I’ve been experimenting with a lot of late 80s/early 90s tones after binging on the Rockman X100 Analog tones that powered the Boston catalog. The amazing tonal superpowers the X100 gives you is another post but I was playing a lot on the clean channel which took me back to some of my favorite guitar tones on pop songs. The 80s to me was the pinnacle of the guitar hero and (call me a boomer) that period had an incredible mix of virtuosity, great songs and amazing audio production with signal clarity on both clean and distorted tones.
One great pop guitar player was Dave Williams, an incredible session guitarist whos resume includes Madonna and Michael Jackson and any other pop star worth a mention in the 80s/90s. If that wasn’t impressive enough, Williams was also a Vietnam war veteran who continued his musical journey despite the years that took him away to fight a war far away from home.
His guitar style in my view is the sound of the 80s – tight, syncopated rhythm, clean expressive tone tastefully blended with chorus and reverb. Hard to replicate stylistically as WIlliams just had that inherent groove which just gave those stadium anthems an edge hard to replicate.
In this famous Madonna track that Dave played on, I was going for the open chords and arpeggiated patterns to replicate his style. The lush chords support the vocal lines without overwhelming it. The rhythm is where he adds a lovely swing to make the song dynamic – its just not the same without his playing! He also continuously adds tasteful motifs that are not too shred-focused but emote the song.
Like a lot of his songs, the chord progression uses diatonic chords, a hallmark of ’80s pop songwriting. He also adds the relative minor per the 80s template which created so many memorable songs.
I used the Rockman X100 modeler provided by Amplitube is called the Boston 100 amp which is part of the Joe Satriani collection, available through the IK Custom Shop.
More experiments to follow to pay tribute to this incredible player and others from that incredible era of guitar!