guitar

Dire Straits

Brothers In Arms

Green Day

Good Riddance

Ed Sheeran

Thinking Out Loud

90+

Minutes of lesson audio!

20 Easy Guitar Tricks Fast-track your playing to the next level!

fix your guitar

Learn how to swap out your pickups

Interviews

Paul Gilbert Joanne Shaw Taylor Twin Atlantic

2016’s Guitar Bargains

The hottest gear from the last 12 months

how to

✔ Develop your

vibrato in 20 mins ✔ Steal Stevie Ray Vaughan’s style

editor’s letter Future Publishing Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Tel 01225 442244 Fax: 01225 822763 Email [email protected] Website: www.totalguitar.co.uk

Editorial Editor Stuart Williams Content Editor Rob Laing Production Editor Josh Gardner Art Editor Leanne O’Hara Senior Music Editor Jason Sidwell Guitars Feature & Tuition Editor Chris Bird Content Editor, Musicradar.com Michael Brown Music Co-ordinator Polly Beauchamp

Contributors Nick Aspell, Richard Barrett, Jon Bishop, Phil Capone, Rich Chamberlain, Sarah Clark, Charlie Griffiths, Nick Guppy, Ed Mitchell, Andy Ounsted, Matthew Parker, Adam Rees, Amit Sharma, James Uings, Bill Weaving Music Engraver Simon Troup Audio Mastering Duncan Jordan Video Production Martin Holmes Photography Joe Branston, Adam Gasson, Olly Curtis, Joby Sessions, Will Ireland, Jesse Wild

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Management Publishing Director Aaron Asadi Editorial Director, Film Music & Technology Paul Newman Group Editor-In-Chief Daniel Griffiths Group Art Director Graham Dalzell

Welcome… It’s that time of year again! 2016 has flown by, and it doesn’t seem like 12 months ago that we were celebrating the release of Fender’s fantastic Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster. This month’s issue is the final one on sale in 2016, so we’re round out the year by showing you how to get back to basics and really nail some guitar-playing fundamentals, plus hopefully pick up some brand new skills to add to your arsenal along the way! Also inside, if you’ve got some Christmas bonus cash burning a hole in your pocket, we’re revisiting the biggest gear bargains of 2016 – all of which will come in around the £400 mark, most of them a lot less. Our shortlist showcases the best and most affordable electrics, acoustics, amps and effects that have featured in our pages over the last 12 months. On similar year-end theme, the TG team has also picked their favourite albums of 2016. It’s a broad church, so check out p16 to see if any of your favourite records of the year made the cut! We’ve brought you another stellar tab line-up this month, too, and with huge tunes from Dire Straits, Green Day, Ed Sheeran, there’s something for everyone – and don’t forget, TG is the only guitar mag to offer this many tabbed tracks complete with play-along audio! We’ll be back next month (or should I say next year!) with another edition of the best value guitar magazine on the market, in the meantime have a guitar-fuelled Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Next issue on sale 13 January 2017

Future is an award-winning international media group and leading digital business. We reach more than 49 million international consumers a month and create world-class content and advertising solutions for passionate consumers online, on tablet & smartphone and in print. Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR). www.futureplc.com

Stuart Williams Editor

making this month’s mag

Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Chairman Peter Allen Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Tel +44 (0)207 042 4000 (London) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)

All contents copyright © 2016 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All  rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or  used in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price and other details of products or services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any changes or updates to them. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage. We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from well managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. Future Publishing and its paper suppliers have been independently certified in accordance with the rules of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).

Chris Bird

Josh Gardner

Rob Laing

TG’s tuition editor has been jamming along to this month’s Classic Track, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms. “It’s a song I learned years ago”, Chris informs us, “But I never quite got the feel of it down. Of course, I didn’t have a volume pedal, so that might just explain it.”

Black Friday might be long gone, but that hasn’t deterred Josh - he spent this month trawling through the last 12 months of TG gear to pick out the best bargain guitars, amps and effects for you to blow your Christmas cash on – turn to p48 to see what he found. Think of him as your Welsh Gear Santa…

Rob’s had the blues this issue – he’s been raving about the new collection from the Stones as they tackle their idols’ songs on Blue And Lonesome, but he also sat down with a younger blues artist, Joanne Shaw Taylor, to talk about her playing approach on her landmark latest album. january 2017 Total Guitar

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#288 the gas Contents station Monitor

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guitar tricks

Starting out with the guitar can be a daunting prospect, but even for an absolute novice, there’s loads of easy tricks you can learn to make guitar easy!

Total Guitar january 2017

Subscribe!

Subscribe to Total Guitar and get a free TC Electronic PolyTune Clip OR get three issues for £5! Turn to p89 and p108 for details!

Photography: Jesse Wild Ebet Roberts/Redferns) Jesse Wild Adam Gasson NBC / Contributor/ Getty Images Joby Sessions

052 20 easy

contents

048

The BEST Gear bargains of 2016

Monitor 006 First Look 008 Scene 010 Five Minutes Alone: Bjorn Gelotte 012 On The Up 014 Me & My Guitar: Joe Duplantier 016 Album Reviews 018 Back Track: Weezer 020 WIN! A PRS SE Mark Holcomb

How To 022 20 Minutes To… Better Vibrato 024 Riff Of The Month: The Killers – Mr Brightside 026 Getting Started With… Picking & Strumming 028 The TG Guide To Effects: Fuzz 030 What The F? Minor Chords

Features 032 Rig Tour: Twin Atlantic 036 Joanne Shaw Taylor 042 Paul Gilbert 048 The Best Gear Bargains Of 2016 052 Cover Feature: Guitar Made Easy!

Learn To Play 060 Jam Track 062 Netlicks 064 Classic Track: Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms 074 Open-mic Songbook: Green Day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) 076 The Turnaround: Stevie Ray Vaughan

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TG Unplugged

Ed Sheeran Thinking out loud

083 The Soundboard 084 John Smith 086 Rockschool: Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud

The GAS Station

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Paul Gilbert

091 Start Me Up 092 PRS SE ‘Floyd’ Custom 24 096 Vintage Viator 12-string Travel Guitar 098 Line 6 Spider V 100 The TG Test: Budget Metal Axes 106 Group Test: Multi-modulation Pedals 110 Fix Your Guitar 114 The Playlist: Jade Puget january 2017 Total Guitar

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Monitor people ✪ news ✪ noise

PLucky 13 TC Electronic lifts the lid on a raft of affordable new pedals e knew TC Electronic was up to something, but even we couldn’t have predicted the pedal mogul would be unleashing 13 all-new effects on the world. Yet here they are: what the company is calling the Smorgasbord Of Tones. Some of the new designs are analogue, while others offer simple digital designs, but all are affordable, with SRPs set at just £49.99 apiece. The effect types run the gamut, too, from boosts, overdrives and distortions on to modulation, delays and reverb, and all feature top-mounted jacks and true bypass switching for easy pedalboard integration. Read on and tuck in…

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7 1 Tailspin Vibrato All-analogue true-pitch vibrato

2 Rush Booster 20dB of transparent clean boost

TC has unleashed 13 all-new affordable effects on the world

3 Afterglow Chorus Vintage-style analogue chorus

4 Blood Moon Phaser 70s-era four-stage phase tones

5 Grand Magus Distortion Versatile amp-like distortion pedal

6 The Prophet Digital Delay Up to 1,300ms of delay with three subdivisions

10 Thunderstorm Flanger Analogue flange spanning chorus to wide sweeps

7 Echobrain Analog Delay

11 Fangs Metal Distortion

All-analogue delay pedal with bucket brigade chips

High-gain, mid-scooped, tightresponse distortion

8 Skysurfer Reverb Three studio-quality reverb types: spring, room and hall

9 Cinders Overdrive Valve-like overdrive with wide gain range

12 Forcefield Compressor Versatile vintage-voiced analogue compressor

13 Rusty Fuzz Silicon-based fuzz with big sustain and ripping velcro tones

january 2017 Total Guitar


scene gear

Your month in guitars

Snark Life

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Okay we admit it, we thought the evolution of the Snark headstock tuner had run its course. And we were so wrong. The new range of guitar, bass, violin and uke clip-on tuners (from £16.99) features a faster chip with higher resolution LCD screens for improved viewing angles. The QTSN8HZ Super-Tight all instrument tuner even includes an Hz tuning display for even greater accuracy to within 1/10th of an Hertz. Viva la evolution. When Now

gear

Animal Noise Following its signature stompboxes for Jeff Loomis, Reeves Gabrels and Periphery’s Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcomb, Pro Tone Pedals has announced an overdrive for Animals As Leaders innovator Tosin Abasi. Building on the influence of the US company’s Dead Horse pedal, the Abasi overdrive ($239) features a six-way low pass filter control for clarity in the nether regions of his eight- string tonal spectrum. When Now


gear

Winter NAMM Show 2017 new year in guitar always starts strong with the biggest and best musical instrument show in the world taking place at Anaheim, California. TG will be there to sniff out the best gear for you but, ahead of the show, a lot of the largest manufacturers are playing their cards close to their chests and have the

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details of their new product launches on strict lockdown. That doesn’t mean we’re not hearing rumours and speculation, though. Look out for some signature surprises, the return of an old name to guitar and a brand new affordable line of instruments from at least one higher-end builder when it all kicks off next month. When 19-22 January

live

Tommy Emmanuel / clive carrolL ollowing the release of new seasonal album, Christmas Memories, Tommy Emmanuel has no intensions of resting. One of the world’s most beloved acoustic fingerpickers is visiting the UK for an extensive run and he’s bringing homegrown

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virtuoso Clive Carroll with him as a special guest. Two of the finest fingerstyle players in one night, and the chance to hopefully see them play together? You should be there with sleighbells on. When From 11 January

live

meshuggaH he Swedish metal progressives don’t come around often on UK and Ireland headlining tours, so when they do, it’s an experience that’s not to be missed. Especially now they have an acclaimed new record to showcase on the live stage. The Violent Sleep Of Reason is a more rhythmically complex listen than 2012’s polarizing Koloss, but rewards listening investment immensely. It’s also a shift towards live tracking and traditional amp recording from a band who have spearheaded the use of digital modelling in metal so bodes well for its live interpretation. When From 12 January

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©ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo


Everybody wants some “I’d love to sit down with Eddie Van Halen, even if just to sit and watch him play guitar up close for a bit. I went to see them in the US on this reunion, I brought my dad and some friends over to see two shows. He was seriously good – the whole band was fantastic, actually. Alex’s drumming was insane and Eddie’s kid Wolfgang was playing bass and doing all the backing vocals… shredding with his dad! If you get the chance, you need to see it. I must have listened to Van Halen II about a billion times, the skill and ease Eddie plays with is unbelievable – he was just laughing his way through those entire records!”

Swaying to the symphony of destruction “My biggest breakthrough on guitar came early on, when I started learning about harmonies and all that dual lead stuff that Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy were famous for. When I got to grips with the power of those harmonies, it yielded great things. I actually went a bit crazy with it – some songs had two different harmonised rhythm guitars, then up to six lead guitars all harmonizing over top. It became a symphony orchestra at times!”

Straight for the heart

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five minutes alone

Björn Gelotte The In Flames axeman on his metalhead dad, first guitar heroes and essential gear… We could be heroes

“My mum and dad came home with a Suzuki guitar – it looked a little bit like a Les Paul but kinda not. It didn’t even come with a case, it just arrived in their hands! It didn’t look anything like the guitar I wanted to play and sounded crap, so I quickly bought a Yamaha RGX. I found an EMG in a music store and carved out the space for it, as well as the battery in the back. It looked shit but sounded great – my first steps on stage were with that guitar!”

“My first guitar hero was Ritchie Blackmore, he could be my favourite songwriter of all time. I’m really lucky, my dad was a metalhead so I grew up on Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Sabbath and Ozzy! After Blackmore came Van Halen, Rhoads, Wylde, Slash… I took elements from all those guys and tried to incorporate them together. When you’re a fanboy, you try to learn all the tricks of your heroes and later they combine into your own sound.”

“you try to learn all the tricks of your heroes and they combine into your sounD” Total Guitar january 2017

Only for the weak “My main weakness would probably be picking. In order to be precise and clean, you need to practise. There is no shortcut… and that’s my problem. If I manage to do something that sounds really good on record, I have to work my ass off to be able to play it okay live! I’ll keep going through the leads until they are in the same area code as what was recorded. Guys like Paul Gilbert are flawless: he can start with upstrokes or downstrokes, nothing seems to bother him! I was always too lazy. I still am!”

In Flames’s new album, Battles, is out now on Nuclear Blast.

Words: Amit Sharma Photography: Joby Sessions, © Photoshot

Got my first real six-string…

“The one piece of gear I couldn’t live without would be my Dunlop 95Q Cry Baby wah. For years I didn’t know how to use it, but I eventually found the sweet spot and it’s now become integral to my sound, especially for leads. Different notes on the guitar have different sweet spots and I think Michael Schenker is the king of all that. Michael Amott from Arch Enemy, too… the way he plays hits you straight in the heart. I also think Fredrik Åkesson from Opeth is insanely good at that stuff, yet he’s the most chilled and laid-back dude ever!”


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© Ebru Yildiz

O N T H E U P Margaret Glaspy

Inventive minimalist songwriter making a lot from a little ingersongwriter Margaret Glaspy grew up with guitars in the house – starting on the fiddle, before the lure of pop and rock music drew the Californian/New Yorker to the dark-side and the six-string. “I’ve always been a huge Joni Mitchell fan, a big Rolling Stones fan,” she’s tells TG. “And I really turned into a massive Elliot Smith fan. I really adored the way he played rhythm guitar and all of the chord changes and his harmonic preferences are really brilliant.” Glaspy’s own playing takes some cues from Smith in its

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shady sense of low-register minimalist melody, not to mention a little bit of The Stones’ bluesy ramble – all overlaid with a wavering, raspy vocal that pitches in and out of falsetto. Her recent debut album, Emotions And Math, gets its hooks into you early, summoning subtle blues lick detours from Liz Phairesque songcraft. “My favourite players all have an aesthetic,” she explains. “Overall there’s a real sound there that isn’t just about the notes they’re

playing, but a textural quality and a sonic approach that’s specific for all of those players that I really appreciate.” Margaret’s aim tonally is for something “organic and also distressed at the same time” with the minimal amount of pedals. A ’59 Deluxe Reverb (for big gigs), paired with her T-style Danocaster Single Cut are the familiar keys to the sound, but their use is oddly off-kilter – unorthodox, even. Take title track Emotions And

Math, in which the solo of a predominantly electric track is played on the low E-string of an acoustic. “That I was quite excited about,” she confesses. “Less because it was some fancy lick and more because of how effective it was. Electric guitar is quite smooth when it’s clean, but with acoustic, I feel like it can be more biting – you’re just literally hitting things on the string.” Who needs more than that?

FOR FANS OF Liz Phair, Elliot Smith Hear Emotions And Math

“My favourite players have an aesthetic that isn’t just about the notes they’re playing”

ON THE UP

people ✪ news ✪ noise

Fronteers

Cabbage

Hull’s harmonic generators ounding like the irksome offspring of Arctic Monkeys and The La’s, Fronteers grew around the close-knit dual guitar and vocal talents of Andy Towse and James Taylor. The duo started jamming Last Shadow Puppets covers, before an open-mic rendition of The Beatles’ Love Me Do led to the accidental discovery of a harmony vocal that’s more addictive than Pringles. “We were just sort of astounded by how it came out,” says Andy. “So we decided to find

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A black mirror to Brexit Britain

more songs where we could do that, then eventually started writing our own.” Having taught each other guitar along the way, they now conjure a brash-but-beautiful treble-laden tones from a Gretsch Electromatic G5422 (Andy) and James’ Blacktop HH Strat. “We just find the thing that works well,” explains Andy. “As long as it’s got a nice reverb on it and it’s feeling exciting then it’s good!” FOR FANS OF Arctic Monkeys, The La’s Hear Next Time I’m Around

he youth of today might be more disaffected than ever, but popular music and politics have rarely been further removed from each other. Mossley punks Cabbage are a garlic-mayo’d finger in the eye to those from wilfully ignorant sector of society. “Cabbage to me is the product of what was dissatisfaction in day to day mundane life,” says guitarist Eoghan Clifford. “We’d had enough. It was Cabbage or die.” The resulting output jostles among the unwashed pits of The

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Sex Pistols, The Dead Kennedys and Fat White Family, asking awkward questions in the process. It’s packed with fury, vitality and, we suspect, donner meat. “I never had any formal guitar lessons so I tend to play whatever doesn’t sound right and try to stay away from the obvious,” says Eoghan. “Sometimes it sounds like a fire in a pet shop and other times it works, so surely that’s the best recipe!” FOR FANS OF Sex Pistols, Fat White Family Hear Necroflat In The Palace

© Rob Blackham

Pærish Who Parisian guitarists Frederic Wah (really!) and Mathias Court Sounds like Euphoric alt-rock to slow head-bang to Gear Frederic – Fender Pawn Shop 72, Hot Rod Deluxe III; Mathias – Fender Stratocaster Billy Corgan Signature, Hot Rod Deluxe III FOR FANS OF Jimmy Eat World, Biffy Clyro Hear Undone

Bad Touch

Who Norfolk noodlers Robert Glendinning and Daniel Seekings Sounds like Swamp-y country rock from the Broads Gear Robert - Les Paul Custom Shop, Marshall Super Lead Plexi; Daniel - Les Paul Standard, Marshall JCM 900 FOR FANS OF Blackberry Smoke, Broken Witt Rebels Hear 99%

Falls

Who “Fuck-rock” guitarists Phil Kelsall and Martin Gallagher

Sounds like Deranged riffs, twisted humour and hairy energy Gear Martin – Les Paul Custom (with House Of Tone pickups), Vox AC30; Phil – SG Special, Blackstar Artisan FOR FANS OF Wet Nuns, Baby Godzilla Hear Live Delicious


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“I have locking tuning heads that allow me to lock [in] the strings so they’re not going anywhere and the stoptail bridge is anchored in the guitar and gives a nice low end. It’s not going through the body. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know but it’s my favourite type of bridge with what I’m looking for.”

me and my guitar

Joe Duplantier Gojira

The French metal visionary gives us a rundown of his collaboration with Charvel 14

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“It’s the signature guitar that I created with Charvel and I’m really proud of it. It’s a heavy guitar, Tele shape. I was always a big fan of the Tele but the single-coil, the type of sound you get with the Tele is not really suited to metal. I need a guitar that has a lot of gain, a lot of weight and precision. It’s a very classic shape but a very heavy sound.”

“Another cool feature is there’s just one knob so it’s not confusing. It’s just volume. When I have a tone knob all I do is check that it’s all the way up. And I think a lot of guitar players will relate and understand, especially in metal. So I just got rid of that knob altogether. And there’s more space for the hand too. I have big hands, too, so for people with big hands this guitar is excellent.”

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“The wood is mahogany with an ebony fretboard. Mahogany is very heavy, very dense and it gives a very solid sound. Nice low end – really tight. Ebony gives the precision and high end to the sound with a lot of attack. And that’s what we’re looking for with our music.”

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“The pickups were also designed by Charvel and myself. We sat down and came up with these great passive pickups, a lot of dynamic and really nice tight low end. A lot of attack. We need the attack, we need the low end and I’ve got everything with this guitar. I’m super excited about it. And it has the G [12th fret marker]”


TG staff picks

albums of the year 16

2016 Blue And Lonesome The Rolling Stones

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hy are a group of pensioners turning in the best blues collection of the year? Because the Stones get it, they’ve been studying the craft for 50 years, and it shows in these covers. Jagger really takes the reigns here, in vocal s trut and fearsome blues harp while Keef and Ronnie expertly work the gears from dirty and ragged, right down to minimal brass tacks. They haven’t sounded this good in years. Rob Laing Download Hoo Doo Blues Total Guitar january 2017

Hear it!

Listen to the TG Albums Of The Year playlist on Spotify bit.ly/tgaoty2016

Painkillers Brian Fallon

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rian Fallon treads a line between Gaslight’s anthems and the introspection of The Horrible Crowes. It’s got great rootsy guitar tones, and is packed with three-and-a-half minute gems. Painkillers is a masterclass in songwriting simplicity, with progressions so familiar you’ll think you could have done it yourself, but executed so well that we’re left wishing we could. Stuart Williams Download Nobody Wins

Magma Gojira

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t feels like Joel Duplantier’s band are carrying on the undeniable spirit of early Sepultura but it’s very much filtered into their evolving identity. The riffs are certainly satisfying here, as is their growing ethereal cleaner side that reveals wider vision. But it’s rhythmically that they are one of the most beguiling bands in metal right now – and it’s a dynamic that rewards repeated listens. David Hands Download Silvera

The Furthest Tree Clive Carroll

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coustic maestro Clive Carroll pushes the boundaries of the guitar once again on this, his fourth studio album. The fleet-fingered technical workout of The Adventures Of Wilfred puts us in mind of some of the fiery playing on 2004’s The Red Guitar and Clive’s bonkers two-melody party piece A Winter Carol shows him to be on another level all together. Pure acoustic virtuosity. Chris Bird Download The Adventures Of Wilfred

ALBUMS people ✪ news ✪ noise

A Moon-Shaped Pool Radiohead

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Post Pop Depression Sorceress Iggy Pop

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Opeth

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ith heavily filtered echoes of the rock hallmarks of old, their ninth album blends the electronic sonics with a visceral edge that’s propelled by dramatic strings on the excellent single, Burn The Witch, a strange, strangulated guitar solo on Identikit and the urgent Krautrock rhythms of Ful Stop. All are highlights on an album that shows them still evolving, even now. Bill Weaving Download Ful Stop

hether this is the Godfather of Punk’s final album remains to be seen, but there’s a ‘going out guns blazing’ vibe to Iggy’s collaboration with Josh Homme, Dean Fertita and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. The result is his finest, angriest work in years – perfectly supported by Homme and co’s scuzzy garage-rock backing, which has menace dripping from every bar. Josh Gardner Download Sunday

Weezer

III: Select Difficulty Golden Sings That Periphery Have Been Sung

Weezer (The White Album)

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ust when you had given up all hope on him, Rivers Cuomo comes back with this. The White Album is vintage Weezer and their finest record in 14 years. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, instead it is 35 minutes of Cuomo fluttering his eyelashes at LA with killer hooks, melodies to burn and big classic rock solos. Rich Chamberlain Download LA Girlz

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eriphery have always had prodigious talent and scope, but it took until their fifth album for them to hone the blend of technicality and their progressive meanderings with insatiable melodies. With Catch Fire, Lune and Flatline they not only pushed their dynamic sounds further, but fuse intricate riffs and rhythmic complexity with irresistible hooks to produce world-beating anthems in the process. Adam Rees Download Lune

ome bands, it seems, can do no wrong. Opeth may have distanced themselves from the death metal that bore them – but their musical meditations remain remarkably forceful. The guitar partnership of Mikael Åkerfeldt and master lead man Fredrik Åkesson continuing to stun on every level. Sorceress reaffirms exactly why the Swedes are one of the most wildly innovative bands in existence. Amit Sharma Download Strange Brew

Ryley Walker

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he Chicago songsmith returns with a slowburn, record that recalls Tim Buckley’s croon and Roy Harper’s Stormcock in its cycling, will-o-the-wisp progressions, while the playing from Walker and his merry band of hometown experimental rock and jazz musos oozes vitality and inspiring spontaneity. Matt Parker Download Sullen Mind January 2017 Total Guitar

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Rivers Cuomo and his famous blue Strat have been at it for over 20 years now

back track

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A guitarist’s guide to the artists you need to know Hear it!

