Drone?

What does it mean when someone says nice "drone" sound. What does drone mean?

The simplest way to incorporate drone is to play a chord progression that has one or more open strings in common. The open strings continue to vibrate throughout the song, sounding the same notes continuously. This works really well with a 12-string.

A drone is just a single note/chord or a short melody that is continually played throughout a song. As far as I know anyways :)

It's not the same a rhythm though, you could have a chord progression with a melody over the top, and there might be a single note or repeated bass line in the background which is the drone.

- J

One time my buddy showed me his sitar/ravi shankar impression. He kept hitting the D string open while playing a melody on the G string. It definately gave an Indian feel to the song.

So that's what a drone sound is! Just recently bought an Epiphone Custom G 1275 Doubleneck SG and the dude who sold it to me told me I can do good drone sounds with it. thnx everyone!

And I bet when the salesman told you that you just nodded your head like you knew what the hell he was talking about. ;)

nah, i found it very difficult listening to him talk in the first place- i was too distracted with the guitar.

go to the link in my sig. and listen to 12-string1. I believe that's a pretty good example of "drone" sound. at least in the first part anyway. Plus it's on a 12-string:D

Droning - noisy like the sound of a bee; "the room was abuzz over the latest scandal"
abuzz, buzzing. Now for the guitar... this means to be playing a single note or chord throughout a section of a song in the background. You here this a lot in metal and rock. Artist like to use a drop "d" tuning when wanting use a drone. You can play the riff or chord shape underneath the Low OPEN E string that's tuned to "D".

Furthuremore, you can tune your low E string a half-step lower and try this exercise:


-2--3------------------------------------
-3--3----------------3--4-3----5--6-5----
-2--2----------------3--3-3----5--5-5----
-0--0----------------3--3-3----5--5-5----
-----------------------------------------
------0x-0x-0x-0x-0x--------0x--------0x-

A drone is a bass note that is played and held throughout the lenght of a piece of music. Just listen to some bagpipes, they always have a drone. One Bass note that plays throughout the whole piece.

Eric, just want to say thanks for turning me on to your music. Keep filling the world with your guitar inspired songs my friend.

P.S. thanks for reminding me about Sound Click...

Originally posted by Leedogg
One time my buddy showed me his sitar/ravi shankar impression. He kept hitting the D string open while playing a melody on the G string. It definately gave an Indian feel to the song.

I do that all the time subconcsiously, invariably it sounds Indianish... a good example of this is the beginning of "Starseed" by Our Lady Peace.