Riptide

What is the Riptide guitar tone?

The Riptide guitar tone is a bright, strummed ukulele part under a folk-pop vocal, heard on Vance Joy's 2010s folk rock recording. It is a clean riff tone, and Vance Joy reportedly tracked it with a 2012 Kala ukulele, the one MusicRadar says Vance Joy used to record Riptide, so the part on the record is a ukulele rather than a guitar through an amp; he told American Songwriter that the song started in 2008, when he picked up the guitar, played the chords for the verse and had the first two lines, then shelved it, and that four years later, back from the shops one day, he started playing a melody on the ukulele that became the instrumental bridge and led him to the melody for the chorus, after which the words came like a stream of consciousness; Wikipedia says the first chords and opening lines were written at his home in Glen Iris, Melbourne, and that he first recorded and produced the song with drummer Edwin White in one afternoon at Red Door Studios in Brunswick, with additional production later by John Castle; the published sheet music puts it in D flat major at 100 beats per minute; it came out on the EP God Loves You When You're Dancing in 2013 and again on Dream Your Life Away in 2014, topped Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2013, reached number one on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and became the longest-charting song in ARIA chart history. Riptide is a strummed ukulele part, not an electric guitar, so the closest a guitar and amp get is a clean, bright sound with little low end and a light strum, rather than any drive.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a clean channel on a modelling combo and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Vance Joy use on Riptide?

A 2012 Kala ukulele, the one MusicRadar says Vance Joy used to record Riptide, so the part on the record is a ukulele rather than a guitar through an amp; he told American Songwriter that the song started in 2008, when he picked up the guitar, played the chords for the verse and had the first two lines, then shelved it, and that four years later, back from the shops one day, he started playing a melody on the ukulele that became the instrumental bridge and led him to the melody for the chorus, after which the words came like a stream of consciousness; Wikipedia says the first chords and opening lines were written at his home in Glen Iris, Melbourne, and that he first recorded and produced the song with drummer Edwin White in one afternoon at Red Door Studios in Brunswick, with additional production later by John Castle; the published sheet music puts it in D flat major at 100 beats per minute; it came out on the EP God Loves You When You're Dancing in 2013 and again on Dream Your Life Away in 2014, topped Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2013, reached number one on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and became the longest-charting song in ARIA chart history.

Sources: MusicRadar: Vance Joy on cheap guitars and the ukulele behind Riptide, American Songwriter: Inside smash hit Riptide by Vance Joy, Wikipedia: Riptide (Vance Joy song)

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.