The Church of AC/DC, part 2

THE SOUND OF BURNING

AC/DC's sound is primarily the sound of two guitars played by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young. Malcolm founded the band in the early 1970s and recruited his younger brother to play lead. The band has seen two vocalists and a number of drummers and bassists in its time, but the one constant has been the Young brothers.

There are a number of famous bands who have had siblings in their line-ups: Earth, Wind, & Fire, Radiohead, Oasis, The Black Crowes, The Kinks, Van Halen, Heart, Iggy and the Stooges, The Replacements, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, The Allman Brothers, Creedance Clearwater Revival, The Jackson Five, Pantera, The Breeders, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Stone Temple Pilots, Kings of Leon, My Chemical Romance, and more. I suspect it is the closeness - or in some cases the antagonism - between the siblings that makes them play well together.

AC/DC's guitar sound is shaped by the use of vintage guitars and amplifiers without effects added to the signal loop that would water down the tone. Angus devotedly uses the Marshall JTM45, the same amp popularlized by Eric Clapton's early recordings, which has been called the "holy grail" of guitar amplifiers. These amps achieve distorted tones not through effects pedals, but by turning the volume up to the point at which the signal overloads the circuit. This is natural, organic distortion, which responds to a player's dynamics. It's the sound of the filaments in the tubes being overdriven. It's the sound of things burning, and it is a rich, warm, natural sound.

There's another "burning" element to the band's sound, and that's the voice of the singer. Brian Johnson similarly pushes his voice beyond normal to the point of distortion. When he sings, you are listening to something being destroyed. Like the filaments in the amplifiers, a resource is being expended in order to create a sound.

AC/DC is often described as writing "power chord" riffs, that is, chords played in a set hand position that can be moved around the neck of the instrument. But actually they use open chords, played at the bottom of the neck, which make use of open, ringing strings. The sound between the two is quite different. Power chords sound thinner, but open chords sound "wider." The sound of open strings on a guitar maximizes what a guitar sounds like. It's the truest, least obstructed use of a guitar's resonance.

Angus' lead playing is mainly blues-based. While his schoolboy uniform gives him the image of an irreverant juvenile, his lead playing is actually tasteful, melodic, and phrased. He always plays to the song, rather than use the song as a vehicle for a solo. His vibrato is refined and his note bending is well-intonated, yet it does not sacrifice any rawness. He often allows for a natural voicing of the amplifier's tendancies, rather than try to erase all accidental noises and mispicking. And unlike other elite rock guitarists like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page who have lost the edginess in their studio work in recent years, Angus has continued to put blistering solos to tape.