Words: Josh Gardner Photography: © Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty Images

Weezer

Grunge-pop aristocrats Weezer were formed in 1992, and quickly set about crafting some of the most influential guitar music of the 90s. While the line-up has evolved over the years, the fulcrum is always Rivers Cuomo – Weezer’s bespectacled frontman has a knack for a hook like few others, and combined with lead chops honed at the altar of 80s metal, there’s loads for guitar players to admire. A word before we begin – Weezer currently have no less than four self-titled albums, so we’ll refer to them by their ‘colour’ names here. Let’s dive in…


Listen to the TG Weezer playlist on Spotify

bit.ly/tg288weezer

start with

The Blue Album

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(1994)

Weezer’s first album is one of the all-time great debuts, and propelled them from club gigs in LA to multi-platinum radio-rock stardom. Blue mixed grungey guitar tones, 50s pop harmonies and chord progressions, and Rivers’ awkward but relatable lyrics to create the Weezer formula… and launched a thousand emo bands in the process. From deceptively tricky fingerpicked acoustic riff of opener, My Name Is Jonas, to closer Only In Dreams and it’s extended neoclassical guitar wig-out, it smashes together punk, pop, classic rock and grunge in a way that few others have before or since. Most albums don’t have one track as sublime as Buddy Holly, or the dark, angsty Say It Ain’t So and it’s Hendrix-y chordal lines, but there’s precious little drop-off over Blue’s 10 tracks - simply put, it’s one of the finest records of the 1990s. Standout track Buddy Holly

back track people ✪ news ✪ noise

then try

PInkerton

don’t miss out (1996)

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The Green Album

also recommended (2001)

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Weezer’s ‘difficult second album’ was a challenge in more ways than one. The reality of the rockstar lifestyle Rivers had dreamed of growing up brought him only dissatisfaction, and recovering from major surgery, he stripped away the playful irony of the Blue Album to delve deep into his feelings of alienation and depression. This darkness was reflected in the music itself – while the guitar hooks are still plentiful, the retro-pop sheen of Blue is replaced with abrasive buzz-saw guitars, feedback, and a rough and ready production. So stark was the change, Pinkerton was a critical and commercial disaster on release – but a bit of time and distance has led to a significant reappraisal since, and it’s now regarded as some of Rivers’ finest, and rawest, work ever. Standout track No Other One

The backlash against Pinkerton caused Rivers to place Weezer on hiatus as he returned to university, but they returned five years later (minus original bassist Matt Sharp) and with the help of Blue producer, Ric Ocasek, turned their pop sensibilities up to 11. Lead single Hash Pipe is a palm-muted slice of dumb, fun radio rock, allegedly written in one night after Rivers downed “a bunch of Ritalin and… like three shots of tequila,” while the languid chord stabs of Island In The Sun would give the band an unexpectedly massive global hit. Elsewhere however, Rivers’ knack for melding modern rock sounds with harmonies, hand-claps and melodies straight out of the 50s pop bible produced gems such as Knockdown Dragout and the superlative Photograph. Standout track Photograph

worth a spin

WILD CARD

Everything Will Be Maladroit Alright In The End (2014)

5

After 2010’s risible Hurley, you wondered if Weezer would ever make a good album again. EWBAITE was a bolt from the Blue (Album), and an emphatic affirmative answer. Reunited with that man Ric Ocasek once more, Lonely Girl distills the three-chord pop song to 100 per cent proof, while Ain’t Got Nobody might be the purest example of what makes Rivers’ guitar style so compelling – effortlessly blending infectious, simple guitar hooks, with some truly virtuosic lead playing in a threeminute power-pop singalong. The only blot on the copy book is the bloated, three-part rock-opera that closes proceedings, but it doesn’t detract from a real return to form. Standout track Ain’t Got Nobody

6

The White Album

(2016)

4

Post-Maladroit, Weezer went on a rough four-album slide, but after Everything Will Be Alright In The End (see below) pulled us back to the shack by actually feeling like a Weezer LP, this was the moment they hit their straps again. White sees Rivers channeling the Beach Boys and golden-era of 60s West Coast pop in this album-long ode to the band’s home state of California, and nowhere is this more evident than the breezy (Girl We Got A) Good Thing, with its persistent sleigh bells and a harmonised Lizzy-esque solo. But in spite of its sickly-sweet touchstones, it never becomes too twee: just listen to the scuzzy guitar lines and menacing synths on Do You Wanna Get High? – itself a darkly confessional look back at Rivers’ early 2000s prescription drug issues… Standout track Do You Wanna Get High?

avoid! (2002)

It was almost inevitable that Rivers would follow the sunny platinum-selling Green by growing a beard and heading to a dark place. Maladroit is concise even by Weezer standards – with 13 tracks fired out in barely 33 minutes – but it’s also the closest they’ve come to embracing the 80s metal that Rivers idolised as a kid. The guitars are darker and the distortion more saturated, while barely a song passes without a legato-heavy solo – it’s the sound of Rivers really cutting loose as a guitarist. Even when they try to go pop – as on the Muppet-endorsed Keep Fishin’ – there’s a bedrock of heaviness here that the band has rarely gone near since, while Fall Together drops the tempo and gets the foot stomping for one of the filthiest hooks Weezer have ever recorded. Standout track Fall Together

The Red Album

(2008)

While Hurley and Raditude might have plumbed worse depths, the Red Album was the canary in the coal mine for Weezer fans. After all, it’s the hope that kills you – and lead single Pork And Beans is a catchy slice of guitar pop that sounded like a band evolving without losing that lightning in a bottle. Sadly, the album itself was a mess of tired, lazy pastiches mixed with lyrics that blurred lines between Rivers’ stock ironic vapidity to boorish cod-hip-hop nonsense. Between the almost sarcastically simplistic opener Troublemaker and the teeth-grinding awfulness of the Chilis-aping Everybody Get Dangerous, fans were left wondering if they were even taking it seriously any more… Standout track: Pork And Beans


19

competition

WIN!

A PRS SE Mark Holcomb

Worth £1,015!

20

This Seymour Duncan-loaded metal beast could be yours

W

hen six-string prog ace Mark Holcomb isn’t wielding crushing riffs with Periphery, he’s been busy designing an absolutely killer signature model with PRS Guitars – and now, thanks to the good folks at PRS Guitars Europe (www.prsguitarseurope.com) you could lay your hands on this Best Buy-winning electric, too. Packing a 24-fret, 25.5-inch scale neck with 20-inch radius, the SE Mark Holcomb is made for finger-twisting leads and arpeggios. A pair of Mark’s signature Seymour Duncan

Alpha and Omega pickups provide utmost clarity even when delivering the heaviest of riffs – handy, given the guitar comes shipped in drop C tuning (low to high: C G C F A D). To be in with a chance of winning, simply answer the following question correctly: Which of these guitarists plays with Mark in Periphery? A) John Petrucci B) Misha Mansoor C) Tosin Abasi Enter at bit.ly/tg288prs Competition closes on 12 January 2017

T&Cs: The competition is open to UK entrants only. Under 18s must obtain parental consent to enter this competition and be able to demonstrate this to Total Guitar’s reasonable satisfaction. Answers must be received between 10/12/16 to 12/01/17. The winners will be selected at random from all correct entries received between the relevant dates and will be sent the prize free of charge. Each winner will be notified within 28 days of the closing date and will be required to give details of a delivery address in the UK to which the prize should be sent. By entering this competition, you consent to us using your personal details to send you information about products and services of Future and PRS Guitars Europe that may be of interest to you. For full terms and conditions, please go to: www.futurenet.com/futureonline/ competitionrules.asp


how to

what you will learn ‘Push’ and ‘pull’ vibrato fretting techniques How to use vibrato with two-note chords How to apply vibrato to string bends

22

20 minutes to…

better vibrato

Grab hold of those strings and inject pure emotion into the core of your playing with TG’s expressive vibrato workout ibrato breathes life and soul into lead playing. Without vibrato, melodies and licks sound flat and lifeless, lacking the uplifting feel of a classic solo. All you have to do TGR288.20mins.fig01.musx is rapidly bend a string up and down with your File Date: 11:34 14/11/2016 fret hand. Not by much – just enough to create Page 1 of 1 a fluctuating, warbling sound effect. Players such as BB King, Brian May, Slash, Notes: David Gilmour and Yngwie Malmsteen each

have their own unique vibrato sound – some are slow and wide, others are faster, with less pitch change. Although there is no such thing as a ‘correct’ vibrato, a lot of less-experienced players tend to just wobble a fretting finger and

V

see what happens. But, like every guitar technique, a little practice and some different musical ideas will improve your ability, and, most importantly of all, help you develop your ownImprove personalYour touchVibrato on the guitar. - Push Vibrato

20 Minutes To.. Contributor: Chris Bird Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

Without vibrato, melodies and licks sound flat and lifeless, lacking that uplifting feel

‘Push the string’ style vibrato q = 60 -100

⇤ ### 4 . & 4 .œ A

2

T A B

. 10 . ⇥

1

œ 9

TRACK 8 B/A

~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ œ 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[9 ]

10

⇥

3

#œ 11

C # m/A

œ~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[11 ]

10

⇥

4

œ 12

B/A

œ~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[12 ]

2

œ

10

⇥

3

#œ 11

Play 4 times ~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ ..

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[11 ]

. .

Play the note on the 10th fret with your second finger and use your first, third and fourth fingers in turn to fret the notes on the first string. Allow the notes to sustain a little before applying your vibrato. Rather than using your fingers to push the string up and down, move the string by turning your wrist.


File Date: 11:36 14/11/2016 Page 1 of 1

20 Minutes To.. Contributor: Chris Bird

by DigitalMusicArt.Com 20Engraved minutes to better vibrato

Notes:

‘Pull the string’-style vibrato

TRACK 9

As with the first exercise, move your whole hand from the wrist in order to move the string, and lock the side of your first finger knuckle under the neck for a stable grip. You’ll be playing bass strings here so pull the string down towards the floor to adjust your vibrato. Play 4 times ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ # 4 . Em .. & 4 . j œ. ˙ œ bœ œ œ œ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ . . T A . . 7 5 B 0 7 0 6 5 TGR288.20mins.fig03.musx Vibrato ⇥ ≤ ⇥ ⇥ ⇥ Improve≤ Your Vibrato - Double-stop ⇥ 3

1

3

1

2

File Date: 11:53 14/11/2016

20 Minutes To..

As with the first exercise, move your whole hand from the wrist in order to move the string, and lock the side of your first finger knuckle under the neck for a stable grip. Page 1 of 1 Contributor: Chris Bird You’ll be playing bass strings here so pull the string down towards the floor to adjust your vibrato.

Notes:

Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

Vibrato on two-note ‘diad’ shapes q = 60 -120

# œ & 44 ..

Em 1

T A B

. .

12

3

œ

1 1

œœ

12 12

14

œœ

TRACK 10

~~~~~~~~~ œœ ˙˙

œ

3

~~~~~~~~~

[12 ] [12 ]

14

1

œ

12

3 3

# œœ

œœ

~~~~~~~~~ œœ ˙˙

..

Play 4 times

~~~~~~~~~

. .

[14 ] [14 ]

14 14

TGR288.20mins.fig04.musx Improve Your Vibrato - Bends with Vibrato File Date: 11:56 14/11/2016 20 Minutes To.. Play the 12th fret diad with your first finger, gripping both strings with an even pressure as you wobble the strings. Try making your vibrato sync to the tempo of the music Page 1 of 1 Contributor: Chris Bird – use either three or four vibrato pulses for each beat of the backing music. In bar 2, use your third finger to play the 14th fret diad. Notes:


String bends with vibrato q = 60 -100

Eb

b & b b 44 .. Jœ 1

T A B

. .

8

⇥

j 3œ

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ. œ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BU 10 (12 )

≤

TRACK 11

3

œ

œ

1

œ

RP

(12)

BD

⇥

E b/D b

j 2œ

w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Play 4 times ..

BU

(10)

8

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

9 (11 )

⇥

. .

If you’re after a soaring, uplifting lead guitar lick then this is the technique for you. It’s tough though, as you’ll need enough finger strength to bend a string and apply vibrato at the peak of your bend. We recommend adding your vibrato by dipping down slightly lower than the note you bend up to.

Practice Plan 1. 2 mins: Play through one exercise slowly 2. 1 min: Play through the same exercise up to speed 3. 1 min: Experiment with your vibrato speed and pitch change 4. 1 min: Move and adapt the example to a different fretboard position Once you’ve tried the tab exercises and also had a go at creatively adapting them in different areas of the fretboard, you’ll develop a feel for how to choose the most suitable fingers or hand position for whatever you happen to be playing. Experiment by trying one or two of these vibrato methods in your next jam. It could be as simple as adding more emotion to a few notes in a riff to make it more dynamic, or giving a melody note a longer sustain.

NEXT MONTH 20 minutes to better string bends january 2017 Total Guitar

23

how to

what you will learn Three unusual chord shapes Ringing arpeggio style playing Playing in E b standard tuning

riff of the month

Get the tone

channel Overdrive

Mr Brightside

24

his month we look at Dave Keuning’s somewhat fiddly but oh-so-catchy arpeggio riff from The Killers’ hit Mr Brightside. The guitar on the recording is tuned to E b standard (Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb) so you’ll need to detune every string by a semitone to play along. On your first look at the tab you may assume this is a ‘one note at a time’ kind of riff. In fact, you’ll be holding TGR288.mrbrightside.fig01.musx down a chord shape throughout each bar File of music, picking one string at Date:but 12:14 01/12/2016 a time. With the strings pressed down Page 1 of 1 together you’ll hear a sweet ringing Notes: sound as the notes overlap. You’ll need to use all four fingers to play each chord

gain

and you may find the shapes are quite the finger-twisters. Spend a little time practising the chord changes before moving on to pick out the notes – this way you’ll benefit from developing your muscle memory and you’ll start to get a feel for the movements. The trick is to keep your third and fourth fingers pressed down throughout the riff, moving only your first and second fingers on each chord change.

T

bass

mid

treble

Use a light overdrive for a thicker sound than a 100 per cent clean tone. A guitar with a bridge humbucker will give bite and clarity (Keuning himself often uses a Gibson Les Paul or Fender Starcaster), but it is quite a ‘warm’ sound so keep your treble moderate. If your guitar has single coil pickups you’ll most likely need to lower the treble and raise the bass. Dial in reverb for ambience and a slow chorus effect to simulate the double tracking on the recording.

Les Paul (bridge humbucker)

Chorus: Speed: 35% Depth: 30% Level: 40%

Mr Brightside The Killers: Hot Fuss - Guitar The Killers Recorded Versions (Guitar Tab with chord symbols, 88pp, £14.95 ref. AM981420) Contributor: A comprehensive guitar folio featuring all the songs from The Killers’ best-selling, critically-acclaimed debut album from 2004. This superb Engraved byincludes DigitalMusicArt.Com publication classic hits such as ‘Somebody Told Me’, ‘Smile Like

Cheat sheet…

Appears at: 0:00-0:32 Mr Brightside Music and lyrics by Brandon Tempo: 149bpm Flowers, Mark Stoermer, Ronnie Vanucci and Dave Keuning. Key/scale: Db major © 2004 Universal Music Publishing Limited.Worldwide reproduced by Main techniques: Arpeggios/ kind permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. extended chords International Copyright Secured.

You Mean It’ and ‘Mr. Brightside’. Each song is accurately transcribed in standard notation, guitar tablature, chord symbols and chord boxes. Available from: www.musicroom.com

Intro

TRACKs 12-13 q =149

D b add 9

œ b & b b b b 44 œ 1

2

T A B

Eb Bb Gb Db Ab Eb

reverb

4

œ

1

œ œ

3

œ œ

let ring throughout 0

17

16

19

16

D b maj 9/C

4

17

œ

1

œ œ 1

4

œ

1

œ œ 0

19

0

16

16

19

16

3

œ œ

G b maj 13

4

17

œ

1

œ

2

œ

4

œ

2

œ œ 0

19

0

16 15

19

16

3

œ œ 4

17

2

œ

œ

œ

œ

œ œ 0

19

16

16

19

16

œ œ 17

19

15

Watching Dave Keuning play this riff live, you’ll notice that his picking hand barely moves. Rest your hand on the guitar bridge so that, at rest, the point of your pick is beside the third string. This gives you maximum reach and minimum movement for all the strings you need to target.


œ 0

Words: Chris Bird Photography: Frank White

The Killers

how to Getting Started With…

Picking & strumming

Whether you want to play lead or rhythm, you need to get your picking technique together. TG shows you how “Picking the strings, then. Up or down – that’s got to be it, surely?”

26

Essentially, yes. Assuming you’re using a pick (aka plectrum), picking pretty much boils down to choosing whether to down-pick or up-pick, and there are a few ‘rules’ that will help you work out the best approach for any given piece of music. Get your picking sorted and you’ll soon find it easier to get a feel for strummed rhythms and ‘single-note’-style lead lines.

what you will learn ‘Down-up’-style strumming How to pick lead guitar lines How a four-count relates to music

If you’re finding this easy, try strumming an upstroke in between every downstroke. Count ‘1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &’ – you’ll be playing downwards on the numbers and upwards on the ‘&’s. It’s the most common kind of strumming and we’ve tabbed an example for you below.

It’s a good starting point though, and you can learn a lot about rhythm through downstrokes. Start by choosing a chord you know, then play it four times using downstrokes. Count out loud to four and strum in time with your count.

are, you’re halfway to understanding rhythms.

use more of the pick for strumming.

TGR288.gettingstarted.fig01.musx “Count four and strum in time? That feels FiletoDate: 10:41 16/11/2016 a little bit basic…” Page 1 of 1 Yep, that’s the idea! Lots of music follows a four Notes: count. If you can feel where the basic downbeats

## œ & # # 44 .. œœœ œœ E

T A B

. .

count: 1 0 0 1 2 2 0

⇥

œœ œœ œœ & 0 0 1 2 2 0

≤

œœ œœ œœ 2 0 0 1 2 2 0

⇥

œœ œœ œœ & 0 0 1 2 2 0

≤

TRACK 14

œœ œœ œœ 3 0 0 1 2 2 0

⇥

œœ œœ œœ & 0 0 1 2 2 0

≤

œœ œœ œœ 4 0 0 1 2 2 0

⇥

œœ œœ œœ & 0 0 1 2 2 0

≤

Hold down the E chord and alternate between downstrokes and upstrokes. As an exercise try just the downstrokes or just the upstrokes.


1. Strumming Let plenty of the pick show. This gives you a good ‘raking’ feel as you strum the strings. Try a thin pick.

TGR288.gettingstarted.fig02.musx Picking and Strumming “It’s harder than strumming!File It’sDate: quite hard 14:10 16/11/2016 Getting Started With.... 2. Soloing to make sure you only hit one string.” Hold the pick close toContributor: the tip for the most Page 1 of 1 Chris Bird How you hold your pick has a big effect on accuracy. Soloing is often easier with a less Notes: by DigitalMusicArt.Com accuracy. Use the very tip of your pick for solos; flexibleEngraved pick.

Easy ‘down-up’-style strumming q = 90

Use the right picking technique for the right kind of music.

“You mentioned lead guitar. Seems to me that solos would be too complicated for this down-up method. What’s the deal there?” Solos are generally more rhythmically complex than strummed chords, but you can often play simpler lead lines down-up style. This is known as ‘alternate picking’, ie, alternating between down- and up-picking. The idea is to play a steady down-up motion and keep the movement going, even if there is no note. That way your downstrokes always land on the downbeat. Have a go at our second tab example.

“I find myself sticking to downstrokes most of the time, but I know it’s not always the right approach…”

Take your pick…

.. . .

