Subject: On the Attack - Definition for the Week
You are getting this e-mail because you subscribed to it on www.learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com. If you don't want to receive these e-mails any longer, go to the bottom of this message and click on "unsubscribe." Hey there Friend, I missed sending out a definition last week, so this week take two, they're small!Let's first talk about 'attack'. This term is not limited to guitar only - it's a 'musically universal' word and applies to any instrument, physical or virtual (these are also interesting concepts, in that 'physical' is the guitar you hold in your hands, but 'virtual' is computer software created to imitate the sound of a physical instrument like a guitar or drums). So what exactly is the 'attack'? It's the way a sound starts. It can be fast or slow. Does the sound gradually fade in to our audible range of hearing, or is it sudden, exploding into being? For example, a hand clap has a fast attack, where the sound of a train coming from far off is a slow attack. Learn enough songs to play an entire gig! Guitar is more a fast attack type of instrument. When you listen to guitar by itself, attack is more sudden when compared to other instruments because it requires the strings to be hit or plucked to generate sound. You adjust the level of attack by how hard or soft you strum or pick the strings. Compare that to a woodwind instrument like a flute where the force of blowing into the mouthpiece determines how loud or soft the notes come out. You can slowly increase the amount of air flowing through a flute, which would demonstrate a slow attack. With guitar, for a sound to be created you must manually disrupt the state of stationary objects. A string has to be struck to produce the sound, so it is an abrupt action causing the sound waves to be produced. Strings don't begin to vibrate on their own spontaneously - it requires some external force to start the sound creation process on guitar. So with regards to attack, there is no gradual rise in the sound level - the sound is forced into being. Of course, you can also modify the entire sound of a recording by adjusting the volume and applying various sound effects to a recording. The point here is that you can manipulate how the attack is perceived by the listener through artificial techniques during the recording process (or more specifically during the production/mixing phase of recording). It's important to note that the terms attack and decay are not limited to playing individual notes. These terms apply to the entire sound in a performance. So if you begin listening to a song and the volume gradually fades in, revealing multiple instruments playing, the entire song has a slow attack, or rather, each instrument sound has a slow attack. Let's go a little more focused on guitar and apply the concept of attack to your playing. If you're style of music is better suited to acoustic guitar, like folk or ballads, you're going to typically play with a softer approach. I'm tempted to say that your attack is slower than it would be in another style of music like metal or punk, but that would be inaccurate, because attack is a reference to the sound generated, not the aggressiveness of the tune. However, your method of applying attack to your guitar play can clearly determine the overall tone of a song. Want an aggressive tone? Use an aggressive attack to hit the strings, meaning hit the strings hard in strumming or picking. My instructor Tom Hess has a very aggressive picking style. When he plays a solo, you hear the pick attack on the strings. 'Decay' is opposite of attack - it is the way a sound ends, whether that is abruptly or a gradual fading away. Think of decay as the tail of a sound. You can have a fast or slow decay. With regards to guitar, just like with attack, we have a great deal of control over the decay. Do you strike the strings and allow them to ring out until they stop vibrating, or do you mute the strings with your hand to make a sudden stop to the sound? It all depends on the song and the effect you want to have on the sound. I've always thought it was cool at the end of a song when the final notes just fade away, but it's equally cool when a song ends abruptly, especially when you don't expect it. Another factor to consider with decay is the surrounding environment. Like we've talked about before, sound is a series of waves vibrating at specific frequencies. As these waves emanate through the air, they are affected by objects in the room. Hard objects cause the waves to bounce off them, while soft objects absorb the waves. The size of the room also has an affect on decay of the sound wave. In a small room the wave has less space to spread out, and as it hits objects like walls and floors and people and furniture, the energy of that wave dissipates quickly. Give a sound more room to spread out, like a concert hall or an open valley, and the sound will travel much further. Again, depending on the properties of the objects it comes in contact with (hard and soft), the sound wave will be either decay quickly or ring out for a while. In studio recordings, we can artificial adjust the decay using effects like compression, chorus and reverb, to name a few. Listening to the raw sounds and determining how and where to add these effects is an art unto itself. It can take years of practice and ear training to get good at applying effects to recordings. Play "Gimme All You Lovin'" and "The Final Countdown" today! So there you have it - attack and decay. I've tried to keep this article somewhat high level and more musically focused rather that getting into the physics of sound. However, there is an excellent discussion of sound theory here. They take some pretty complex subject matter and break it down into nice manageable chunks of information. I specifically did not talk about sustain (the center area of a sound) in this discussion, as I plan on covering it in a later message. Sustain has to do with the amount of energy that went into creating the sound in the first place. Guitarists tend to discuss sustain as more of a tonal quality rather than a property of a sound wave, so well talk about it more later. Hope that helps - Rock On! Peace~ Dave Dave "Eddie" Vance is a rock guitar enthusiast and gear nut. He has been playing guitar for over 30 years and enjoys tormenting the neighbors every chance he gets. When he's not slaving for the man, you can find him rocking out with his B.C. Rich Bich guitar, a cold beer and some sweet tunes. He also runs Learn-To-Play-Rock-Guitar.com, but you knew that already! 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