector in the middle and adding some of the bridge pickup in to brighten things up, but humbuckers are darker than single coils.
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That P90 is the biggest part of the equation that isn't, you know, Martijn himself
I think your tone is lovely. Be you.
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Believe me, nobody is going to listen to you and wish you sounded like Martin Iterson. He's a great player, but you have a great style and touch, and tone, all of your own that you need to work with. It is fun to match our tone with other players to see what we can learn, but you are doing some great stuff with that L5ces and anyone would love to sound like that.
Originally Posted by Peng1026
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I prefer your sound.
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I also prefer your sound.
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Me three.
We always want what we do not have, don't we? It's the human condition. Your sound and touch are really, really good!
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Thank you all for the kind words! Yes I would just be me and find out my own sound. I just tried to figure out what primarily makes Martjin's tone, and now I got your hints, the P-90 is one big factor.
Do you guys think that he has a strong stroke on his right hand? Or maybe the alternative picking is another factor as well?
Many thanks again!
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I think Martijn is playing an ES-125. Smaller body than your L-5. Laminated top, not carved. That could also play a small role in a somewhat brighter sound. And, as you say, he appears to have pretty strong pick attack.
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MVI has a lot of mids in his sound. Yours has less, but the larger difference I hear is that your sound seems to have some compression/limiting. It doesn't sound like straight into the amp. I could be wrong, though. It might be that you're using a thicker, perhaps softer pick. The pick makes a dramatic difference in the tone of an electric guitar. I don't sound like any of the guitarists I admire, and never will, regardless of the gear I might try to use. We just have to accept that we sound like we do, and make that a feature, not a bug. Your tone is fine.
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Many thanks for your comment! Yeah you are quite right I didn't record it through an amp and mic, just plugged the guitar directly in the audio interface, because I don't have an amp that I am pleasant with and I couldn't record at a loud enough volume at home, and yes I added compression/limiting to the track to get the track volume loud enough. : ) The pick is thick, but not soft, I'm using the dunlop sculpted 1.4mm. Originally Posted by sgosnell
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A thinner pick should produce a tone somewhat closer to MVI's, but it can take some experimentation to find the thickness and material that suits you. Fortunately, you don't need a huge bank account to buy several different picks.
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I, too, am inspired by his playing, sound, and feel and have tried to achieve a similar sound.
There are at least 3 elements here: the playing feel, the gear, and the recording methods.
I would encourage you to buy these MVI lessons from DC Music School. They are well worth the price and you can hear him solo over many standard progressions and hear his tone while he comps and plays chord solos as well. It also enable you to play along with him at various speeds. The benefit to this, I think, is that the hardest part of getting his sound is his pick attack and time-feel. The best way I have found to do this is to play WITH him over and over again until you can match it exactly. As with all players who swing hard, you will find that he phrases lines with a push-pull feel and it is precisely the areas that he delays a phrase or pushes a phrase that give it his unique swing feel. Transcribing the notes alone will not give you his feel. Also, his picking is strong and uses a combination of alternative picking and some sweeps, but it is not a uniform method. It is not a strict technique with a set of "rules" as far as I have observed. He will sometimes use an up or downstroke at a unusual place in a phrase (at least to me) but I think it is likely a natural way for him to play at this point so that he can emphasize specific notes to give it the bop feel that he wants. He floats his right hand and does not anchor. It is not necessarily a picking technique designed for maximal efficiency. As a comparison, when I observe Pascuale Grasso his right hand seems to barely move and he uses a very efficient technique to play his lines. MVI's right hand reminds me more of Bruce Forman, who also swings (harder than just about anyone) but it doesn't seem to have developed from a method of trying to play efficiency - more just a natural attempt to get the guitar to sound like Charlie Parker.
The left hand is also very important and I have had to slow down several phrases to determine whether what he is doing a slide or a hammer-on as this does change the sounds. For example, when he plays two eighth notes into an eighth note triplet, sometimes it is with a slide and sometimes a hammer-on. Likewise, he sometimes with pick that phrase with alternate picking (up, down, up or sometimes down, up, down) or sometimes sweep two notes and alternate the rest. It's really interesting to see but requires a lot of attention. Additionally, he will sometimes do a slight up-bend on a note (maybe a 1/4 note bend, or not even that much) right at the very end of the note duration, which is another element of his phrasing I have picked up.
To summarize, I would recommend playing along with the recording until your playing blends with his in order to match his swing feel. There's no better substitute I don't think.
As to the gear:
The ES-125 is laminate top, ~16-inch lower bout, ~3" depth, and has a P90 pickup.
I think the P-90 is crucial to the crunch in his sound. I have gotten close with a Charlie Christian style pickup as well, but the P90 is best. I think in general a single-coil sound will get you closer than a humbucker.