Lead guitar with alternate picking

⇤ #4 & 4 œ count: 1

T A B

10

⇥

œ

‰

&

2

12

œ J &

12

(

⇥)

TRACKS 15-16

œ J

œ

3

&

10

12

⇥

4

(

⇥)

j œ &

12

The challenge here is working out which notes are downbeats and which are upbeats. Remember to keep your down-up motion going continuously.

how to

The TG Guide To Effects Get the most out of your pedals

Fuzz From retro riffs to stoner sludge, meet the

1

Level The level knob will govern the output of the pedal, so the higher you place this, the more it will drive the front of your amp

effect that’ll make your distortion mammoth 1

2

28

he origins of fuzz are with guitarists such as Link Wray overdriving their amps and slashing their speaker cones to make them sound more aggressive. Further to this, Grady Martin (guitarist for Marty Robbins) helped push the fuzz sound forward after recording his part on Don’t Worry using a faulty preamp, resulting in a broken, fuzzy tone. Fuzz got its first real breakthrough, though, when Keef used a Maestro FZ-1 to ape the sound of horns on the Stones’ Satisfaction. It made the pedal (the first commercially available fuzz box) an instant hit, and spawned clones and modded circuits in the form of the Coloursound Tonebender and Arbiter Fuzz Face. Jimi Hendrix was partial to his Fuzz Face, but also enlisted Roger Mayer’s Octavia fuzz, which adds the distinctive

T

‘octave-up’ tone heard on Purple Haze, and around this time, ElectroHarmonix delivered the Big Muff. Fuzz produces a rougher sound compared to overdrive and distortion – the harsh square clipping resulting in a big, fat wooly tone. Fuzz fans usually fall into one of two camps: germanium or silicon. This refers to the type of transistor used in the design; in general germanium is the classic, smoother sound, while silicon is a more biting, modern tone. Distortion trends can come and go, but fuzz is a perennial. In more recent times, players such as Matt Bellamy, Josh Homme and Scott Holliday of Rival Sons have been keeping the fuzz flag flying! what you’ll learn How to use common fuzz controls What to look for in a fuzz pedal Popular fuzz pedals to try out

The origins of fuzz are with guitarists overdriving their amps and slashing their speaker cones

2

Fuzz/Drive This controls the amount of clipping applied to your signal, depending on your pedal, it’ll take you from a subtle bite to a thick wall of gravelly fuzz!


effects guide

must try… Dunlop Fuzz face from £130 The Fuzz Face is probably one of the most recognisable effects pedals of all time. Get a red one for germanium, or a blue for silicon, and if you fear that big round UFO design is going to cramp up your pedalboard, check out the mini versions (complete with the turquoise Hendrix version) to save space and a bit of cash, too!

29

Electro-Harmonix Nano Big Muff PI £62 There have been loads of iterations of the infamous Big Muff, but the Nano gives you the same triple-pronged volume/sustain/tone control section as the original in a modern pedalboard-friendly casing. At around £60, the Nano Big Muff will give you a slice of classic Pi at an affordable price.

ZVEX Vexter Fuzz Factory £189 The Fuzz Factory is the fuzz for the modern noisenik. It pushes things forward with Gate, Comp and Stab (short for stability) knobs,

which give you the ability to create a whole gammit of fuzz noises. Go for the Vexter series for FF innards in a more affordable casing.

Recommended settings 5

6

5

5

5.5

10

tone

drive

6

6

10

vol

tone

drive

vol

tone

drive

vol

Pumpkin Pie

Wooly Mammoth

Retro rock

To recreate Billy Corgan’s huge fuzzy Smashing Pumpkins sound you’ll want a Big Muff or an emulation thereof. Set your ‘sustain’ (gain) to max, tone to about 2 o’clock, and boost the level to 12 o’clock.

Josh Homme is a master of heavy, punchy fuzz that doesn’t sound over-saturated. Set your gain control at around halfway, but boost the output, and bulk up your amp’s mids. This will overdrive the amp and blend the two smoothly.

Fuzz is a vital part of retro rock tones. Use a vintage Fuzz Face-style pedal and set your gain and level controls to just above halfway. Have your amp just on the verge of breaking up, and tame the treble to avoid shrillness.

NEXT MONTH We continue to give you the lowdown on the wonderful world of effects pedal by going on and on and on about everyone’s favourite atmospheric effect… delay! january 2017 Total Guitar

how to what you will learn How minor chords relate to the major scale The notes that make up A and Am chords Five different Am chord shapes

What The F?

Minor chords J Building on last month’s major chord

ust like the major kind, minor chords are used throughout every TGR288.wtf.fig01.musx style of music. They’re also some of the easiest shapes to play

File Date:– 11:51 chances 17/11/2016 are you learned a few minor chords in your first lessons. And, like most music theory, you’ll get the hang of how minor Page 1 ofchords 1 work if you’ve learned the major scale first (check out issues

basics we move on to take a look at the hows and whys of minor chords

286 and 287 for more on the major scale). This is because major chords use notes Notes: taken directly from the scale, and minor chords do the same, but with one small change: the third note is played a semitone lower. Read on and we’ll explain…

1. A change to the major scale

TRACK 17

1 2 2 frets

b3

1 fret

1 fret

### 4 & 4

A B C

2 frets

C# D

2 frets

1 fret

1 fret

F# G#

E

A

1

U

Am

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

TGR288.wtf.fig02.musx T File A Date: 11:51 17/11/2016 0 2 4 0 2 4 B Page 1 of 1

3 4 5 6 7 8 1 fret

U

q = 90

A major chord uses the first, third and fifth notes of the major scale. In minor chords the 3rd interval is lowered by a semitone, taking you to a note that’s not found in the scale: in the key of A the C# note (the major 3rd) becomes a C.

˙

œ nœ

2 0

2

3

Notes:

A

You can see how the note changes here as you play the A major scale (A B C# D E F# G#), then the notes of an Am chord (A, C and E). In this key C is a ‘minor 3rd’ or ‘ b3’.

30

2. Guitar chord shapes

TRACK 18

# # # 4 . œœ œœ œœ & 4 . œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ A

Guitarists rarely play chords that follow the theoretical layout of notes. If you look at the notes of this open Am chord however, you’ll see that the theory is sound: The C# note found in A chords is changed to a C in Am chords.

A

E C E A

Five chord shapes, all Am, but all in different positions on the guitar's fretboard. Spend some time working out the notes and you’ll see that they are all combinations of A, C and E notes.

x

0 2 2 2 0

0 2 2 2 0

n œœœ œ œ

⇥

⇥ ⇥ ≤

0 2 2 2 0

⇥ ⇥ ≤

0 1 2 2 0

œœœ œ œ

œœœ œœ 0 1 2 2 0

œœœ .. œ œ . .

0 1 2 2 0

⇥

TRACKs 19-20

o

o

x

o

x

1 2 3

œœœ œ œ

0 1 2 2 0

5

1

1

1

1

7

x

x

1

x

1

9

1

2

2 3

4

3 4

4

4 4 4

Am


0 2 2 2 0

œœœ œ œ

Play 4 times

Jam around A and Am and you should hear the mournful sound of the minor chord compared to the bright major chord. Balancing happy and sad sounds is the art of any good songwriter.

Am

3. More chord shapes

. .

T A B

œœœ œ œ

Am

Am

Am

Am

Am

3

Both Barry (l) and Sam (r) have switched to semi-hollow guitars in recent years

32


rig tour 1

doesn’t feed back. Gretsch asked me if there was anything I would change about it… so I asked if I could try one without a Bigsby and with locking tuners, because I hit pretty hard when we’re going for it. I also wanted a thicker inlay for when there’s a strobe flashing in my face. I honestly feel these Gretsch guitars changed the way I play a lot. I feel like I instantly got better, I started playing things I never knew I could.”

2

Fender Telecaster Thinline

2

3

“My other main guitar. Before Gretsch, all I played was Teles – I’ve got about seven of them now. We’ll have about five different tunings in any set, so I bring one main and one spare. They’ve all got their own little sticker or idea behind them. Imagine is my favourite song of all time – I don’t think a song with more purpose has ever been written – so that’s what I chose for this.”

4

Electro-Harmonix Small Clone

3

Twin Atlantic Glasgow anthemic rock heroes talk us through the equipment they’ve chosen for their biggest tour ever… hey say British bands have to work twice as hard to get to the top, and that’s exactly what Glasgow quartet Twin Atlantic have been doing for nearly a decade now – taking their blend of jangly chords and crunchy riffs as far around the world as they’ll possibly go, hot on the heels of fellow Scottish rockers and longtime friends, Biffy Clyro.

T

This year’s fourth full-length, GLA, stands as their most cohesive offering to date – with boutique fuzz providing much of the muscle behind their brand of chart-bothering, anthemic rock. Moments after soundcheck at London’s O2 Forum in Kentish Town, singer/guitarist Sam McTrusty and lead guitarist Barry McKenna guide TG through the gear they’re relying on to deliver the goods on their biggest headline shows yet…

Sam McTrusty

“I’ve known about these for years, but I was never indulgent enough to fit one on my board until now! Because I’m singing as well as thinking about crowd control, pedals are a bit of an afterthought. I was listening to a lot of In Utero while we were making our new album and I wanted to recreate that swirling, sickly feedback. Whenever that comes on, it’s to add swampiness – on tracks like You Are The Devil, Overthinking and Valhalla. It’s one of the pedals that can’t be replicated, and when you mix it with fuzz you get instant Nirvana.”

Gretsch Panther Center-Block

Kemper Profiler

“This is one of the Panther prototypes, with Gretsch’s stock Filter’Tron pickups. The centre-block inside is what helps handle distortion so well… now I can play a hollowbody on full fuzz and it

“Not long ago, I used to run four amps at the same time and we were starting to play live on TV – for example, we recently did Later… With Jools Holland. If you send four mics from four different amps

1

4

January 2017 Total Guitar

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rig tour 5

that are always changing to someone in a BBC truck, they’ll think, ‘Fuck you – it all sounds the same!’ This makes my signal a lot easier for everyone. My main clean sound is a 1957 Fender Champ, my main fuzz profile is a 1962 Vox AC30. There are about 100 Marshalls in there, too. We even profiled The Big Cheese pedal by Audio Kitchen, which works as an amp you can run through a cab and ended up being used for 90 per cent of our albums… some things are too fragile to take on tour!”

Scotch Bonnet Fuzz 34

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“I am the only owner of this fuzz pedal, as it was made by one of my guitar techs called Phil Wilson on the fly – you can’t buy it. It’s basically a Big Muff, but you can really mess around more with the high mids. We’ve used it so much for recording, I’m almost scared to touch the switches because it’s quite temperamental. It just goes on and off, that’s it!”

T-Rex Octavius

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“Like the Small Clone, I used this on nearly every rhythm guitar track on the new album. It was my way of dropping it down to single notes instead of chords, so I can fatten things out more with the same weight and presence. There’s a lot of that style on there, while before it was all about power chords! I used the high octave on the chorus of Heart And Soul, with

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7 long reverbs coming from the Kemper. The tracking is so good it literally sounds like someone else is there playing a baritone, rather than being too digital.”

Barry McKenna Gibson ES-335

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“We made our second album with Gil Norton – he suggested I could use a bit more girth in my tone, instead of always sticking to Strats. He asked if I’d ever tried a 335, and I had, but I’d never really thought about them. He said had this mate who could lend us one and I used it throughout the sessions. Halfway through, he said we could use it for a video shoot, but to be careful as it belonged to his mate Joey. And we asked, ‘Who’s Joey?’ It turns out it was

8 Joey Santiago from The Pixies! That guitar inspired me to switch and this was the second 335 I bought.”

Les Paul Junior

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“While recording in LA, we found the cool vintage guitar shop called Timewarp Music. I was after a Firebird and they had a nice one, but it didn’t really speak to me. Then I noticed this hanging on the wall, and I’d never really thought about buying a guitar like it... but it just spoke to me. I have a simple test for buying new guitars – play something you’ve been trying to write and if the next bit comes to you, get it! A lot of the new record is about attitude and danger, this ended up being my guy for all of that!”

Yamaha SVC50 Electric Cello

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“I started playing cello when I was eight, it was actually my

gateway into music! I was lucky enough to go to a primary school with a good music department. It wasn’t until later in school, when my older cousin started giving me records, that I decided pick up the guitar. I didn’t really do the chord stuff, coming from cello I already had the dexterity to noodle. The frets made everything feel so easy, compared to cellos, which are fretless. Right now I’m using it for the song Crash Land, but there’s a bunch of stuff we’ve done with cello on there.”

Roland Juno-D Keyboard

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“Back in the day, I couldn’t really afford to have a designated keyboard amp and DIs generally sound pants. So I started putting my piano through my guitar rig, like on the song Free, which I play through a warm tube amp sound with loads of reverb to make it sound lush and roomy. So

twin atlantic 10

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9 now I’ve actually got piano patches in my Kemper, there’s an old Blues Deluxe Jr that I profiled, jazzed up with some triplet delay from the Eventide… it sounds unreal.”

Death By Audio Supersonic Fuzz Gun

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“This is the most badass pedal I’ve ever owned. There’s a switch between gated and oscillated modes – when it’s gated it still sounds mental, but in oscillation… everything just kicks in. The moment you stop playing, you get these crazy wails and siren noises. It’s quite untameable, but I quite like that. Every night we use it, things sound a bit different because it’s impossible to control.”

Visual Sound Jekyll And Hyde V2

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“Our old guitar tech, Brian, also worked for The Strokes and one day I was talking to him

about overdrive. He recommended this – which was the only pedal The Strokes used on their first album, and he had the actual pedal they recorded with, which he lent to me for a bit. The tones are insane, and you can hear it all over that debut record. I even got to use it live, but I had to give it back when he was next out with them. The company had changed hands and the newer models didn’t have the same components, which is why I found this specific version.”

DigiTech Whammy

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“I’m always searching for new sounds out of boredom. Every guitar player should fuck around with their tone, you don’t want the same sound all the time.

And what I love about the Whammy is that it can do so much more than what it’s famous for. It’s actually my new favourite chorus pedal… I almost don’t want to give that secret away! Basically, if you stick it in deep detune and leave the heel all the way up, you get this really sweet chorus.”

Boss RC-30 Loop Station

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“This purely came through wanting to sound bigger. We put extra guitar parts on our first record just to fatten things up and I wanted to recreate some of that live. So what I’ll do is play parts, loop them and then play over them… which has gone disastrously wrong at times. But that’s part of live music, you

know? No one expects everything to be perfect, in fact I quite like the weird sounds you get when it goes weird.”

Eventide Timefactor & Modfactor

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“It’s simply a fact that Eventide make amazing pedals. The Modfactor takes care of a lot of my choruses and flangers, tremolos, swells, they are just so many tricks to it. I liked it so much I got the Timefactor over the Strymon delay, it just made me want to stick with Eventide. Plus I can control everything from my Mastermind [MIDI controller].”

Twin Atlantic’s GLA is out now on Red Bull Records

“I saw it on the wall… I’d never thought about buying a guitar like a LEs Paul Junior, but it just spoke to me” january 2017 Total Guitar

Wild Side Words Rob Laing Photography Olly Curtis

Joanne Shaw Taylor is asserting herself as the star of British blues on latest album ‘Wild’. But it took a step into the unknown with Joe Bonamassa’s producer to make it…

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B

eing a blues guitarist can be a hard road to travel in this day and age. Without mainstream support, battles are won on smaller stages across the land as artists carve out their reputations the old way and win a fanbase one gig at a time. It’s grass roots and a long game but one that can give an artist serious staying power. It’s taken Joanne Shaw Taylor five albums to get the call from Later… With Jools Holland, and as we speak to her a few days after she plays to a TV audience of millions and (in the presence of fellow performers Paul Rodgers and Chrissie Hynde), there’s a real sense things are changing. And for very good reasons. “Personally I grew up watching …Jools,” reflects Joanne as we talk in the dressing room ahead of her sold out show at Bristol’s Fleece. “When I was 15 in Solihull, we didn’t have the internet yet and watching …Jools Holland and reading guitar magazines was the only way of discovering new blues artists, so to be on it… you know I didn’t think I would

ever get to do it, let alone play with Jools himself, so it was a bit nerve-racking!” Her new Top 20 album, Wild, found Joanne under a different kind of pressure altogether. The first release on her own label, Axe House Music, it’s the best contemporary blues album we’ve heard this year, but it meant leaving comfort zones to make it. To enter the unknown with veteran producer Kevin Shirley (who’s worked with the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Robert Cray, Iron Maiden), a new group of musicians and cowriters in Nashville and emerge on the other side as an improved player, singer and songwriter.

“You can’t fight your producer - you have to trust them”


You’re good friends with Joe Bonamassa, did he give you any kind of heads-up on what Kevin was like to work with as a producer?

“I don’t think I really spoke to Joe about it, actually. We are such good friends – he is like my big brother – that I didn’t kind of want his opinion, I wanted to have a separate experience, in that I was worried that he would say something and I would get it stuck in my head. I did talk to Roy [Weisman], Joe’s manager and he was like, ‘Whatever you do

interview / joanne shaw taylor

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feature don’t fight Kevin,’ and I said, ‘Why would I fight Kevin, have you seen the size of the guy? I’m not going to fight him!’ But he meant with his ideas; ‘He brings you songs and you might not like them, Joe always fights him and he is usually right so just let him do it.’ I was just thinking, I am finally working with Kevin Shirley, who I have always wanted to work with. If I had wanted to make a Joanne Shaw Taylor album I would go and do it myself. I want the Kevin Shirley/Joanne Shaw Taylor album.”

Before you got into the studio, is there anything that you went into this album wanting to achieve as a player?

Joanne’s 1966 Esquire had a bad experience at the airport

“I think this was the most that I have ever just gone in without any clue of what we were going to do. Usually I turn up with everything in place and we just record it.”

That must have been quite a nervewracking experience…

So you had to trust in his instincts as a producer? “I think that I have seen a lot of young artists run into that and I try and tell them not to do it. You can’t fight your producer – you have to pick someone you trust, because if you are going to go in there and fight them, they are going to end up with an album they don’t want their name on and you’re not going to be happy with the album. Just go in there, and if there is something you don’t like then obviously say so.”

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“I’m not what you’d call a traditional blues guitar player by any extenT”

“Yes, I realised when I got to Nashville and I had a week there without Kevin. I landed and walked straight in the next day with the songwriters and I sat in my hotel that night and was like, ‘You’ve got nothing. You are literally recording an album and the pressure is on because you are doing your first one with Kevin and it’s your own label and you’ve got nothing, kid.’ Part of me is saying, ‘What were you thinking?’ But at the same time it was nice to kind of have that freedom and I wouldn’t have had the input of the musicians, songwriters and Kevin and it was nice to collaborate. I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t have

Shaw Things

The essential gear in Joanne’s rig 1 1966 Fender Esquire

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“I got it cheap when I was 15 because its previous owner had attacked it with a knife – as you do to vintage instruments [laughs], so I put a humbucker in and it’s got a five-way switch . I’ve got an Albert Collins signature Telecaster, too. I only tour in the UK with the Esquire now. I will tour it in Europe if we are going via ferry and van but it doesn’t leave my side, it goes in the hotel all the time. I used to fly it and I was on a particular flight back from Detroit once [where Joanne has lived for eight years] to come back to London for Christmas and now there is a huge chunk of wood missing out of it. The chunk was so big it should have been in the case but it wasn’t so they [transport security] had obviously taken it out, dropped it on the floor, broken it and put it back in the case. It’s an extension of me, which is ridiculous as it’s a piece of wood with wires, but that one is going in the casket with me.”

2 Les Paul Standards

“There are a few extra guitars now, because we recorded the record in standard tuning, which I never do. I’m always in E b , it helps my voice being a bit lower particularly night after night. When I told that to Kevin he went, ‘That’s nice – we record in E.’ So there are more guitar changes because we are flittering between the two. I have always been 50/50 with Les Paul and Telecaster. Les Paul dominated the past couple of tours but I’m switching a lot more between them now. I have two Les Pauls and they are stock – one I got from Gibson and the other is my own. One is drop D for some of the heavier stuff.”

3 Fender Super Reverb

“On these kind of dates we are doing on this tour I like a clean amp and then getting the tone from the pedals and guitar. With the bigger venues we tend to whip out the Marshall 18-watt Bluesbreaker too and then run the two of them.”

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interview / joanne shaw taylor all the ideas. I’m not Bob Dylan, and I can’t write 200 songs a year and them all be massive pieces, so it’s good to have added input.”

What was it like for you co-writing songs for the first time when you went out to Nashville? “I think for me that’s probably the thing I was most nervous about and I did talk to Joe about that. His advice was just to get as many ideas together as possible and if there are things you hadn’t completed yourself, take those. I’m not a professional songwriter and you go in with these guys and they basically sit there and their job every day in Nashville is to write 10 songs and at least one of them be a hit.”

And then when it came to recording, that was with a new group of musicians too, because Kevin had people he wanted to use… “Yes, they picked Nashville cats. Obviously Michael [Rhodes, bass] is in Joe’s band and I knew Michael

4 4 Mojo Hand Rook overdrive

“Its just a really good overdrive pedal and something that’s kind overlooked a lot in pedals is it’s solid. There are so many pedals I buy that once you’ve stomped on them in a live gig situation and had spilt beer on them they are ruined. It has three different settings on it and one is meant to be kind of like a Tube Screamer, one is a bit more like a Klon and the other is more like a [Marshall] Blues Breaker pedal so it offers a few more options. They are all nice, organic tones and not too processed.”

previously through Dave Stewart [who championed Joanne early on]. Very intimidating. I will make no bones about the fact that I was definitely the worst musician in that room but that’s the way you want it to be.”

In that it can push you? “Oh yes, absolutely, and if you are recording in that space of time, you need pro session guys who are used to adapting to different artists and listening to the song and don’t know me too well or have preconceived ideas about what I might want. They did what was best for the song. I think the most intimidating thing for me still is the fact I have zero theory [knowledge]. I can’t read music and I basically know what key I am in and that’s about the extent of it. I don’t know the names of chords.”

A lot of players are like that though… “With the blues genre, growing up listening to Albert Collins, clearly that guy made that stuff up on the spot – that wasn’t taught to him. For the first couple of days recording this album, they charted it really quick and they changed things every now and again, like, ‘go four over the five to the something’. I gave myself a talking to and said, ‘You are learning these songs at the same speed as the other musicians but you are doing two things instead of one and you have zero experience so just tell them.’ So I came up the next day, I think it was Dyin’ To Know where they were going on about numbers and I just said to Michael, ‘Look mate just give it to me in English,’ and he said, ‘You know when we were going to G, we are going to the E.’ I was like, ‘Why didn’t you just say that?!’ And then we were home.”

You switch between Teles and Les Pauls live, is that because you need to cover a broader tonal range? “Yes, I think so. I’m not what you’d call a traditional blues guitar player by any extent and we cover a lot of different ground really but it seems to break down into bluesy, twangy authentic rhythms and the soul stuff, and then the rockier material. And you just can’t make a Telecaster sound like a Les Paul. I tried to play Dyin’ To Know on a Les Paul for the Gibson Studios because they didn’t want me playing a Telecaster and it’s like, ‘You do know it’s not my fault I can’t make a Les Paul sound like a Telecaster [laughs].’”

Joanne grew up idolising SRV and Albert Collins, but tries not to imitate their styles too closely

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Did you gravitate towards a Strat at any point? “I did for the first time on this album. I love Strats but I think for me, because it was my first guitar when I was about 13 and I was so focussed on Steve Ray Vaughan for a year, every time I touch a Strat, I just go back to a bad Steve Ray Vaughan impersonation but we actually used one. Rob [McNelley, session guitarist on Wild] had a lovely ’65 Strat and we used it on Wannabe My Lover. You just can’t get that Strat tone out of a Tele… you can’t beat that Strat tone for that rhythm.”

It really is that Stevie Ray thing… “I can’t get round it, it’s ingrained in the fingers now. Everything is a bad Cold Shot with me on a Strat [laughs]”

Have your blues influences changed over the years? “Yes, I constantly seek out new music, and not necessarily new music but new for myself, whether that’s going backwards or forwards. I have very eclectic tastes but certainly the Texas blues things dominated for the first couple of years I was learning; Freddie King, Albert Collins, Stevie, january 2017 Total Guitar

feature bit more capable of branching out of the typical kind of stuff I had been doing. But certainly in terms of rhythm parts, he pushed me because I usually stick to the Jimi Hendrix , very busy rhythm lead or the Dyin’ To Know, bluesy kind of take. Obviously things like No Reason To Stay, it’s a lot more of a Dire Straits, Chris Rea approach.”

Joanne onstage in Bristol with her Albert Collins signature Tele

You discovered blues at a young age. Do you see many young fans at your gigs? What more do you think could be done to attract a younger audience?

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Thunderbirds, ZZ Top. And then around my early 20s it was the British blues guys which I had never been interested in because it wasn’t the Texas thing. Which is funny as Joe latched onto that and wasn’t interested in the Texas thing. Opposite sides of the world. “Kosoff was the big one in my 20s and then when I was recording [2012 album] Almost Always Never, I went on a real Eric Johnson kick, but I still can’t play anything that Eric Johnson can play. I’m just now going through my Jeff Beck phase. He knows what he’s doing. But it’s difficult when you don’t own a Strat.”

Tonally it’s interesting to hear different approaches. You obviously have a signature sound, but a song such as Chains brings in a Billy Gibbons feel… “Yes, that’s kind of the vibe that we were going for. I’ve always been one of those players that I think has hopefully got a fair bit of personality and you can tell it’s me, which is what I wanted but it can be a blessing and curse when you are doing a wide range of material. S o yes, we did experiment a little bit, I think my two favourites were probably Chains and Kevin really got me to get into a BB King mode for My Heart’s Got A Mind Of Its Own, which is something I had never done before. I whipped out the ES-335 Bonamassa signature model, I do believe.” Total Guitar january 2017

“In Nashville I was the worst musician in the room!” That song sounds like a new kind of approach for you. Was it something you had to think differently about? “No, because that’s the kind of stuff I grew up with. I don’t generally play it too much, I’m a bit heavier. You do have to restrain yourself as I’m a lot more of an in-your-face guitar player which is a lesson I’m learning. You don’t have to play every note, every second. It was nice to go for that. One of my favourite albums is Freddie King’s Burglar with Pack It Up, and the 335… that simple, funky approach. So that was good fun to do. I think it turned out alright.”

Was Kevin Shirley pushing you into new areas as a player that you hadn’t been before? “Yes, definitely as a singer as well. With the cover of Wild Is The Wind, it’s a song I just couldn’t wrap my head around and it took a while, but again, I trusted him on it. As a player, not too much in that I think that was one thing he was pretty happy about. I think he wanted to push me vocally more, I think he felt I was a

“I’m not sure more can be done really. I think the only real breakthrough you can get is getting into the mainstream and having that one artist like Stevie that creates a whole new generation of guitar players. Which he did – a lot of young kids got into the blues and it had a big resurgence because of Stevie. At the end of the day radio is the main way of attacking the most amount of people but you just don’t get much guitar on radio anymore. Even if you look at rock bands – like the Foo Fighters – they don’t do g uitar solos so guitars are not in the mainstream too much, which is a huge part of blues. “I do have concerns that it would be nicer to have a younger fan base there for blues because it’s obviously going to die out. But that said, I am seeing more and more young people at the shows and particularly female for me which is nice because its still a male-dominated instrument. Maybe they happen to be latching onto me a bit more because there’s not very many role models for them. Hence I latched onto Bonnie Raitt, Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde.”

It seems like this album is changing things for you now – what are you noticing that’s different? “I’ve learnt that there is no such thing as overnight success. I always joke it’s been a 16-year overnight success, and it’s really been a creeper; this is my first top 20 album and we are getting people phoning to do interviews, they’re asking, ‘Who are you? You’re in the Top 20 albums chart, you were on Jools Holland. ‘What record label are you signed to?’ Axe House. ‘Whose label is that?’ Mine. So I think all those things add up and we had the Glastonbury appearance and you do notice it’s those little things, and it snowballs slowly.

Joanne Shaw Taylor’s new album, Wild, is out now on Axe House Music

interview

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interview / paul gilbert

Appetite for destruction As the virtuoso returns with a raw new album, he talks teaching, saxophones and why playing fast is just filling space… Interview Jamie Hunt Photography Joby Sessions

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eteran TG readers will know Paul Gilbert well as the longest serving guest tutor our magazine has ever had. He’s still teaching guitarists with his online guitar school, and as we’ll find out, that experience very much informs his own approaches as a creative maverick now. Paul’s always got surprises in store and latest solo album, I Can Destroy is no exception. Getting veteran producer Kevin Shirley behind the desk necessitated some changes, and this led to some creative moments as the gap between writing and recording narrowed dramatically. Combined with extra musicians and threeguitar harmonies, it makes for a guitar feast and plenty to talk about as we meet him on tour…

How did the process of making I Can Destroy begin for you? “I began with self-doubt and worry. The things that erased that and turned it into confidence was meeting with Kevin Shirley, getting [past PG collaborators] Freddie Nelson and Tony Spinner to work on it with me and getting a vision of

what the band would be. I started with the lyrics and that gave me a general structure. Around that you can build anything, so it was helpful to have a specific band in mind. I knew I could do a lot of guitar and vocal harmonies and it’s interesting trying to tour the music with a three-piece, because then it’s just one guitar. “Now the three-piece know the songs and we’ve had some time to spend on them, it allows us to play more and fill the blanks. The biggest thing for me is that Tony Spinner sang a lot of the bridges. He has a much higher range than I do and great vocal tone. In a song like Blues Just Saving My Life Tony sang the bridge and live I sing it. I’m amazed my voice has lasted this long, as I really have to scream it out! In the studio though, it was really nice to have that big sound, played live.”

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Why did you feel you needed additional players for the recording this time? “I knew that Kevin doesn’t really do overdubs. If you really kick and scream he might do a couple, but he wanted a band that would record live and sound good. So I needed to put


interview

“You’ve got to turn your vibrato into something that’s not a turd”

together a great band that sounded like a produced, finished thing with one run through. Three-piece bands usually sound pretty raw, so I thought it would be really nice to have extra guitars, keyboards, vocals and it worked!”

What are the benefits you found with the live tracking recording method as opposed to doing it individually?

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“It’s a lot easier to edit [recording parts individually], that’s for sure, but it’s not as much fun and we really enjoyed the process of playing together. When I choose musicians I try to find the people that can get the sounds and the feel that I want, with minimal rehearsal. Not that I didn’t want to rehearse, but often there’s just not time. It’s helpful if we have a musical connection to begin with. When I showed them a straightforward song it immediately sounded like it was finished, which actually happened! “The plan for the album was to do a session in June and a session in August. I had the songs ready for the first half of the album, so that would give me July to finish the second half with Kevin, I knew we would record one song per day, because that’s what we did with Mr Big [Shirley produced 2011’s What If…). The first session was for six days, so I got six songs ready. We recorded the first song in three hours, so Kevin said, ‘Let’s do another one.’ We ended up recording two songs per day, so after three days I was out of songs. I had to turn to the songs I had started but the band had never heard. I would call everybody up and say, ‘Come to the studio an hour early, I’ve got a new tune.’ Songs like One Woman Too Many were recorded an hour after the band heard it for the first time. It’s exciting to do that because the song is born from nowhere. You’ve never heard it until you’re recording it for real. “You can contrast that by doing an album with overdubs and that can be satisfying because you feel like you get everything perfect. When you listen back though you might go, ‘Uh, I don’t know if I’m gonna listen to this again’. There’s something about live recordings. Even if you say, ‘I wish I could just fix that’, when you listen back it feels really good! As a musician, you always want to be perfect, but you have to resist the temptation. A lot of the time perfection is not an improvement on the song.” Total Guitar january 2017

In the past you’ve used an electric drill, a three-string guitar all tuned to E and a human capo. Were there any unusual tools or approaches in the studio this time? “If you’ve got something you use it and seeing that I had three guitars I did a lot of triple guitar harmonies. That’s very different from the way I usually play. A lot of the time now I focus on improvisation and you can’t improvise when you’re doing triple guitar harmonies. You have to sit down and figure out what your part is, but the result is this great big sound. If you have that band there, you’ve got to use it!”

Are triple guitar harmonies something you’d like to continue with?

Paul’s legendary pick drill – he’s always thinking outside the box!

“We did one show in Japan with the full studio band and played the new album, a lot of my older material and a couple of acoustic songs. It felt like I was a member of Crosby, Stills And Nash. There were such great sounding harmonies and I thought someday I’d like to do an acoustic record with these guys. Being the guitarist in a three-

piece is really fun, but as a songwriter and singer it’s good to have other guys who can play and sing with me.”

Has developing as a songwriter informed your guitar playing? “Growing up listening to bands like Sabbath, a lot of the time the arrangements are simple. On a song like Iron Man, the guitar riff is the same as the bass riff and it’s even the same as the vocal melody. Everybody plays the same thing at the same time. In my earlier days I did that, but faster. On songs like Scarified, I play my part and the riffs are the same on the bass. I started listening to Motown, where nobody plays the same thing and all the parts work together. It creates a great sound and leaves room for everything. That’s become attractive to me. Playing songs where we’re not just beating a riff over the head, we’re creating an actual arrangement.”

And what about the effect of your work as a guitar tutor? “Teaching is helpful because I get to see the inherent problems of the instrument. It’s made me appreciate things that I’m able to do and not care so much about some of the things that have made me popular. The fast picking thing is not that useful, but holding a bend, adding vibrato and being in tune is. You can do the fast stuff, but it has to end sometime and that last note is really important. It has to sound good and you have to put some sauce on it! If it’s wanky it ruins the whole thing, it’s

interview / paul gilbert like dogshit on your dinner plate. So you’ve got to turn your vibrato into something that’s not a turd! “Teaching has made me realise that a lot of my fast playing is the musical equivalent of, ‘Umm… umm… uhh…’ – it’s like when you’re trying to think of the next thing to say that actually has meaning, you fill space. ‘Umm’ has about the same meaning as my fast playing. While I’m searching for my next idea I’ll play lots of notes, when I get to my idea I play something with an actual melody. In terms of connection to my musical intention (what I’m hearing in my head), often the fast stuff is completely unconnected. That worries me because I want to play what I hear and feel, not just muscle memory sequences. “With technical sequences, I try to find out what rhythmic meaning it has. If you loop the phrase you can usually feel a pulse. Then, listen to the groove and add or subtract notes to make it fit. There are three-note sequences I play over a shuffle feel, but over a straight feel they don’t sound as satisfying. If Paul with the full-size version of his Ibanez PGM signature (see p46 for the mini)

I add an extra note to the sequence I can make it fit. All of these little ideas grow from trying to fit within a groove. “I encourage my students to get their foot working. I’ve heard so many people play with their metronome on but they ignore it completely. If you are the metronome you are less likely to ignore it. I also steer my students to hear what they play and sing along. You don’t have to be a great singer to scat along with what you’re playing, but it’s a great way to gauge if a new idea is ready to use. You need to know what each scale looks like, but also what it sounds like. If you’re not sure what something is going to sound like, that’s a position you need to practice. Before yesterday’s show, I took the chords from the song Blues Just Saving My Life and spent an hour improvising and singing what

“The fast stuff isn’t that useful, but holding a bend really is”

I was playing, to get confidence and familiarity with new ideas.

Looking ahead, where do you want to take your musicianship in the future? “Mostly, I want to work on my improvisation, to be able to play what I hear. That’s what gets me excited. Last night we were doing a jam in the second to last song and I realise that I wasn’t playing what I was hearing in my head. Because of that, I wasn’t really interested in what I was playing. I looked into the audience and it seemed like nobody out there was interested in what I was playing either. I started singing into the mic what I was playing and immediately everyone started smiling and I started caring about what I was doing. “When I was about eight years old I thought, because I have these melodies in my head and all I want to do is try to find them. It’s nice to go back to my eight-year-old spirit and what I always wanted to do with a guitar. You learn all of these scales and chords, which are great, but at some point you have to say, what actually is the sound that I want to make? It takes a long time to develop the athletic stuff, but you can get tired of hearing it. Similarly, if I spend all day working on blues improvisation, then go up on stage and do some widdly widdlys I’ll go, ‘That’s kind of cool.’ It’s all about balance. “I’ve been getting into the blues so much. Not only the guitar but how the great Jazz players from the 50s and 60s would play a blues. Like Johnny Hodges, the sax player from Duke Ellington’s band. When I was a kid listening to Allan Holdsworth – who I loved – saying that he was trying to sound like a sax player, I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ I’d only heard Sax in doo-wop bands or smooth jazz, Kenny G saxophone. I’d never heard the jazz guys because I didn’t grow up listening to it. Harmonically, the slow blues style is not much different to Hendrix playing Red House, except they might have the II chord and the VI called once in a while. Guitar players tend to use their set licks, and have variations on Hendrix’s phrases. Sax players don’t do that, they’ve got a completely different way of phrasing. It’s led me down this blues wormhole, which I love, and has really informed my playing across the board.” Paul Gilbert’s new album, I Can Destroy, is out now on earMUSIC january 2017 Total Guitar

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interview 1

I, Rig Paul gives us a quick tour of his touring gear 1 Ibanez Kikusui Sake Custom Shop Fireman “The finish is based on a bottle of Japanese saké [it’s a brand called Kikusui, hence the name – Ed]. I have a big collection of Ibanez guitars from over the years and I always kept going back to the same four or five guitars in the studio. I realised that they all have the big neck joint. They sound better because they use more wood. When Ibanez first made me the Fireman, I told them to make a big, chunky neck joint. Every Fireman I’ve ever played sounds great because of that.”

there’s one of my full-size Ibanez PGM signature models – that one has a Wilkinson trem and locking machine heads.”

2 Ibanez PGM Micro “This is the guitar that has three strings tuned to E, in different octaves [Ibanez will be making it available to purchase soon]. I also have the same guitar with six strings, set up with a higher action for slide. And then

4 Marshall JCM 2000 TSL 100s “Marshall amps are great for me because they’re loud, diverse and wherever you go you can get one. On the road, I can rely on any rental Marshall to be loud and sound good!”

2 46

3


4

3 Pedalboard “I have a TC Electronic MojoMojo overdrive and a Ibanez Tube Screamer so I can step up the amount of distortion in stages. I’ve also got two MXR Phase 90s – one of them is set to slow and one is set to fast. I use a delay, an EHX Electric Mistress flanger, an MXR [MC406] Buffer (to improve the signal on long cable runs) and an Octron octave pedal by a Foxrox.”

Words Josh Gardner Photography Adam Gasson

The Best Gear Bargains Of 2016 T here’s nothing more inspirational than a lovely bit of new gear, and lucky us – it’s never been more affordable to pick up quality new tools to make music with! So, is that Christmas bonus burning a hole in your pocket? Has your nan come good with

48


some cold hard readies instead of the usual socks or an awful jumper? Or are you in the mood to treat that special someone (or yourself!) with a guitar gift this festive season? Come with us, as we pick out the new bargain guitars, amps and effects that you need to have on your list…

best gear bargains of 2016

Electric Guitars 49

Schecter C-6 Plus

Silvertone 1423

Best for: Shredding until your fingers bleed Best Price: £335 We said: “There’s really no mystery to the C-6 Plus – except maybe why Schecter doesn’t think it’s worthy of a catchier name to set it apart from the crowd. It is certainly worth capturing your attention, however, and should get it from anyone whose game is rock and metal.”

inner Dan Auerbach Best price: £299 We said: “These reboots won’t thrill the vintage nitpickers, but that’s not their demographic. Sure, old-world charm has been sacrificed in places (timber, pickups, bridges) for modern practicalities, but that approach, along with the affordable price tags, gives these guitars a much wider appeal.”

Best for: Channeling your

Gretsch G2622 Streamliner

Yamaha RS320

Best for:

Hot blues and rock Best price: £299 “The most affordable guitar in Yamaha’s Revstar range, the RS320 excels at balls-to-the-wall rock ’n’ roll. It feels meaty and sounds it, too – from the mid-focused crunch of the bridge to a high-octane saturated neck lead voice. It’s not the most versatile guitar out there, but it’s a lot of fun.

Semi-hollow tones Best price: £336 “Hugely versatile, it’s probably the best bargain ‘ES-335’ money can buy. Fit, finish, sound and playability are all way above what you’d expect at these prices – far from being half as good as an Electromatic; nearly as good but half the price of one would be a better summary.”

Best for:

Squier FSR Ryan Jarman Signature Best for: Indie-rock eccentricity Best price: £327 “Quite simply one of the coolest, most unique guitars you can get for the money. Mashing up the best bits of the Jaguar, Jazzmaster and Mustang, this short-scale beast packs a punch, and not just because of its Burgundy Mist finish!” january 2017 Total Guitar

feature

Guitar Amplifiers 50

Blackstar ID:Core Stereo 100 Best for: Versatile gigging Best price: £249 “As software and hardware continues to develop, the quality of sounds has improved no end, while Blackstar’s app builders have come as close as anyone to providing the perfect interface that’s intuitive and, above all, fun.”

Line 6 Amplifi 30 Best for: Jamming over songs Best price: £230 “We were worried that hooking up with our phone would be a pain, but being free of wires makes it far more fun. If Line 6’s objective was to let us make more of our guitar time, it’s job done.”

Peavey 6505 Piranha Best for: High gain punch Best price: £144 “The Piranha’s crunch and lead modes cover a wide range of drive effects,


ranging from a decent classic rock bark, to a modern metal sound that’s unmistakably 6505, and not that far away from its bigger brothers.”

Roland Blues CUBE HOT Best for: Gigs on the go Best price: £449 “With solid-state amps, portability, reliability, consistency and affordability are a given, but great tone is what really counts. But this sounds and responds like a top boutique valve amp, with none of the valve drawbacks.”

Marshall CODE50 Best for: Bedroom noodling Best price: £259 “The CODE is packed with an incredible choice of tones, plus a clever USB interface. It’s competitively priced, looks good, sounds great out of the box, and it’s ridiculously easy to use – even for a complete beginner.”

best gear bargains of 2016

Acoustic Guitars

51

Yamaha FG830 Best for: Classic dreadnought tones Best price: £322 “As a pure acoustic dreadnought this is one that you simply must try whether you’re just starting out or are a lot more experienced guitar player. With a sound that comes in way above its bargain price point, it’s dangerously close to being a real game-changer in the acoustic world.”

Guild Archback Jumbo Jr

Washburn Woodline Lâg T70DCE Best for: Open-mic newbies 10 Series WLO12SE

Best for: Taking on holiday Best price: £365

Best for: Fingerpicking Best price: £389

“The Jumbo Junior down-sizes Guild’s classic jumbo body shape and creates a very similar outline to Taylor’s GS-Mini travel acoustic. It’s an ideal takeanywhere electro or simply a kick-about house guitar, ideal for the songwriting and recording musician.”

“An orchestra shape is about sparkling highs and tight bottom-end. Figure in the inherent brightness of an all-mahogany construction, and you’re rewarded with a guitar that’s perfect for fingerstyle players and self-accompanying singer-songwriters.”

Effects

Ibanez Analog Delay Mini

Electro-harmoniX Cock Fight

Zoom G5N

Best for: Retro delay sounds Best price: £85 “Unlike some mini ‘analogue’ delays that are actually digital, this is the real deal, and it’s a masterful recreation of the classic dark-voiced Ibanez AD-9.”

Best for: Sleazy wah and fuzz Best price: £80 “We’re sold. You’re getting some great wah sounds and a fantastic fuzz, for less than a hundred sheets here. The Cock Fight is money, for next to nothing.”