I do not know what strings he uses but from listening and looking closely I do think they are roundwounds, but I have not verfied this.
The pick makes a difference for sure. He uses these: Dunlop 41P096 Delrin 500 Guitar Picks - 0.96mm Dark Pink. Compared to thicker picks or picks of different material that I have tried, this give a snappier, brighter, somewhat thinner sound, and I do think it matters quite a bit as when I play his stuff with heavier picks or different material it does not have the same tone.
(I am using TI flat wound 13s just because I like them the best of all strings I have tried, but as I said, my best guess is that MVI is using roundwounds.)
The recorded sound:
I actually wrote an email to DC Music when I purchased his lessons to ask how they recorded him and the responded that Hello, Martjin was recorded direct! So, I assume that means he plugged directly into the board or audio interface. Not sure what method of DI they used, but it is clear that it was not through an amp and not mic'd up.
In my own experiments, I think this also matters. I think you can get a particular type of flat response, gritty kind of sound with the P90 direct into an interface, and it certainly helps the notes pop and bite the way they do not these DC Music recordings, which I happen to really love.
If you compare this sound of his, though, to his recorded albums with the same guitar, it is not exactly the same. The phrasing, swing, pick attack, etc are there, and it is still the sound of an ES-125 with P-90, but there is less grit than what I hear in the DC Music recordings. You can also listen to him on YouTube on some live recordings and he almost always uses a Fender tube combo amp and again you can always tell it's him playing because of his unique swing and phasing but the tone will differ by the recording method.
These are the best insights I can offer. I have gotten the closest to his sound with a laminated jazz box, P-90 pickup, the Dunlop pick, plugged direct into an interface and MOST IMPORTANTLY, after painstakingly playing along with him about 100 times!
I hope this helps.Last edited by rdlmd; 04-21-2024 at 10:21 AM. Reason: adding more information
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You sound great!
I'm sure you don't want to alter your L-5, but if you did ... try a humbucker-sized P-90!
[I like Bare Knuckle's!]
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Great post - what a great player and fabulous tone, about my favourite contemporary jazz guitarist right now. I have been meaning to study the DC recordings he did, but not sure I would put the same effort in that you have. Having recently picked up a 1952 ES-125 I can confirm that you can't buy his tone (even with correct pick and strings)! Originally Posted by rdlmd
Re strings, LittleJay reported that he uses flatwound 11's with a 12 high E, and I'm sure he would be right:
Praise be to the Gibson ES-125
Somewhere else it's reported that he uses Chromes.
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Thanks for the additional info! The link you posted referencing LittleJay, however, says he uses flatwound 12's with a 13 for the high E. Originally Posted by edpirie
I snuck a peak at MVI's instagram and on one of his older posts there is a close-up of his guitar and I think I agree that it looks like flatwounds in the video. And, I don't see any silk wrapping at the end of the strings. They could very well be DA Chromes!
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Here is a recent recording I did of a MVI transcription of one chorus on Have You Met Miss Jones.
This is my Archtop Tribute AT105 (ES175 copy by Masaki in Japan) with a P90 pickup plugged direct into my iphone via the iRig 2 device. There is no reverb or processing of any kind, just direct. I'm using TI flatwound 13s and the same Delrin 0.96mm pink pick that MVI uses. And I recorded this as I played along with him. This recording is isolated guitar. In the absence of the backing track (bass and drums), it sounds like I'm rushing or dragging certain parts. This is what I referred to above about his swing time-feel that pushes and pulls at certain points in a phrase. (I guess you'll have to take my word for it, that I'm not just playing out of time, ha ha.) So, this is about as close as I can get at this time. Having listened back to my recording and his, I think he still has some amount of "splat" or (pleasant) harmonic distortion going on when he hits notes on the heavier strings (D, A, and E) that I don't quite have. I don't know if this is down to the characteristics of his P90, his strings, his attack, or other factors. See what you think
MVI HYMMJ C1 direct (AT105).mp3Last edited by rdlmd; 04-22-2024 at 09:24 AM. Reason: additional info
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Ha, you're right, not sure where I got 11s/12 E from, maybe because that's where I landed. If it really is 12s/13 E (Chromes) then you will be close in gauge with a set of TI 13s. Originally Posted by rdlmd
Interesting you have an AT-105. I have an ATC-175 Classic, very similar, and swapped out the P90 for a Bare Knuckle Half Note, which I prefer somewhat. It is quite different sounding to my Gibson ES-125.
Many on this forum have said that aiming for someone else's tone is worth it up to a point, but you are always going to sound like you and not them. What it can do is open up possibilities to develop your own style and sound - like the points about dynamics and timing in your post earlier. Personally I like the clip you posted - your tone sounds smoother to my ears than MVI, a lot of people comment about how much he digs in - but it sounds sweet and I'd be happy to listen back to myself playing like that.
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