Best for: Massive modelling options Best price: £205 “At around the fifth of the price, the G5n is in a different sonic league to the likes of the Line 6 Helix or Fractal AX8, but its flexibility and huge range of sounds mean it could fill a similar role on a budget.”

Best price: £218 “If the T70DCE seems to be a little bit basic in its appearance and spec sheet, that’s not reflected in its performance. The French know a thing or two about understated good looks, and it’s evident here in this very tidily made budget electro with a strong projection, trim bass and a modern, clarity and precision.”

DigiTech Trio+ Best for: Creating live backing Best price: £249 “As a practice and songwriting aid, the Trio was always a brilliant resource but, with such an increased range of possibilities, the Trio+ knocks it out of the park. Truly a band in a box, and one that you can use live, too.”

Tone City Audio Sweet Cream Best for: Classic TS overdrive Best price: £40 “Like a Tube Screamer, this delivers a ‘transparent’ overdrive. We love how it responds to player dynamics: hit hard and it snarls; soften and it cleans right up. Just like a great valve amp.”


Guitar Made Easy If you’ve just got your first guitar, or perhaps you’ve dusted off that old axe in the attic and decided to finally learn to play it, you may already be thinking, “There’s got to be a way to make this easier, right?” Well, that’s where we come in. Rather than showing you the boring basics like how to hold your guitar or plug it in, we’re looking at some fun, easy stuff that anyone can try out. Read on and let’s get started!


Words Chris Bird Photography Jesse Wild & Olly Curtis

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guitar made easy

Clean up your chords Get your finger technique sorted and your chords will sing… o

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o

x

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o

1 1

2 3

2 3

C

D

The open C chord is a repeat offender when it comes to dead strings. Make sure to fret right on the points of your fingertips and don’t pull your fingers flat over the strings.

o

o

Most guitarists find the open D chord easy, but hit the open fifth or sixth strings and the sweet sound of the chord will turn to mush. Target the fourth string on downstrokes and lift your pick away from the strings on upstrokes.

o

1

1 1

1

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4

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G

F

Chords like G are easy for experienced players, but beginners usually find the stretch is a challenge. The solution? Just play the four treble strings (the thinnest strings) until you get a feel for the stretches. It works with G7, too.

A barre is when you press down on several strings with one finger, and F is usually the first of these chords most players attempt. It’s also one of the hardest. If barring across all six strings is too tough just barre the first and second strings.

Capo up! Change the key of any song the easy way

F

or the uninitiated, a capo is a can move the capo down to the 1st handy device that you clamp fret or remove it all together, TGR288.coverfeature.fig01.musx over the strings to raise the allowing him to play exactly the File Date: 12:07 pitch. Why? Well take22/11/2016 a look at same guitar parts one or two singer-songwriters such as George semitones lower. If your voice is Page 1 of 1 Ezra for the answer. Ezra will often higher, try moving your capo Notes: play with a capo at the 2nd fret. But farther up the fretboard instead. if he’s playing live and finds a song A basic capo is cheap as chips, so too high to sing comfortably, he there’s no reason not to try one! TRACKs 28-32

q =72

C

& 44 .. œ œ T A B

. .

œ. œ œ œ

let ring throughout 1 3

2

Fingerstyle - Guitar Made Easy Cover Feature Contributor: Chris Bird Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

0

1

G/B

œ œ

œ œ œ

3 2

0

0

œ.

..

Play 4 times

3

. .

We’ve played this simple fingerpicked arpeggio in open position and it sounds great. We’ve also played it a second time using a capo up at the 7th fret, and you should be able to hear that the higher sound is a lot sweeter. Try out your capo using strummed chords, too.


Cover feature TGR288.coverfeature.fig02.musx File Date: 15:53 23/11/2016 Page 1 of 1 Notes:

Scale new heights

Scales don’t have to be hard to remember. These three easy shapes are almost identical to open chords you’ve probably already worked out C major pentatonic scale o

x

o o

o

1

q =72

2

2 2

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T A B C major pentatonic scale

You hopefully already know the C chord Just press down on the strings with your first, second and third fingers where the dots show you, then strum the top five strings!

C

& 44 .. œj œœ œ œ

1

C

Unlike chords, scales are played one note at a time. You should be able to see that the C major pentatonic scale uses all the notes from a C chord, plus a couple of extras.

. .

1

0 2

o

2

3

#4 & 4 ..

2 3 3 3

3

. .

T A B Em

E minor pentatonic scale

Em is another common chord that any beginner will know. Just press down on the relevant strings with your second and third fingers, then strum all six strings.

5

1

3

1

1

Just as with the C chord, Em is almost identical to a scale, this time the E minor pentatonic scale. The notes of the scale always sound good over an Em chord.

5

1

4

This is an Am barre chord – it’s more advanced than what we’ve looked at so far. Use your first finger to press down on all six strings. Third and fourth fingers are also used.


0

0 2

0

Em

1

1

3

3 3

1

1

1

4 4

A minor pentatonic scale Again, see if you can spot the chord shape ‘hidden’ within the notes of the scale. It’s because the chord and scale share so many notes they always sound good played together.

. .

3

œ œ œ 0

2

2

~~~~ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ

œ

0 0

2

0

2

4

~~~~

3

.. . .

TRACKs 31-33

4

Am

0

TGR288.coverfeature.fig04.musx File Date:with 11:59 22/11/2016 The challenge any scale-based lick is the quick note to note changes. Use your second Pagefinger 1 offor1all of the 2nd fret notes in this lick. It’ll help you keep position shifts to a minimum. Notes:

A minor pentatonic scale

1

0 2

..

œœ œ . ˙

TRACKs 28-30

q =115

54 2

2

j œ

o o o o o o

o o

0

œœœ œ

TGR288.coverfeature.fig03.musx File Date: 11:59 22/11/2016 Play through the chord and scale before attempting this Keith Richards-inspired C major pentatonic Page 1 of 1line. After that, try making up your own lick using notes taken from the scale. Notes:

E minor pentatonic scale o

TRACKs 25-27

œ œj œ ~~~~ œ œ j œ & 44 œ . œ œ . ‰ œ œ q =120

Am

1/4

T A B

1/4

5

~~~~

7

5

7

5

8

5

8

w

BU

8 (10)

There’s a classic rock vibe here – think AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and so on. Unlike our previous backing tracks, the music doesn’t stick to one chord, so there’s a more sophisticated sound.

guitar made easy

Muscle memory Although it sounds more like a gym exercise, muscle memory is a key part of learning the guitar. Read on and get guitar fit!

E

xperienced guitarists reading this feature will be familiar with the welcome sensation of your fingers intuitively knowing where to go on the fretboard when you’re playing a song you’ve spent time learning. Equally, you’ll probably be all too

familiar with feeling completely lost when you start learning a new piece of music. If you’re a beginner, you probably feel a bit lost with everything guitar-related! Don’t worry, it’ll pass. Muscle memory is the process that bridges this gap. The simple act of repeating

short, bite-sized pieces of music trains the muscles in your fingers to ‘remember’ the movements. From chord changes to challenging solos, the ‘start slow and gradually build speed’ mantra is guaranteed to help guitarists of every level improve.

Got any change? Follow these chord change exercises to develop your speed around the fretboard D and E chord CHANGE

x

x

TRACKs 34-35

o

A and D7 CHORD CHANGE

o o

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1 2

1

TRACKs 36-37

2

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D

1

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E

55

D7

A

The idea here is to change repeatedly between D and E chords. We’re starting at a relaxed pace playing just one chord in every bar of music, before moving on to play two chords per bar, then finally four chords per bar. In real-world practice it’ll take a while to build up to four chords per bar.

4

3

Here, we’re moving on to two more advanced shapes: an A barre chord, and a D7 chord played between the 3rd and 5th frets on the guitar. Follow the same exercise as before, starting out with one chord in a bar, then doubling speed on two more occasions.

Make your gear work for you You’re working on your technique, but overlook your gear and your sound will suffer. Read on as TG troubleshoots… 1. Try out different picks

2. Starting out? Check your string gauge

Guitarists are fickle beasts and we all have different preferences for the size and thickness of the picks we use. Generally thin picks sound better for strumming and thick picks give better accuracy for solos, but the choice is yours.

The first weeks of learning guitar are quite an assault on the fingertips. They’ll firm up, but you’ll probably want to use light gauge strings to begin with. Try a set of 0.009-gauge strings (‘nines’) for finger-friendly playing.

3. Get a professional guitar set-up Guitars are complicated instruments (especially electric guitars) and, yes, even changing the gauge of your strings can impact the way it works. String buzzes or a high action (the strings feeling too high over the neck) suggest your instrument needs a trip to your local guitar shop.

4. Oi! Turn it down! When it’s time to rock, you absolutely should turn up your amp and rock the hell out of it.

However, when it comes to practising, instead dial in a clean, undistorted tone and stick to neighbour-friendly levels so you can hear any mistakes you make. Then turn it up again!

5. Buy a tuner Don’t expect to be able to tune up by ear right away – that kind of skill takes ages to develop. Make life easy and keep your guitar sounding tip top by using a tuner. Hardware tuners needn’t be expensive and if you’ve got a smartphone, there are loads of free tuner apps to choose from.


Cover feature It’s all in the hands…

Get a slick pro sound and send your solos into the stratosphere with three rock tricks

I

nspired by rock guitarists such as Slash and Eddie Van Halen we’re looking here at a handful of special techniques that you probably won’t use every time you play, but when you do, you’ll be glad you did because they sound awesome. Make sure to dial in some distortion – a dirty sound actually makes these techniques easier. Without distortion it’ll be a bit of a lame duck.

TGR288.coverfeature.fig05.musx File Date: 12:00 22/11/2016 Page 1 of 1 Notes:

The pinched harmonic, aka squealie

TRACK 38 q =115 G5

~~~~ j — ±

b & b 44 — .

1/4

T A B

56

Hold your pick so that only the point is showing. Too much pick and you’ll struggle to get a squeal.

Pick the string, then immediately touch the string with the side of your thumb to sound a harmonic.

—.

~~~~

PH

1/4

5

~~~~ j — ±

1/4

~~~~

1/4

7

5

7

This tricky technique is a lot of fun so do give it a go. Dial in some distortion and aim your thumb 24 frets higher than the fretted notes. We’ve played the lick twice, using harmonics on the second time.

The pick scrape Target your pick on the bass strings. The winding on these strings will give a good ‘scratchy’ sound.

Using a distorted tone, slide your pick along the strings. Vary your speed and see if you can do a ‘wolf whistle’ effect.

TGR288.coverfeature.fig06.musx File Date: 12:00 22/11/2016 Page 1 of 1 Notes:

Hard rock riff sound

TRACKs 39-40

q =115 G5

b4 nœ & b 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ PM

T A B

Hold your pick as you normally would. You’ll be targeting the second, third and fourth strings.


Now rest the side of your pick hand against the bridge of your guitar, just touching the strings.

3

5

5

5

3

5

5

5 5

5

3 3

5

5

3

5

5

5

Known as palm-muting, the idea is to slightly mute the strings, for a chunky high gain sound. Listen to the opening notes of Van Halen’s Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love for an example.

guitar made easy

Get low down and dirty Retune one string and you’ll open up a whole new way of playing guitar riffs. What could be easier?

H

opefully you know how to tune your guitar – the open strings are E, A, D, G, B and E again (tuning notes can be found on your Guitar Skills CD, if you need to tune by ear). Most of the riffs and songs you learn will be based on this tuning. However, many more experimental players use altered tunings: Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page was fan x x

x 10

of DADGAD tuning and grunge greats Soundgarden used several variants from TGR288.coverfeature.fig07.musx the mildly unusual sounding CFCGBE to the downright weird EEBBBB. We’reFile looking at 12:01 22/11/2016 Date: a tuning known as ‘drop D’. All you have to Page 1 of 1 do is drop your sixth string down by two semitones (two frets) down to a DNotes: note. What results is most interesting… x

1

q =110

10

3

4

1

1

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D5

F5 G5 F5 D5

& b 44 .. œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœœ E . T GB A D . 1212 0 0 0 0 0 3 5 B AD 12 0 0 0 0 0 3 5 ⇥⇥≤⇥⇥≤⇥⇥ PM

E

A

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D5

D5 This is a D5 chord in standard tuning. It is easy, but you still need either two or three fingers to play it. You’ll need a steady hand.

This is the same D5 powerchord, but using drop D tuning. You can play this shape with just one finger, which, let’s face it, is easy!

TRACKs 41-42

x x

N.C.

~~~ .. œœœ

Play 4 times

œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ

~~~ . 3 . 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 5 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ⇥⇥ ⇥⇥≤⇥⇥≤⇥⇥⇥ PM

Most of this riff is based on one-finger powerchords. Use either your first or third finger to barre across the strings. It’ll make for quicker moves than sticking to just the one finger.

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Instant rip!

TGR288.coverfeature.fig09b.m TGR288.coverfeature.fig08a.musx Legato - Guitar Flash guitar doesn’t have toTGR288.coverfeature.fig08b.musx be hard to play! Melt theTGR288.coverfeature.fig09a.musx fretboard with two blazing lead ideasMade Easy Le 24/11/2016 File Date: 10:30 24/11/2016 Cover Feature Date: 18:04 24/11/2016File Date: 18:04 Fast hammer-ons and pull-offs File Date: 10:33 24/11/2016 Van File Halen-style tapping 1note, of 1 Page 1 like of Joe 1 Satriani and fingersPage 1 ofdown 1 firmly Contributor: Page 1 of 1 from rock onto Page irtuosos to hammer aking inspiration a fretted instead of Chris Bird

V

Steve Vai are fearsome Notes:

players, but beginners can try out techniques like hammerons and pull-offs. Instead of picking every note, use fretting

& T A B

œ

œœœ 3

12

13 12 10

Our lick boils down to two phrases – and this is the first part. Use your first, second and third fingers at the 10th, 12th and 13th frets respectively.

(known as a hammer on) and to Notes: re-pluck the string as you pull away to a lower note (known as a pull-off). It’s a smoother sound than picking.

& T A B

œ

guitar legend Eddie Van Notes:

Halen we’re using a technique known as tapping. The idea is to use a finger on your picking hand to hammer down

TRACK 43

œ œ #œ 3

10

T

12 10

9

The second half of our lick repeats this simple phrase. It’s the same rhythm as the previous phrase, but played on the 9th, 10th and 12th frets.

& T A B

œ œœ œ œ œ 6 12 5 8 12 5 8

Our tapped line is really easy. The circled note is a tap; follow this by pulling your tapping finger away to reveal a 5th fret note; finish with a hammer-on to the 8th fret.

usingNotes: the pick Follow up a Engrave Engraved by itself. DigitalMusicArt.Com tapped note with hammer-ons and pull-offs and you have a surprisingly easy way to play fast, flash sounding lead lines.

& T A B

œ

œ #œ œ œ œ

TRACK 44-45

6 12 4 7 12 4 7

You’ll be playing almost the same thing again here, just at the 4th and 7th frets. Use either your first and third or first and fourth fingers.

&


Cover feature The three-chord trick Three chords. Thousands of songs. Learn the most important chord progression in music

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ou’ve probably heard jokes about acts such as Status Quo or Chuck Berry writing songs with three chords. Well, it’s no joke – and they’re not the only ones taking the easy road: this staple jam session progression is heard throughout rock, blues, folk,

and more. Get the chords down and you’ll have thousands of songs to try. Known as a I-IV-V (one-four-five’) progression, or ‘three-chord trick’, the chords are built on the first, fourth and fifth notes of the major scale. Learn the scales to find out the chords.

TRACK 46 Hear a classic I-IV-V progression in a basic blues style

One-four-five progression in C o

x

o

x

o

x

1

1

2

o

1

CDEFGABC

1

2 2

3

3

o

3 There are seven notes in the key of C major (or eight, if you count C twice). It’s easy to see that the chords of a one-four-five progression in C must be C, F and G.

C

F

o

o

o

o

x

o

x

x

Three Little Birds (A D E)

o

2. Chuck Berry

1 2

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G A B C D E F# G

3

C

o o

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1

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A

E F# G# A B C# D# E E major is hard scale to remember, thanks to the sharp (#) notes. Still, it’s one of the more common scales for guitarists so try to remember the E-A-B progression.

2 3 4

E

B

1

1

1

1

2 3

2 3 4

4

1

1

2 3 4

F Total Guitar january 2017

Bb

C

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (C# F# G#)

6. Stevie Ray Vaughan Pride And Joy (Eb Ab Bb)

7. Tracy Chapman

8. Jake Bugg

X

1

4. George Ezra

Give Me One Reason (F# B C#)

One-four-five progression in F X

(E A B)

5. U2

1 2

3. Dire Straits

Budapest (F Bb C)

D

One-four-five progression in E o

Johnny B Goode (Bb Eb F) Walk Of Life

This should be easy, by now. Obviously a I-IV-V in G major uses G, C and D chords. It’s really easy to play because you can use open chords.

G

10 classic songs that use the I-IV-V progression… 1. Bob Marley

G

One-four-five progression in G 58

Onefour, er… 10!

F G A Bb C D E F These chords are tough, but useful. Tough because you have to play barre chords. Useful because you can move the shapes anywhere on the neck to a different pitch.

Lightning Bolt (E A B)

9. Status Quo Rockin’ All Over The World (C F G)

10. Led Zeppelin Rock And Roll (A D E)

ja m t r ac k Glenn Frey of the Eagles knew a thing or two about jamming over acoustics

jam track play guitar with a band!

rock the acoustic

Major 7 chord shapes at the ready, TG takes a mellow approach to the jam track

T

he acoustic guitar has long had a role in rock music, with bands such as the Eagles and Bread in the 70s, through to Counting Crows, Goo Goo Dolls, Coldplay and John Mayer all crossing over between rock and pop. Inspired by these artists, we’ve recorded an instrumental track for you to jam your own rhythm and lead ideas along to. It’s up to you whether to use an acoustic guitar or plug in your electric – both will sound great over the backing.

There are three sections to play along with: an intro, which also doubles as the bridge, plus a verse and chorus. Both the intro and verses use ‘major 7’ chords, which have a characteristic mellow and emotional sound. There’s a change of feel in the chorus as the mix of major, minor and ‘dominant’ 7 chords gives a bit more movement. Whether you choose to play lead or rhythm, make sure to follow the light, relaxed vibe of the acoustic guitars in the recording.

60 x

scales

W

hen soloing, you can use the D major pentatonic scale to create stirring sounding licks that, in the main, will sound great over the backing. Listen carefully though, because the chords we’ve used are not all from the same key, so occasional notes may clash.

x

o

x

T

hese are the chord shapes we’ve used in our track, so follow these if you want to join in on rhythm guitar. Of course, if you know the chords in other positions on the fretboard then you can experiment with these, too.

1

2

1

D x

x

o

o

o

o

1

3

3 3

4

1

1

o

o

Dmaj7 o

o

o

o

o

1 2

3

1

1

3

3

2

3

1 D7 x

Em

o

o

4 4

x

o

Gmaj7

G

o

o

x

o

1 2

3

2

2

3 3

D major pentatonic scale

Amaj7 Total Guitar january 2017

1

A7

Cmaj7

o

o

Guitars and backing: Jon Bishop Photography: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns/Getty

1

1

3

2

1

o

chords

2

7

x

TGR288.lick4jamtrack.fig01.musx File Date: 07:34 10/11/2016

Acoustic Rock Lick For Jam Track

backing track (track 47)

Page 1 This ofsong 1 comes with a backing track on your CD. Simply insert the disc in your player, press play and jam along, guitaraoke style! Notes:

Bishop jam track /Contributor: rock theJon acoustic Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

jam track rock the acoustic Melodic Lick q = 85

D

# & # 44 Œ 0:18

T A B

Amaj 7

~~~~~~ ‰ œœœ œ œœ ~~~~~~

7 9

7

9

j œ

7

œ œ J

9 11

10

Cmaj 7 ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ œ. œ œ œ œ œœ J ‰

~~~~~~~~~~

12

10 12

~~~~~~~~

15

Gmaj 7

œ œ œj œ œ ~~~~~~ œ œ œ œ j j ~~~~~~~ œ œ œ. ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

12 10

9 11

9

7

9

7

9 7

5

We’ve recorded this melodic lick over the backing, roughly 18 seconds into the track. Use plenty of vibrato for an expressive, emotional sound, particularly on longer notes. You can copy the lick as we’ve tabbed it or use it as a springboard for your own ideas.

jam track

Cheat sheet

Fly Like The Ea gle s

Tempo: 85bpm Time signature: 4/4 Key/scale: D major

61

INTRO/BRIDGE

| D / / / | Dmaj7 / / / | D / / / | Dmaj7 / / / || VERSE

| D / / / | Amaj7 / / / | Cmaj7 / / / | Gmaj7 / / / |

| Dmaj7 / / / | Amaj7 / / / | Cmaj7 / / / | Gmaj7 / / / || CHORUS

| Em / A7 / | D / D7 / | G / A7 / | D / / / | | Em / A7 / | D / D7 / | G / A7 / ||

Having looked at the chords and scales, it’s time to take a broader view here and think about how you might approach the track in full. We recommend starting out sparsely and gently, before letting your ideas unfold as the music progresses.


n et l ic k s

62

Photography: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Total Guitar January 2017

video

Three easy songs

www.bit.ly/ tg288video

tg’s online Video lessons

Three easy songs Impress your friends by learning three classic songs that we’ve made easy for you with simple chords and basic rhythms…

M

ost beginner guitarists start out learning a handful of chord shapes, chord changes, rhythms and simple lead guitar ideas. Most likely you’ll be practising bite-sized pieces of music, and this will allow you to progress quickly. Tackling a full-length song at this early stage, however,

can be quite a challenge so you’ll need to cherry-pick a few manageable pieces, which is where we come in. The first song we’re looking at is Hendrix’s Hey Joe. With lead fills and extended chords throughout, it’s really not a song for beginners. Until you look at the basic chord structure, that

is. You can jam along to the whole song following just five easy open chords. Sure, it’s a simplified version of the song, but its enough to get you started. We’re also looking at Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, both of which can be boiled down to a handful of simple chords.

63

Jimi Hendrix – Hey Joe

Bob Marley – Three Little Birds

Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah

It may surprise you that a song by a guitar wizard can be distilled down to a few chords. Hey Joe sees Jimi working his magic, embellishing chord shapes with clever melodic fills and extensions, but, at the song’s core are just five easy open chords: C, G, D, A and E – and that’s a progression any beginner guitarist can have a go at. Just watch the video to hear how each chord should sound. The chord progression covers the whole song, admittedly in a stripped back way, but it’s a shortcut if you want to jam along with Jimi’s original track. Start by practising the chord changes – try C to G, G to D, and so on. Repeat the changes and gradually your fingers will ‘remember’ where to go and it’ll all start to feel easier. We’re using a basic strumming pattern that follows the rhythm of the song.

Three Little Birds follows a I-IV-V (‘one-fourfive’) progression, so called because the chords are built on the first, fourth and fifth notes of the major scale. The song is in A major and the scale notes are: A, B, C#, D, E, F# and G#, so you can see that chords are A, D and E. You may already know these chords in the open position, but we’re playing them higher up the fretboard. They’re the same chords because they contain the same notes – just in a different position. The idea is for each chord to have a short, abrupt sound (known as ‘staccato’) achieved by releasing pressure from your fretting fingers as soon as you strike the strings. The rhythm is a typical offbeat reggae groove. That means that if you count to four to keep time, you’ll be playing a chord in between each number.

Leonard Cohen’s original track has been covered many times, but Jeff Buckley’s 1994 recording has had arguably the farthest reaching influence – listen to most other cover versions and you’ll hear some of Buckley’s arpeggios replayed note for note, albeit usually in different keys. None of these arrangements are easy to play, but any guitarist can try the chords – C, F, G, Am and E cover the verses and choruses. If you’ve not been playing guitar very long we recommend using a simple strumming pattern. This is the simplest method and will give you something to sing along to. If you want to try the ‘one note at a time’ arpeggio approach, we recommend fingerpicking. Simply play the lowest note of each chord, then go up and down through the three highest (thinnest) strings.

Cheat sheet…

Tempo: 74bpm Key/scale: A major Main techniques: Staccato / muting / offbeat groove

Cheat sheet…

Tempo: 84bpm Key/scale: G major Main techniques: Open chords / strumming TG Tip Follow the rhythm of the original track for

TG Tip Count ‘1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &’ to keep time. Your

TG Tip Count ‘1 & a 2 & a’ to keep time, and sync

a suitable strumming pattern

chords should all land on the ‘&’s

your strumming or fingerpicking to your count

Cheat sheet…

Tempo: 56bpm Key/scale: C major Main techniques: Open chords / fingerstyle


Dire Straits Brothers In Arms 64

Get to grips with Mark Knopfler’s bluesy fingerstyle lead lines on this anti-war classic from Dire Straits’ 1985 world-beating album

© Debra Trebitz / Frank White Photo Agency


cl assic t r ac k

B

SOUND ADVICE

rothers In Arms was the biggest selling studio album of Dire Straits’ career, topping the charts worldwide in May 1985. The title track, a dark and moody anti-war song contains some of Mark Knopfler’s finest playing, which had moved on since the early days of Sultans Of Swing. Crystal clean country-esque had been replaced with a darker, bluesier tone and style, delivered here on a Les Paul rather than the Strats Mark was known for. Knopfler always favours playing fingerstyle, however much of the lead work in Brothers In Arms will sound just as good played with a pick. It’s mainly single-note playing, so, if fingerpicking isn’t for you, stick with your pick. We do recommend using your fingers wherever Mark plays a diad, however, to get just the right feel.

Everything you need to know before playing ‘Brothers In Arms’

Get the tone

4

mid

4

1

though: dial in enough gain on your amp for the loudest licks in the outro solo and back off your guitar volume to reduce

scales

T

1

4

4

2 3 4

B

G#m9 x

x

1

1

1

1

6

2

1

1

1

7

1

3

x

1

1

1

2

3 3

2 3 4

2 3

D#m

E

x

x

x

1

1 1

1

1

1

1

4

F#

11

1

4 2

3 4

F#sus4

3

3

3

4 4 3 3

4 4

4

3 4

2

2 3

2 2

1

3

1

4 4

G# natural minor scale (shape 3) 1

1

1

1

2 2 3

3 3

4

4

4 4

4

F#sus2

G# natural minor scale (shape 4)

JANUARY 2017 Total Guitar

Guitars and backing: Phil Capone

4

1

1

2

1 1

2

1

1

G# natural minor scale (shape 1)

4

C#m

1

1

2

4 4

Bsus4

1

8

2

3 4

3 4

65

his song was written in the key of G#minor and Knopfler uses the G# natural minor scale almost exclusively. The three scale shapes shown here form a framework that’ll see you through most of the song, aside from an occasional ‘outside’ note. Learning the patterns before you start will make life a lot easier, especially as this song is in a slightly guitarunfriendly key.

1 1

G#sus2

G#m

Emaj7

You’ll still need to use your guitar volume,

x

1

1

3

3

flicking your volume knob as you play!

these shapes. We’ve left out any inversions (where the keyboard plays a different root note – thus giving a more complicated chord name) – so, for example, where you see a chord name such as D#m/A# in the tab, just play D#m and don’t worry about the A# root notes.

x

3

7

pedal – a crucial part of the sound that

sounding lines.

4

1

were created using an Ernie Ball volume

Effects Volume pedals

1

4

reverb

the distortion on the earlier, cleaner-

3

x

treble

makes it much easier to operate than

2 3

bass

Use a neck position humbucker and a moderate amount of amp gain. Use a volume pedal for the swelled notes.

x

1

Mark Knopfler, but he recorded

into a Marshall JTM45 amp. The swells

gain

A

1

Stratocaster when you think of

with neck pickup selected and plugged

side from a few diads (which don’t really have their own names), Knopfler doesn’t play any chords in Brothers In Arms – chord duties are taken by the keyboards. However, i f you want to jam along, you can use

1

Y

ou probably think of a Fender

this track on a Gibson Les Paul Standard

chords

1

channel overdrive

cl assic t r ac k

Dire Straits

Brothers In Arms full tab

Sultans Of Swing: The Very Best Of Dire Straits (Guitar Tab with chord symbols, 152pp, £18.95 ref. DG70826)

Brothers in Arms

the definitive compilation album, including melody line, lyrics, guitar chord boxes and chord symbols. This excellent songbook includes some of the band’s greatest hits such as ‘Sultans Of Swing, ‘Money For Nothing’ and ‘Brothers In Arms’. Available from: www.musicroom.com

Words and Music by Mark Knopfler Copyright © 1985 Straitjacket Songs Limited. Universal Music Publishing Limited UK/EU reproduced by kind permission of Music Sales Limited US/CAN reproduced by kind permission of Hal Leonard Corporation All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured

Complete guitar tablature transcriptions of all the songs from TGR288.direstraits.fig01.musx

File Date: 12:06 14/11/2016 Page 1 of 1 Notes:

Brothers In Arms

Dire Straits

Contributor: Phil Capone Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Intro q = 80

## & # # # 44 ‰

Emaj 7

0:40

T A B

66

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6

G#m

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G # m/C #

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3

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T A 6 6 6 TGR288.direstraits.fig02.musx B

G # m/C #

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emaj 7

3

6

4

6

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Brothers In Arms File Date: 16:07 14/11/2016 Dire Straits Page 1 of 1 Contributor: Phil Capone # Knopfler the swells,by youDigitalMusicArt.Com can go down the more Notes:keeps things fairly simple here, sticking to shape one of the G natural minor scale. If you haven’t got a volume pedal for Engraved 7

tricky road of using your guitar’s volume knob instead. Either way, make sure you hit the swell notes with your volume off and increase it swiftly to avoid losing the note.

Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Verse 1

## & # # # 44 Ó E

1:13

T A B

F#

Œ

j œ

œ œ œ œ~~~~~w Vol.

BU BD 6 (8) (6)

4

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~~~~~

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G#m

∑

D#m

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8

6

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# # # # œ œ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . œ ˙ & #

Total Guitar JANUARY 2017

E

∑

F # sus 4

F#

∑

G#m

Ó

D#m

Œ

‰

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#### 4 Ó & #4 E

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track (minus guitar) on your CD. Simply insert the disc in your player, press play and jam along, guitaraoke style!

BU BD 6 (8) (6)

Bsus

4

B

∑

~~~~~

Full track + backing (tracks 48-49) This song comes with a full demo track and a backingVol. 1:13

T A B

B

D m

G m

∑

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Dire Straits / Brothers In Arms

6

8

6

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# # # # œ œ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . œ ˙ & # T A B

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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3

6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ #### ⇥ j ˙ & # œ. œ

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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5

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TGR288.direstraits.fig03.musx Brothers In Arms 10 File Date: 16:08 14/11/2016 Dire Straits The music1inof this mix you’ll needPhil to listen Page 1 section is pretty sparse, with guitar lines supporting and ‘replying’ to Knopfler’s vocal melody. With no drums or bass in the Contributor: Capone carefully to the chord changes played by the keyboards to cue you in. Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Interlude 1 G # m/D #

## & # # # 44 œ

œ.

T A B

6

1:57

4

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œ.

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4

3

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4

6

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˙

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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3

4

3

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6

6

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4

6

4

3

6

4

6

4

1

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G # sus 2

# # # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Œ & # # ˙.

w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

T A B

G#m

Vol.

4

6

4 TGR288.direstraits.fig04.musx Brothers In Arms File Date: 16:09 14/11/2016 Dire Straits There may1only practise slowly to get a feel Page of 1be a few bars of music here but there’s plenty going on. You’ll be switching between eighth notes, 16th notes and triplets, so Contributor: Phil Capone for the timing. Disregard finer details such as staccatos (shown with a dot over or under the notes) and volume swells until you can play through the notes. Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Verse 2

## & # # # 44 Ó E

2:15

T A B

F#

Œ

œ œ œ. œ œ 9 6

7

6 6

œœ œœ .. ˙˙ .. 6 6

D # m/A #

G#m

~~~~~~~~ ˙~~~~~~~~ w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ˙ Ó Bsus 4

B

B

~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vol.

Vol.

4

5

7

8

D#m

Œ

œ #œ œ œ 7

6

8

6

1

&

####

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F#

G#m

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ w w Ó # w E

Emaj 7

D#m

Œ

œ œ #œ œ

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ JANUARY 2017 Total Guitar ˙. Œ

67

F#

## & # # # 44 Ó E

œ œ œ. œ œ

Œ

cl assic tr aTck

2:15

9

D # m/A #

G#m

D#m

~~~~~~~~ ˙~~~~~~~~ w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ˙ Ó Bsus 4

B

œœ œœ .. ˙˙ ..

B

~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vol.

7

Vol.

4

6 6 6 A 6 6 8 B Straits Brothers In Arms Verse 2 (continued) Dire

5

œ #œ œ œ

Œ

7

7

6

8

6

1

F # sus 4

F#

G#m

D#m

# # # # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ w~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ó & # w Emaj 7

E

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vol.

T A B

8

&

9

6

9

6

####

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#

#

#

#

m F sus ~~~~~~~~~~~C ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ F~~~~~~~~~~~ G m ˙ ˙ Œ. # ˙ ˙ E

4

Emaj 7

œ. j œ œ

~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ Vol.

T A B

Vol.

4

6

4

œ

7

6

6

8

F # sus 4

F#

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ˙. ‰

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5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

7

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

let ring

3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ˙. Œ

œ œ #œ œ

Œ

4

6

6

8

TGR288.direstraits.fig05.musx Brothers In Arms 11 File Date: 16:33 14/11/2016 Dire Straits Remember, Mark Rest your thumb a bass Page 1 of 1 plays this track fingerstyle so you’ll need to use your first and second fingers to pick the diads in bar 1 to get the same vibe. Contributor: PhilonCapone string to keep your hand steady. The lick that ends the section is a repeat of bar 13 from verse 1 and follows the melody Knopfler sings on the words “brothers in arms”. Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Interlude 2

68

G#m

## & # # # 44

j œ

2:58

BU 7 (9)

T A B 1

œ

RP

#

C m ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ E

j œ

BD

3

( 9 )( 7 )

4

4

3

6

3

6

C#m

# # # ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ & # # w

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

T A B

j œ

Œ.

Œ

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3

E

6

G#m

E

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j œ

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œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3

4

4 6

4

3

3

4

G#m

6

4

6

4

F#

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ w ˙

˙˙

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vol.

4

7 6

TGR288.direstraits.fig06.musx Brothers In Arms 4 File Date: 16:34 14/11/2016 Dire Straits Page 1 ofyou1can take more than pure technique from a song transcription; Mark’s masterful songcraft is on display here in a second interlude Contributor: Philthe Capone Sometimes that raises dynamics, drops pace again, then injects a burst of energy on the final chord to lead you into the next section – all in the space of six bars. Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Bridge G#m

## & # # # 44 Œ 3:16

‰

T A B 1

j œ œ œ œ. jœ . œ

G#m

# ## & # # Œ.


œ J

3

6

2 6

œ

œ

4

4

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F#

#

B/D E ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ B

~~~~~~~

6

F#

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4

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6

B

˙

4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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7

6

B/D #

˙~~~~~~~~~~~ Œ

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4

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6

4

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F#

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ w 6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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## & # # # 44 Œ 3:16

‰

j œ

B B/D E ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ . œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

F

j œ œ œ œ. œ .

~~~~~~~

4 T 3 4 6 A 6 2 6 B Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Bridge (continued) 1

G#m

# ## & # # Œ.

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F#

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4

4

6

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7

3

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4

˙~~~~~~~~~~~ Œ

3

6

~~~~~~~~~~~

Dire Straits Contributor: Phil Capone


Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Solo 1 G#m

œ œ œ. œ œ œ

T A B C#m

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8

9

11

1

~~~~~~~~ œ #### œ & #

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~~~~~~~~

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11

8

11

9

9

11 (13 )

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BU 11 (13)

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~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ ˙ . œ Œ œ

6

6

4

~~~~~~~~~~~~

4

11

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8

9

8

11

BU

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

C#m

~~~~~~

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E

~~~~~~ œ

E

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j œ

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~~~~~~~~~~~~

G#m

8

G#m

˙~~~~~~~~~~~~ . Œ

RP

9

6

œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ

~~~

œ œ ‰

Brothers In Arms

2 0

Fret the opening slide in bar 1 with your third finger – this will ensure your hand ends up in prime position to play the rest of the lick.

Notes:

6

w w

¿¿ ¿

5

4

E5

¿¿¿

E

File Date: 16:34 14/11/2016 5 Page 1 of 1

## & # # # 44 Œ

F

Dire Straits / Brothers In Arms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4

6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ w

F sus

8

9

8

11

9

11

~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ œ. ‰ œ. ‰ Vol.

4

6

9

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4

~~~~~~~ Vol.

6

G#m

11

F#

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TGR288.direstraits.fig08.musx Brothers In Arms File Date: 09:41 16/11/2016 Dire Straits The first solo involves a position shift up the neck to shape three of the G # natural minor scale. Mark rarely plays a note-for-note copy of the solo live, preferring to Page 1new of 1ideas around these licks, so you may like to take the same approach. The last three bars are important though, leading youContributor: Phil Capone improvise into the next section. Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Verse 3 E

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Dire Straits Dire Straits 10 10 Page 1 of 3 Contributor: Phil Capone Page 1 of 3 Contributor: Phil Capone Notes: Engraved byDynamics DigitalMusicArt.Com As the song intensifies, Knopfler shifts his licks higher up the neck so it helps to be familiar with shape four of the G # natural minor scale here. also feature Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com heavily but don’t worry about such details until you’re comfortable with each phrase; always learn the mechanics before adding the finishing touches.

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38

This outro solo is played over a repeating eight-bar chord sequence, which means you can break the whole thing down into five manageable chunks to make it easier to learn. Mark tends only to use three fretting fingers, but it’s worth bringing in your fourth finger on the four-fret stretches, for example in bars 3 and 5.


learn to pl ay open-mic songbook

Green day

good riddance (time of your life) Liven up your strumming and picking with Billie Joe Armstrong’s singalong classic

B

illie Joe Armstrong’s rhythm playing is the driving force behind Green Day’s sound. But his technique isn’t always about powerchords. In Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) the guitar gradually shifts from TGR288.greenday.fig01.musx picking to strumming, allowing the tune TGR288.greenday.fig01.musx File Date: 07:09 11/11/2016 to grow in an organic way. Following a File Date: 07:09 Page 1 of 1 verse,11/11/2016 picked intro and the part evolves Page of 1 Notes: in the first1interlude, then settles into a strummed Notes: rhythm pattern for verse 2.

Although the tabbed intro may look tricky, you don’t have to be too fussy about the picking unless you’re dead set on reproducing it note for note. Verse 2 follows the same chords and rhythm as the intro, just strummed – so the tab is a helpful guide for the whole song. Whether you’re picking, strumming or doing both, the most important thing is to get a feel for the rhythm and aim to lock in tightly.

Good RIddance GoodGreen RIddance Day Green Day Contributor: Phil Capone Phil Capone EngravedContributor: by DigitalMusicArt.Com Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

green day good riddance (time of your life) Verse 1 TRACK 50

74

q = 90

5 q = 90 G G5

G5

1

# &# &

T A T B A B

Em

D5

.. Em œ œ œ œ œ .. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ 0 3 . . 2 0 00 2 0 22 3 2 0 . 0 2

4 4

D5

G5

C

œœ œ C œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œ 2 2

0 0

0

0

0

3 0

0

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ .. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ .. œ œ œ œ 3 . 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 . 0 0 0 0 3 0 2 0 .

1

3

D5

G5

Em

D5

Em

.. Em œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ .. Em œ .. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ .. œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ 0 3 . . œ 0 0 0 0 0 . 20 020 03 0 0. 20 3 0 3 2 . 0 2 . 0 2

G5

1

Play 4 times

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Play 4 œtimes.. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ .. œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3 3 3 3 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 . 3 3 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 2 2 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 . ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤ ⇥3 ⇥ ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤ ⇥3 ⇥ ≤ ≤ ⇥3 ≤ ⇥ ⇥ ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤ ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤ ⇥ ⇥ ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤ ⇥ ⇥ ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤ ⇥ ⇥ ≤ ≤ ⇥ ≤

.. .. .. .. œ œ œ œ . . 0 . . . . 3 0 ⇥3 ⇥ ⇥ ⇥

1

D5

Csus 2

3

G5

0

3

3

œœœœ œœœœœ œ

D5

0 0

2 2

0 0

0 0

œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœœ 2 2

3

2

3

2

0 0

0 0

0

Billie Joe follows a 16th-note rhythm, which means there are four notes for every rhythmic pulse. Maintain a ‘down-up-down-up’ motion and you should always be picking in the right direction. It’s the same rhythm after verse 2 – the only difference being that you’ll be strumming instead of targeting individual strings.

chords Just five easy open position chords make up the song. Take note of where ‘X’s are shown over certain strings – these indicate that the string in question should stay silent. You’ll either need to mute the string with a fretting finger or, where possible, avoid it all together with your pick.


x

o

o

x

X

o

o

x

o

x

x

x

o

o

o

1 2 2

3 4

G5

3 4

2

Csus2

2

1

3

3

3

C

D5

Em

o o

Guitars and backing: Charlie Griffiths Photography: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty

# & # 444 ... œ œ œ. Ó . & 4 œ œ œ œ œ. Ó let œ ringœthroughout let ring throughout . T 0 A 0 . T 0 B 3 3 A 0 . B ⇥3 ⇥3 ≤ ≤ ⇥ ⇥≤ ≤

Csus 2

G5

backing TRACK (track 50)

green day / good riddance (time of your life)

This song comes with a backing track (minus guitar) on your CD. Simply insert the disc in your player, press play and jam along, guitaraoke style!

song sheet

Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) Intro

Chorus

G5 / / / x2 G5 / / / Csus2 / D5 / x4

Em G5 It’s something unpredictable Em G5 But in the end it’s right Em D5 G5 I hope you had the time of your life

Verse 1 G5 Another turning point Csus2 D5 A fork stuck in the road G5 Time grabs you by the wrist Csus2 D5 Directs you where to go Em D5 C So make the best of this test G5 And don’t ask why Em D5 It’s not a question C G5 But a lesson learned in time

Chorus Em G5 It’s something unpredictable Em G5 But in the end it’s right Em D5 G5 I hope you had the time of your life

Interlude 1 G5 / / / Csus2 / D5 / x2

Verse 2 G5 So take the photographs Csus2 D5 And still frames in your mind G5 Hang it on a shelf Csus2 D5 In good health and good time Em D5 Tattoos of memories C G5 And dead skin on trial Em D5 For what it’s worth C G5 It was worth all the while


Instrumental verse Chorus Em G5 It’s something unpredictable Em G5 But in the end it’s right Em D5 G5 I hope you had the time of your life

75


Chorus Em G5 It’s something unpredictable Em G5 But in the end it’s right Em D5 G5 I hope you had the time of your life

Outro G5 / / / Csus2 / D5 / G5 / / / Csus2 / D5 / G5

good riddance (time of your life) Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) Words and Music by Billie Joe Armstrong, Frank E. Wright III and Michael Pritchard © 1997 WB Music Corp and Green Daze Music Warner/Chappell North America Ltd, London, W8 5DA UK/EU Reproduced by kindpermission of Faber Music Ltd. US/CAN reproduced by kind permission of HAL Leonard Corporation. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured


turn A rou n D the turnaround licks of the blues legends

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Get some some Texas passion in your blues playing as you jam along with TG’s sizzling SRV-style licks

T

exan blues ace Stevie Ray Vaughan is rightly considered one of the all time great guitarists. Inspired by his older brother Jimmie to pick up the guitar, he came to prominence when Texas Flood -his debut album with his band, Double Trouble – made fans of Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, TGR288.turnaround.fig01.musx John Lee Hooker and many others. File Date: 12:18 09/11/2016 Stevie is most associated with the Fender Strat – with example put together Page 1 aofbattered 1

from late 50s and early 60s parts, ‘Number One’ serving as his main guitar, plugged into a mixture of Fender, Marshall and Dumble amps. Though he famously used heavy strings and a high action on his guitars, this isn’t essential to get in the tonal ballpark – as long as you hit the strings with confidence and play like you mean it, you’ll be well on your way. Just dial in a little light overdrive (Stevie used an Ibanez TS-808 Tube Screamer) if your sound needs more welly.

Turnaround Stevie Ray Vaughan

Contributor: Richard Barrett Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com

Notes:

1 Shuffle groove and lead lick

76 q =110

#4 & 4 œ T A B

j q q =q q

TRACK 51

3

E

œœ œ. œ œ 0 0 0

12

0

œœ œ. œ

œœ œ. œ

œœ œ.

0 0 0

0 0 0

0 0 0

5

7

œœ œœ œ. œ œ œ # œœœ œœœ œ œ 0 0 0

7

0

0 0 0

5

7

2 2 2

0

0 0 0

œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3

3 let ring 2

4

3 4

j œ

3

3

4

3

3

2

4

3

~~~~ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ ~~~~

4 2

0 0

2

0

0 0

2

0 0

TGR288.turnaround.fig02.musx Turnaround File Date: 07:23 10/11/2016 Stevie Ray Vaughan Inspired by Stevie’s fiery rhythm style, this example plays up the contrast between a bassline played with downstrokes, and the open treble strings, played with upstrokes to give the illusion of two guitars playing at once. The real trickery is to incorporate the blues lick in bars 3 and 4 without losing momentum – play it slow at first. Page 1 of 1 Contributor: Richard Barrett Notes: Engraved by DigitalMusicArt.Com 2 Moving around the 12-bar blues

T A B

œœ œ œ .

œœ œœ. œœ œœ. œ œ. œ œ

0 0 0

0

0 0 0 7

5

0 0 0

7 7

0 0

œœ # œ œœ œœ œœ. œœœ œœ. œœœ œœ. œ œ œ œ œ œ 3

5 5 5

6

0 0 0

7 7 7

0 0 0

8 7 9

0 0 0

10 9 11

0 0 0

œœ

E

1/4

1/4

12 12

œ œ œ~~~~ œ œœ ~~~~ 14

12

14

12

0 0

j œ

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ~~~~ œ œ ~~~~

3

BU BD 14 (16 ) (14 ) 12

14

12

14

1/4

1/4

12 12

12 12

We’re building on the previous lick here with an alternate take on SRV’s renowned rhythm embellishments over the IV chord of a I-IV-V progression. Strum confidently and firmly, and mute out any idle strings with your fretting hand. This can seem a bit of a task at first, but becomes automatic quite quickly if you do the groundwork.


Photography: John T. Comerford III / Frank White Photo Agency

# & 44

A

TRACK 52

TGR288.turnaround.fig03.musx

Turnaround

Full 07:23 tracks +10/11/2016 backings (tracks 56-57) Date:

File These tab examples come with ‘full mix’ audio tracks plus two (minus guitar) on your CD. Simply insert the Page 1backing ofin your 1tracks disc player, press play and jam along, guitaraoke style!

Stevie Ray Vaughan

the turnaround / StevieRichard Ray Vaughan Contributor: Barrett

Notes:


3 triplet-based Turnaround line

# & 44

j œ

œ œ œj œ œ œ œj œ œ œ œj œ œ œ

B

3

0

T A B

TRACK 53

2 4

0

2 4

3

3

0 2 4

0

j œ

0 2 4

0

0

3

œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œj œœ œ œœœ œœ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ nœ œ œ œ œ w A

0 5

E

0 5

0 3

0

B

0

0

2

0 0

0 0 0

2

0 0

0 0 2 4

4 2

0

2

0

1

E

0

2

0

3

0

TGR288.turnaround.fig04.musx Turnaround More of an ‘lead’ part, this line combines open and fretted strings so there’s always plenty going on, sonically – essential in a trio such as Double Trouble. We’re using the EFile minorDate: pentatonic scale (E G A B D) and E blues scale (E G A B b B D). This isn’t about showing off a massive vocabulary of licks – it’s about delivering authenticity! 07:24 10/11/2016 Stevie Ray Vaughan Page 1 of 1

Contributor: Richard Barrett

Notes:


4 Chords for melody

TRACK 54

j q q = q q Half time feel 3

q =108

~~~~~~~~~~ ˙ œœ œ. œœ # # # # 4 gggg ˙˙˙ Œ & œ 4 ggg ˙ E 6/9

w/bar

~~~~~~~~~~

w/bar

gg 12 ggg 1211 gg 1111

T A B

9

TGR288.turnaround.fig05.musx File Date: 07:24 10/11/2016

Amaj 9

E

~~~~~~~~~~ . ˙ œœ œ gg ˙˙ œœ Œ ggg ˙ w/bar

gggg g

~~~~~~~~~~

j œ

j œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ

œœ

j œ

w/bar œ œ œj œ œœ ˙˙~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~

w/bar

12 13 11 12

w/bar 7 7 9

10

7

9

9 9

7 7

9 9

7 7

7 7

9 11

9

9 11

9 11

9 9

77

Turnaround Stevie Ray Vaughan

In addition to his fiery style, Stevie would also play with great sensitivity on the instrument, and that’s what inspired us here. Though the chords may be unfamiliar at first, Page 1 of 1 fairly easy to get to grips with. The Hendrix-style two-note shapes are another lovely way to play both melodically andContributor: Richard Barrett they are actually chordally.

Notes:


5 Sophisticated lead licks

## & # # 44

j œ

T A B

9 11

˙

A

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ #### ˙ œ E

& T A B

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

14

TRACK 55

14

j œ

bœ

œ nœ

3

9

œ

œ

nœ

œ

œ

10

12

nœ

3

œ

10

j œ

11

bœ

10

œ nœ

1/4

3

3

12

14

12

BU 14 (15 )

œ 9

œ

1/4

14

12

14

œ~~~~~~~~~ œ~~~~~~ œ

œ

9

12

~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ 9

~~~~~~~~~~~

14

3

11

œ~~~~~~~~~~~ œ

œ

œ.

1/4

9

œ 11

Œ

1/4

14

12

3

This example opens by loosely outlining the notes of an A7 chord (A C # E G), plus a brief moment on a B b note for added tension, before sliding back to the E blues scale in bars 3 and 4. Having a play around with the slick sounding position shift could net you a few more blues licks for your trick bag!

JANUARY 2017 Total Guitar

Tab Guide Get more from TG by understanding our easy-to-follow musical terms and signs What is tab? Tab is short for tablature, a notational system used to give detailed information as to where notes should be played on the fretboard. Tab appears underneath conventional music notation as six horizontal lines that represent the strings of the

guitar, from the sixth (thick) string at the bottom to the first (thin) string at the top. On these lines, numbers represent which frets you place your fingers. For example, an A note on the 2nd fret, third string, will be shown as a number ‘2’ on the third line

down on the tab. Unfretted strings are shown with a ‘0’. The key and time signatures are shown in the notation. TG also includes a timestamp to tell you where in the original track you’ll find each example and tempo expressed in beats per minute.

FRET BOXES: chords, scales and capo notation Hand labelling 3

2

Nut and Fretboard i

1

m

Chord example

o o o o o o

a

o o o

c

4 T

1

p

2

78

3

G Here are the abbreviations used for each finger. Fretting hand: 1, 2, 3, 4, (T) Picking hand: p (thumb), i (index), m (middle), a (annular), c (little finger)

This fretbox diagram represents the guitar’s fretboard exactly, as seen in the photo. This design is used for ease of visualising a fretboard scale or chord quickly.

This diagram represents a G chord. The ‘o’s are open strings, and a circled number is a fretting hand finger. A black ‘o’ or circled number is the root note (here, G).

capo example

capo notation

scale example

o o o

CAPO 2nd FRET >

CAPO 2nd FRET >

o

x

o

4

1

1

2

2

3

4 4 4 4 4

A major scale

D (C)

The blue line in the diagram represents a capo – for this A chord, place it at the 2nd fret. Capos change the fret number ordering. Here, the original 5th fret now becomes the 3rd fret, 7th fret now 5th fret, etc.

1 2 2

3 3

3

A (G)

1 1 1 2 2

Here the chord looks like a C in the tab, but the capo on the 2nd fret raises the pitch to make it a D. The 2nd fret capo’d notes are shown with a ‘0’ in the tab as if they were open strings.

The fret box diagram illustrates the fret hand fingering for the A major scale using black dots for root notes and red dots for other scale tones. The photo shows part of the scale being played on the fourth string with the first, third and fourth fingers.

Guitar techniques: Picking Down and up-picking

Tremolo picking

Palm Muting

pick Rake

Appreggiated chord

The symbols under the tab tell you the first note is to be down-picked and the second note is to be up-picked.

Each of the four notes are to be alternate-picked (down and up-picked) very rapidly and continuously.

Palm-mute by resting the edge of your picking hand palm on the strings near the bridge saddles.

Drag the pick across the strings shown with a single sweep. This is often used to augment a rake’s last note.

Play the notes of the chord by strumming across the relevant strings in the direction of the arrow head.


tab guide Fretting Hand Hammer-on & Pull-off

NOTE TRILLS

Slides (glissando)

fret-hand tapping

Fret-hand muting

Pick the first note then hammer down on the string for the second note. Pick the third note and pull-off for the fourth note.

After picking the first note, rapidly alternate between the two notes shown in brackets using hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Pick the first note and then slide to the next. For the last two notes pick the first, slide to the next and then re-pick it (RP).

Sound the notes marked with a square by hammering-on/tapping with your fret hand fingers, instead of picking.

X markings represent notes and strings that are muted by your fret hand when struck by your picking hand.

Bend and Release

re-picked bend

pre-bend

quarter-tone bend

Vibrato

Fret the first note (here, the 5th fret) and bend up to the pitch of the bracketed note, before releasing again.

Bend up to the pitch shown in the brackets, then re-pick the note while holding the bent note at the pitch shown.

Silently bend the string up from the 5th fret (PB5) to the pitch of the 7th fret note, pick it and release to the 5th fret note.

Pick the note then bend up a quartertone (a very small amount). This is sometimes referred to as a ‘blues curl’.

Your fretting hand vibrates the string by small bend-ups and releases. Exaggerate this effect to create a ‘wide’ vibrato.

pinched Harmonics

Tapped harmonics

touched harmonics

Bending And vibrato

Harmonics Natural Harmonics

Artificial Harmonics

79

Pick the note while lightly touching the string directly over the fret indicated. A chiming harmonic results.

Fret the note as shown, then lightly place your index finger directly over ‘x’ fret (AH‘x’) and pick (with a pick, p or a).

After fretting the note in the triangle, dig into the string with the side of your thumb as you sound it with the pick.

Place your finger on the note as shown, but sound it with a quick pick hand tap at the fret shown (TH17) for a harmonic.

A previously sounded note is touched above the fret marked TCH (eg, TCH 9) for it to sound a harmonic.

Sustained note and Divebomb

Gargle

Whammy bar vibrato

Vibrato bar / whammy bar Whammy bar bends

The note is picked as shown, then the vibrato bar is raised and lowered to the pitches shown in brackets.

Scoop and doop

Scoop: depress the bar just before striking the note and release. Doop: lower the bar slightly after picking note.

A Note is sustained then the vibrato bar is depressed to slack. The square bracket indicates a further articulation.

Sound the note and ‘flick’ the vibrato bar with your picking hand so it ‘quivers’. This results in a ‘gargling’ sound!

Gently rock the whammy bar to repeatedly bend the pitch up and down. This sounds similar to fret hand vibrato.

Violining

Finger numbering

pima directions

Pick hand tapping

Turn the volume control down, sound the note(s) and then turn the volume up for a smooth fade in.

The numbers in the traditional notation refer to the fingers required to play each note.

Any kind of fingerpicking requirements are shown at the bottom of the tab notation.

Tap (hammer-on) with a finger of your picking hand onto the fret marked with a circle. Usually with ‘i’ or ‘m’.

Others Pick scrape

The edge of the pick is dragged either down or up along the lower strings to produce a scraped sound.


Unplugged

82

YOUR MONTH IN THE ACOUSTIC WORLD


AcoustiC The Martin Archives presents and interactive history of the guitar legend

Five ‘11th’ chord shapes

Essential chords to fuel your creativity x

o

o

o

2 3

Cmaj7#11 x

o

o

o

2

3

Brace Yourselves The Martin Archives book released

A

new book on the Martin guitar legacy aims to give readers a more hands-on experience when it’s released this month. In 2014, Hal Leonard released the Fender Archives, but now the other legend of Nazareth is getting a ‘scrapbook of treasures’. The scrapbook treatment has been a great way to

Aadd11 present subjects in a more immersive way. Classic bands, films and more have all had the treatment in recent years – with posters, adverts, diagrams, brochures, stickers and recreations of old letters that can be taken out and examined. The Martin Archives, by Jim Washburn with Dick Boak and a foreword by

Graham Nash, opens the CF Martin vaults to use rarely seen material to chart its chronological history, with recreated artefacts including old letters, price tags, postcards, a 1936 company product brochure and even a polishing cloth included to bring the story of an icon in guitar building to life.

83

1

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

3 4

www.halleonard.com G#m11

Play station Hotone goes acoustic

x 7

2

H

otone is best known for its mammoth catalogue of tiny pedals, but its new A Station preamp takes a more fully featured approach. The pedal provides a preamp for both guitar and microphone, with XLR ins and outs, as well as 1/4-inch jack DIs, offering a three-band EQ, plus a feedback-busting notch filter, effects loop and mute switch. Phantom power is also on board for the mic input, while a boost footswitch ups the volume for solo moments. The A Station is powered by a 9V battery or power supply, and will be available ‘soon’ for £129.99

4

3

C#11

1

7

1

2 3

Cmaj9#11

www.hotoneaudio.com january 2017 Total Guitar

AcoustiC

Words Rob Laing Photography Olly Curtis

John Smith He’s played with Lianne La Havas, David Gray and LeAnn Rimes, but more than that, John smith is the best kept acoustic secret in Britain…

K

84

een-eyed TG readers may react to songs in a different way. I felt a Fender Tweed for some songs tonight. The recognise John Smith’s name connection there, and I felt that I could session work also puts his impressive collection from our Ben Howard cover communicate to an audience better than I could of British made Fylde acoustics into action. feature back in issue 241. Ben playing instrumentally.” So did his singing “He’s built me six or seven guitars over the told us about how he’d had voice come easily? “At first it was a horrible years,” John says of Fylde master luthier Roger an epiphany seeing Smith supporting John voice,” he admits. “And I sung out of tune quite Bucknall. “There’s lots of other guitars I like, Martyn in Manchester and been blown away a lot. It took me quite a while to sing properly. too, but my workhorse is a Fylde. I’ve got two by his percussive lap playing. I’ve probably done a couple of thousand gigs Falstaffs, a banjo – he built me that recently But while Howard has gone on to arena level, and it’s just practice” and it’s unbelievable – I’ve got an eight-string the proudly independent Smith continues on a Away from his own music, John’s still been baritone resonator that’s one of a kind, a mini more low-key path. That’s frustrating to some able to make a living from guitar playing as Falstaff with a cutaway that’s up in Nashville degree, because one listen to his last album, a session player with diverse artists including tuning… and a tenor guitar. So with sessions Great Lakes, confirms the Devon-born Lisa Hannigan, Lianne La Havas, Chas & Dave, I can turn up with something that sounds singer/songwriter’s status as one of the most Cara Dillon and recently, country star LeAnn completely different. Anytime anyone sees the underrated musicians in the country. And Rimes. This has helped him to develop his banjo or the resonator, they’re taken aback and here, ahead of a low key gig road-testing new blues, folk and Americana elements, and taken then you record them and it sounds amazing.” material in Bristol’s cosy Old Bookshop bar, him further down an electric road that will That eclectic taste in guitars is another we find a man with two paths as a player. feature on his forthcoming solo album – due in hallmark of a player whose keen drive to “I’ve just always done things slowly,” he Spring – and accounts for a Coodercaster and develop can be heard through his own responds to our assertion that his music discography. “I really started with is a well kept secret over a drink after reading guitar magazines and Eric soundcheck, “But I’d hate to become Clapton’s Unplugged,” John reflects on really big and figure out how to maintain his roots. “Then I got into Bert Jansch Four ways John keeps the creativity that. You see it happen to people and it and John Renbourn, and I was given a flowing from his guitars looks uncomfortable.” copy of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left and Take some time But the fact is Smith is an artist who’s in a whole summer I had off when I was “I find that having a bit of time to sit and think is important already sold out London’s prestigious in sixth form I learned every Nick Drake for writing songs, which is quite hard to get hold of if you’re Union Chapel under his own steam, song and that really taught me how to on tour, the thing you actually do the least of is writing and because once people hear him, they get it. play guitar. But then I got into the playing. But I always think first, what do I want to do?” Indeed David Gray was impressed enough percussive thing.” Cue Howard’s to ask him to join his band playing mostly discovery in Manchester. But the way Keep writing slide guitar for a US tour after Smith John has headed since suggests a restless “I’m not a consistent writer and most of what I write is supported him in the UK. Fans of John creative spirt that means he never stops horrible, I have to pick one in three things to work on Martyn and Nick Drake will find much to learning from the guitar. because so much of it is rubbish. But I think that’s true enjoy here; there’s a synergy between the “I started to listen to Tony Rice and for a lot of people.” intricate flow of his folk fingerpicking people like that – proper flat pickers. And Buy or borrow and rich husky voice that seems I thought, I’m going to get into standard “A new guitar always helps, picking up one of my own effortless. But it wasn’t. John started out tuning – which I’d actually never really guitars I haven’t played in a while or borrowing someone as an instrumental performer, and only done – and learn chords, take some else’s guitar. See what happens.” changed because of a need to make a lessons and learn what’s going on. I took stronger connection with audiences. a couple of lessons from a jazz guitarist Diversify “As soon as I started singing with it, and actually learned how the fretboard “Life’s too short not to, and there’s too many guitars. If I people started responding differently,” works, and that blew my mind.” get stuck in one style it might mean I never want to buy a he notes. “It doesn’t matter how showy Which makes us even more excited to Les Paul!” the guitar playing is, people really do hear where John Smith heads next.

Stay inspired


interview / john smith

“As soon as I started singing with it, people started responding differently”

85


acoustiC Rockschool

Ed Sheeran

Thinking Out Loud

W

ith over a billion views on YouTube, 750 million streams on Spotify and a few million sales thrown in too, Thinking Out Loud has been a massive hit for Ed Sheeran and it’s a great song to learn on the guitar. Ed uses a simple rhythm technique, hitting the strings with his picking hand on beats 2 and 4 to give a percussive effect. A lot of singer-songwriters do

this to add a rhythmic element to accompaniment that may lack a little groove. It may become natural to mix this into your playing, especially if you lean towards a stripped-back, solo style. Rockschool’s arrangement also includes the electric guitar solo to give a fuller impression of the original song. This solo is well worth learning as it’s full of classic R&B moves that would be great to add to your repertoire.

full tab

The Rockschool Acoustic Guitar Grade Three book contains everything you need to pass your Grade Three exam in one essential book. For more info, visit: www.rslawards.com

86

Thinking out loud

Words & Music by Ed Sheeran & Amy Wadge © Copyright 2014 Sony/ATV Music Publishing/BDi Music Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured

Ed Sheeran Thinking Out Loud q = 82

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Guitar: andy jones Photography: nBC / Contributor/ Getty Images

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Full track + backing (tracks 63-64)

Ed sheeran / thinking out Loud

This song comes with a full demo track and a backing track (minus guitar) on your CD. Simply insert the disc in your player, press play and jam along, guitaraoke style!

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87

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The main rhythm groove is outlined in bars 1 and 2 – so make sure to spend some time learning this part. The ‘X’s in the tab denote Ed’s pick-hand string strikes. Notice that they fall on beats 2 and 4 of each bar, giving a ‘backbeat’ akin to a snare drum in a standard rock rhythm.

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92

the gas station Real world reviews of the best new gear

90

98

Welcome to the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome*) Station! Every issue, the TG scours the market for the hottest new gear and brings you transparent reviews that you can trust. From the smallest of accessories that make your life easier, to big investments such as brand new guitars, amps and effects pedals – if it’s worth your attention, you’ll find it here!

How we test

Best Buy Award

Curation

No snake oil

Our product selection is driven by our love of gear. We select the most exciting products on the market every month to bring you opinions you can trust.

You won’t find us getting hung up on hokey mythology or nonsense marketing speak: we aim to bring you bullshitfree opinions on the gear you’re interested in.

Face-value reviews

We can’t be bought

We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge on it on whether it looks good, sounds good and plays well – not by the name on the headstock.

TG review scores are a true reflection of our experts’ opinion on the product they’ve been testing. You’ll never find a rating in our mag that has been bought and paid for.

*WHAT IS GAS? Gear Acquisition Syndrome is the guitar-player’s never-ending urge to acquire new gear, irrespective of whether they actually need it. Don’t pretend you don’t have it – we all do!

Superb, a best buy


Excellent

TG Best Buy Awards are reserved for stand-out products that earn a five-star rating. This is the best, most exciting new gear that you need to check out

Best buy award Best for…

Real world reviews

91 Start Me Up

Five new products to get you started

92 PRS SE ‘Floyd’ Custom 24 PRS’s mainstay gets a locking vibrato upgrade

96 Vintage Viator Paul Brett 12-String Travel Guitar Curious compact travel guitar with a very unique voice

98 Line 6 Spyder V

The classic modelling combo gets a serious upgrade

Different guitarists have different needs. This badge highlights a particular strength that a product has in a TG Test or Group Test, so you can choose what’s best for you

100 The TG Test: Affordable metal Guitars

Best for…

106 Group Test: multi-modulation pedals

We test every product under the conditions that they were designed for. For example, if an amp is designed to be played loud, rest assured that we’ll have tested it at rehearsal/gig volumes!

Above average kit

100

some issues

Want to thrash your way through a gig or shred like a beast? These four axes won’t break the bank doing it…

Push the sonic limits with these fabulous filters

Poor

110 Fix Your Guitar! Changing Your Pickups

gas station

04

02

01 05 03 91

start me up!

Five awesome new products to get your gear engine revving this month… Seymour Duncan Jimi Hendrix Signature Strat set pickups

1

Back in 1968, Jimi Hendrix played a Strat loaded with pickups hand-wound by a young Seymour Duncan; now, those tones are available to all. The set is custom-wound, with an aggressive bridge, thick neck and quacky in-between middle combinations. Each pickup has a reverse magnet stagger to replicate the effect of playing a right-handed guitar upsidedown, restrung for a left-handed player, just like Jimi used to do! (£359.95 per set, www.seymourduncan.com)

Marshall Mid Bluetooth

2

Marshall has added a new top-end set of cans to its popular headphones range. The Mid Bluetooth is a set of, you guessed it, Bluetooth-enabled ’phones that use top of the line aptX technology for CD-quality wireless sound. In addition to the classic Marshall styling, these over-ears also promise a 30 hours battery life, collapsing design, the same custom -tuned 40mm dynamic drivers as the Major set, and a 3.5mm output for sharing music with friends. (£169, marshallheadphones.com)

Nexi The Solution

3

With a patch cable-less plug-and-play system, built-in power supply and fully waterproof construction, Nexi’s aptly named The Solution is a seriously advanced take on pedalboards . The ’board itself features a built-in tuner, two-channel switch and boost, plus 1/4-inch input/output and USB sockets, but Nexi has also introduced 14 analogue pedals to go with the ’board, all feature true bypass switching and can be used wirelessly with The Solution, but also include regular jacks for normal pedalboards. (€199.95, www.nexi.eu)

IK Multimedia iLoud Micro Monitor

4

Most of us don’t have room for a full studio rig at home, but IK Multimedia has a solution in the iLoud Micro Monitor, the smallest monitoring system you can buy. Similarly proportioned to your average computer speakers, these monitors pack 50 watts of power and a bass reflex port, providing enough detail to help tweak your recordings to sound great on any system. Plus, with easily adjusted EQ presets and Bluetooth connectivity, they’re great for listening to tunes, too. (€365.99, ikmultimedia.com)

Pluginz Marshall Jack Rack

5

You may have seen Pluginz before – they’re those nifty amp head replicas with 1/4-inch jack sockets that hold your keys – but they just got that little bit more authentic, with the addition of official Marshall heads to the range. Four models are available – JCM800 Standard, JCM800 Handwired, 1959SLP and JCM800 Chequered – and each Jack Rack comes with four guitar jack keychains engraved with the Marshall ‘M’ logo, plus a full wall mounting kit to liven up your studio/bedroom/man cave. (£34.70, pluginzkeychains.com)


t h e ga s station

92


review

PRS 2017 SE ‘Floyd’ Custom 24

1 £999

A pretty guitar that’s actually a beast!

T

here was a time when Paul Reed Smith guitars were seen by some as elitist playthings – too expensive for the working guitarist, and too pretty to risk pranging at a gig. These were the guitars you bought when you’d bought all the golf clubs and swanky German sports cars you could need – ‘Guitars for lawyers and doctors’ went the rather unkind mantra. In 2001, PRS began to change those preconceptions with the launch of the Korean-made SE models. Keenly priced for the average guitarist and styled to look like their American-built siblings, the SE range has evolved a lot over

locking whammy bar loved by everyone from Eddie Van Halen to Dimebag Darrell. Even with the Custom 24’s tasteful vintageesque vibe, the Floyd looks right at home here. It’s like someone bolted a supercharger to an E-Type Jaguar. It shouldn’t work, but it actually looks great… So what makes the 2017 SEs better than the previous editions? Well, you get the same ‘signature’ PRS headstock logo as the USA models instead of the block logo truss-rod cover – with a much subtler ‘SE’ logo, too. But the big news is a pair of upgraded pickups. The 85/15 set is based on Paul Reed Smith’s 1985 Standard Treble and Bass pickups, much-respected for

Neck

At a Glance

The PRS SE ‘Floyd’ Custom 24 comes spec’d with a Wide Thin neck profile. Add 24 fat frets and you’ve got a guitar with serious playability

2

Floyd

3

Pickups

Body: Mahogany w/

bevelled maple top and flame maple veneer Neck: Maple, glued-in Scale: 635mm (25”) Fingerboard:

Rosewood Frets: 24, jumbo Pickups: 2x PRS 85/15 humbuckers Controls: 1x volume, 1x tone (w/ push/pull coil split) and 3-way pickup selector blade switch Hardware: Chrome Floyd Rose doublelocking vibrato and top nut, sealed die-cast machineheads Left-handed: N/A Finish: Vintage Sunburst (as reviewed), Gray Black Contact: PRS Europe 01223 874 301 www.prsguitars.com

This SE pimps the classic Custom 24 format with a chunky Floyd Rose doublelooking vibrato with a recess for pull-ups and the ability to dump the strings on the pickups

The new pickups are based on PRS’s 1985 Standard Treble and Bass humbuckers, which also offer convincing classic single-coil tones. This is one versatile guitar

1

93

The 2017 models are the highest spec SE guitars yet the past 15 years. The 2017 models are easily the best-looking and highest-spec SE guitars yet – let’s see what they’ve got cooking. Slipping it from its padded gigbag, no-one could deny our 2017 SE ‘Floyd’ Custom 24 is a looker. In typical PRS style, this guitar’s pretty flame maple top is like a tractor beam to the eyeballs. Underneath the eye candy, you’ll find a mahogany body cut in PRS’s classic double-cutaway shape. The supremely comfortable Wide Thin profile neck is honed in maple, and comes paired with a rosewood ‘board with a flock of the nowiconic bird inlays and plays host to 24 fat frets. Of course, ‘Floyd’ isn’t just a clever name. Our Custom 24 comes loaded with a chunky Floyd Rose vibrato, with a recess for pull-ups, the seldom-challenged but never-bettered double-

the ability to offer great humbucking and single-coil tones. These new humbuckers are wired through a master volume, master tone (with a built-in push/pull coil split) and a three-way pickup selector blade switch offering both pickups solo and combined. Textbook stuff. Time to plug in. Running through our amp’s clean channel, the bridge ’bucker unloads a whole sackful of sparkle. While this setting works great for choppy rhythm stuff, we prefer adding the neck pickup into the mix. This combination retains the bright clarity of the bridge pickup but adds some warmth. Switch to single-coil mode and you’re almost in Hendrix Little Wing territory, with little wobbles on the whammy bar adding to the effect. You don’t always have to divebomb on a Floyd, y’know!

Best buy award

3

2


t h e ga s station

Origin of the species! A brief history of Paul Reed Smith guitars...

I

While many associate PRS guitars with blues-rock cats such as Carlos Santana, card-carrying members of the metal brigade including Mark Tremonti, Chris Robertson of Black Stone Cherry and Periphery’s Mark Holcomb are all in PRS’s signature artists, too. With that in mind, it makes sense that the new Custom 24 ‘Floyd’ has been voiced with heavy in mind, and the 85/15 pickups have less lower-mids than regular PRS humbuckers, and that means more clarity even when you get a bit crazy with the saturation. Total Guitar january 2017

The 85/15 pickups are based on PRS’s 1985 Treble and Bass set

Also try... Fret-King Super-Hybrid If it’s tonal versatility you’re after, the Super-Hybrid offer humbucking, single-coil and acoustic sounds, the latter thanks to an onboard piezo pickup system

£499

The Floyd Rose is an unusual look for a PRS, but it feels right here

Interacting with varying levels of dirt, the bridge humbucker can pull off anything from vintage AC/DC to scooped-mid thrash stuff. We like the clarity and note separation across all three locations on the pickup selector switch. Blues players will love the smooth attack and sustain of the neck position, and the single-coil tones on tap. This is a seriously versatile guitar. Great looks, superb playability, rock-solid tuning and a proper padded gigbag. What’s not to love? We already respected the SE Custom 24 and its versatile tonal

Fender Standard Stratocaster HSS with Floyd Rose palette, but the newly spec’d 85/15 pickups make this latest model a far more interesting prospect for metal players. Every note propels itself off this guitar like a firework. The fact the guitar is so damn pretty makes us powerless to resist its charms. Ed Mitchell

S U M M AR Y

94

t seems like PRS Guitars have been around forever, but Paul Reed Smith didn’t launch his brand until 1985 – even though he had been building guitars since the 70s, working on designs that would combine the best attributes of the mighty Gibson and Fender houses in a package with cool vintage looks and high-spec tonewoods. Smith built his first guitars for the likes of, er, Happy The Man’s Stanley Whitaker and former Heart guitarist Howard Leese, but it was the endorsement of Latin rock legend Carlos Santana that marked PRS out as a contender, and Santana was later rewarded with a US-built signature model, as also featured in the 2017 SE range. The rest is rock history, with PRS growing over 30 years to become one of the ‘big three’ US guitar makers.

Features sound quality value for money build quality playability overall rating

The original pimped classic features a Floyd Rose whammy, a humbucker and two single coils in the engine room and a rosewood fingerboard

£689

Charvel Pro Mod So-Cal Style 1 HH FR The So-Cal comes loaded with a Seymour Duncan TB-6 Distortion humbucker in the bridge position and a SH-6N Distortion at the neck, with push/pull knob to split both pickups’ coils

£709

t h e ga s station

96


review

Vintage Viator Paul Brett 12-String £239 Travel Guitar The guitar you never knew you needed

L

et’s be honest. Travel guitars are not renowned for their beauty, they’re generally functional and stripped down to the bare essentials, but the Viator 12-string is an exception. Ultra-portable – complete with nice padded gigbag – it also offers good looks and feel, with a couple of modern tweaks. Paul Brett was once the guitarist in the Strawbs, but has since made his name as a collector, and since 2012 he’s leant his name and expertise to a range of acoustics that blend vintage looks with modern, common sense design.

this has brains as well as looks, spec’d as it is with Fishman’s Sonitone pickup – the one with a built-in USB output for recording straight to your computer. Getting to grips with the Viator is easy thanks to the small body and the vintage V profile neck. That ’board is crowded, however, and it takes a while to get used to where your fingers need to be to fret chords. Brett intends to use his guitar in minor 3rd above ‘Terz tuning’ – basically like having a capo at the 3rd fret – but you’ll need lighter strings for that. In standard tuning, with the

1

Compact

At a Glance

The Viator’s minuscule Sitka spruce and sapele body is based on the parlour style popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

2

Type: Electro-acoustic

12-string travel guitar Top: Solid Sitka spruce Back & sides:

Laminated sapele Hardware: Grover

open-geared machineheads

Modern spec

This guitar might look like something found in granny’s attic, but it features up-to-date goodies such as a Fishman Sonitone pickup with built-in USB port

3

Electronics:

Fishman Sonitone pickup w/ USB Left-handers: No Finish: Natural only Contact: JHS 01132 865 381 www.jhs.co.uk

neck profile

The Viator’s neck has a pronounced vintage-style V profile that not only slips beautifully into your palm, but its strength also aides the general tuning stability

97

3

This offers a unique take on the portable guitar thing strings supplied, our Viator’s tonal response is bright and crisp with a reasonable amount of volume considering it’s such a compact thing. The tension is fine for fretting all the way up the neck, and we find the tuning stability rock-solid. This cool little acoustic is a dream for travellers, buskers and folkies with tiny cars and offers a unique take on the portable guitar thing. It’s beautifully made, plays great – albeit while requiring some technique adjustment on your part – and won’t give your piggy bank nightmares either. Ed Mitchell

S U M M AR Y

Brett’s 12-string skills have been highly regarded for nearly 50 years now, and so it’s fitting that he’s designed a 12 that cleverly translates the formula into the ultra-portable travel guitar world. The guitar’s lithe body is based on the kind of acoustic guitars popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the big ol’ Martin dreadnought became the go-to spec. The timber choice reads like Woody Woodpecker’s wet dream – with a solid Sitka spruce top and laminate sapele back and sides, all joined together with maple/rosewood binding. The nato wood neck comes paired with a rosewood fingerboard, 21 vintage-size frets and a resonant NuBone top nut to match the NuBone saddle, while the crowded headstock plays host to a dozen open-geared Grover tuners. The overall vibe is vintage, then, but

1

2

Features sound quality value for money build quality playability overall rating january 2017 Total Guitar

t h e ga s station

98


review

1

1

Controls

2

At a Glance

The colour-coded control panel is good-looking and easy to navigate; just select amp or effects and you can quickly dive straight into editing your sounds

2

Type:

Digital modelling amplifier Output: 60W Speaker: 1x10” special design plus HF tweeter Controls: Drive, bass, mid, treble, volume, master volume, amp/FX select, loop, play/pause, edit, tap tempo, home, rotary pre-set control Sockets: Guitar in, 3.5mm headphones, USB, 3.5mm aux in, Line 6 RJ45 floorboard connector Weight: 9.7kg

3

Display

The Spider’s display is a little small, but nevertheless it’s clear and easy to understand. If you want better graphics, download the excellent mobile app

3

Round the back

Direct recording via USB? No problem. The Spider also has a handy aux in, and it’s compatible with most Line 6 floorboards, for extra versatility

Dimensions:

Best buy award

Line 6 Spider V 60

[HxWxD] 415 x 440x 225mm Contact: Yamaha Music Europe 0844 811 1116 www.line6.com

99

£281

Line 6 debuts the fifth evolution of its popular amp range and a separate tweeter to make sure nothing’s lost. There are over 200 high-quality amp, effects and cab models, with over 100 presets to enjoy, together with a built-in tuner, metronome and even 19 real drum loops to jam along to. As if that wasn’t already enough, there are Android and iOS apps and a built-in receiver for Line 6’s

means better quality at low volume and more balance at higher volume levels, and not just for electric guitars – your acoustic will sound just as good, too. As with any modelling amp, the accuracy of individual amp models is important, but what’s more important is how well those core sounds and effects hang together

TONES ARE FULL OF character with excellent response Relay wireless transmitters, not to mention an aux in, and a USB out that will let you record to a PC using the bundled Cubase LE software, or to your tablet or mobile phone. The Spider V’s controls are intuitive, although the display is a little on the small side. The updated sounds are excellent; the new full-range speaker system

and how responsive the amp feels when you’re playing it. In this department, the new Spider scores highly – strip away the effects and the basic tones are full of character with great pick response. The Plexi and two variations on the AC30 are among the high points, organic and brimming with attitude. The preset patches are very good, too; the effects are occasionally

overcooked, but as a starting point they’re all worth a listen. The mobile app is easy to use, intuitive and fun, connecting without any glitches and letting you edit and save your own sounds, as well as upload them to the Line 6 cloud network and download firmware updates. The new Spider V range represents great fun for guitarists at all levels – the new and improved amp models are highly playable and represent a significant advance over the competition, while the built-in looper, metronome and drum loops make practice great fun, too. And let’s not forget, fun is what it’s all about! Nick Guppy

SUMMARY

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echnology never stands still; and when you’re the market leader in one of the most competitive amp-building areas, you have to keep evolving, and that’s what Line 6 has done with the latest update to its long-serving Spider modelling amp range. Here, we have what’s likely to be one of the most popular versions, the 1x10 Spider V 60 combo. Clad in black vinyl, with a smart black and silver grille, the new Spiders have a distinctly different look. The Line 6 badge has moved from the centre to the right of the control panel, and the shiny knobs of the Spider IV have been replaced by matt black ones, with colourcoded backlit lettering, giving the new Spider a futuristic yet functional look. There’s more under the skin, too, as the Spider V 60 has a bi-amped, full-range loudspeaker system, with a 10-inch custom-designed driver

Features sound quality value for money build quality playability overall rating january 2017 Total Guitar

t h e ga s station

Mid-priced metal machines! Words Ed Mitchell Photography Jesse Wild

If you’re looking for a killer shred machine, and have 500 quid smouldering in your pocket, here are four guitars that prove you’ve never had it so good...

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the tg test

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nce upon a time, if you wanted to play metal you had to pick from what was available. Heavy merchants such as Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath and Eddie Van Halen made their bones on old Gibson SGs and ES-335s. It wasn’t long until they started noticing the limitations of their gear and the tweaking began. Iommi spec’d a 24-fret guitar. Eddie ripped the humbucker from his old Gibson and chiselled it into a Strat body. By the 80s, the humbucker-loaded, 24-fret, Floyd Rose vibrato-equipped electric was all the go. Three of the four guitars in our group test are direct descendants of those 80s ‘SuperStrats’. The Jackson X Series Soloist, LTD F-200FR and BC Rich Mockingbird – the latter a pimped 70s design – feature basswood bodies, powerful ’buckers and your classic double-looking Floyd Rose. The fourth guitar, the Fret-King Esprit V, is more like the old-school metal planks – in particular the Gibson Explorer – first employed by the original 70s hairies. Not everyone wants a Floyd, so we’ve included the Esprit to show the range of metal machinery available. Shredding is our business… and business is good! It’s time to unleash the beasts…

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Jackson X Series Soloist

£600

Ageless 80s classic that still stuns…

Fret-King Esprit V

£579

Old-school cool

This thing has a real ‘hair metal’ vibe...

Looks kinda familiar…

Indeed. The Soloist is one of the most iconic shred machines of the 80s – an era when spandex wasn’t just for cyclists, but also when we witnessed some great leaps forward in guitar development. This is exemplified by our Soloist’s ultra-thin compound radius neck, 24 fat frets, active EMG humbuckers and double-locking Floyd Rose.

Fret-King – brainchild of UK guitar guru Trevor Wilkinson – takes ‘inspiration’ from classic designs, smashing them together to create something different, and the Esprit V is clearly a DNA splice of an Explorer and Firebird. The headstock has a 60s Epiphone vibe, too…

It’s very different from the other guitars here... The neck is a lollipop stick, huh? Thin as the walls in a new-build flat. Jackson call this its ‘speed neck’. A real shredder’s delight, it’s reinforced with graphite rods to

Yeah, it’s our wild card for sure, but you don’t need a wafer-thin neck and a Floyd to make eardrums bleed. The Esprit V has a chubby neck with a rosewood fingerboard and 22 fat frets. The ’board’s

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add stability. Add in the Floyd vibrato’s locking shenanigans and you won’t knock this thing out of tune without dropping it off a block of flats…

rounded edges give it a vintage ‘played in’ feel that we reckon many players will love.

What’s the skinny on the tone? But does it sound as good as it feels? The iconic EMG 81/85 pickup pairing may come across as bland on a clean setting, but crank up the gain and they’ll blow your bleedin’ brains out. Every note and harmonic pops with supreme clarity in all positions, and bottom-string riffs sound huge and razor-sharp. This is pretty much metal perfection.

It ain’t skinny. Physically, this is a much heavier guitar than the others here, and that extra lumber is evident in the huge sustain and deep bottom-end that spills out from the Esprit V. You can lighten the tonal load with the Vari-coil, which dials the humbuckers down into single-coil mode for cleaner tones, making this a versatile beast. Even metalheads turn off the filth sometimes. Don’t they?

At a Glance

At a Glance

Key features: Basswood body,

Key features: Agathis body, set

1-piece maple thru-neck, 12” to 16” (305mm to 406mm) compound radius, Floyd Rose vibrato, rosewood ’board, 24 jumbo frets, EMG 81 (bridge) and EMG 85 (neck) Left-handed: No Finish: Candy Metallic Blue (as reviewed), White Pearl Metallic, Copper Pearl, Black, Satin Black Contact: Fender GBI 01342 331700 www.jacksonguitars.com

maple neck, rosewood fingerboard with 22 medium jumbo frets, Wilkinson tune-o-matic bridge/stop tailpiece, 2x Fret-King WHHB humbuckers, Vari-coil control, padded Fret-King gigbag Left-handed: No Finish: Gloss Black (as reviewed), Tobacco Burst Contact: John Hornby Skewes 01132 865 381 www.jhs.co.uk


the tg test

LTD F-200FR

Behold a metal battle axe that’s primed for war…

£429

BC Rich MK3 Mockingbird

£549

Is the ’bird still the word?

Somebody’s been nibbling that guitar!

This isn’t as brutal-looking as most BC Rich stuff…

It’s an acquired taste for sure. We reckon the F-200FR’s basswood body looks like a flint axe fashioned by some ancient Norseman to terrify and conquer. That sums up the job of a metal guitar for us!

This new Mark 3 Mockingbird is positively sweet in its Trans Black Cherry finish, but still looks tough enough for the hard rock and metal crowd. The Mockingbird has always been a favourite of Slash of Guns N’ Roses, natch.

Basswood seems to be the go-to wood choice for metal guitars these days…

What lies beneath?

Some people assume basswood is used ‘cause it’s cheap. Nope. Virtuoso tone freaks like Guthrie Govan and Steve Vai swear by basswood and spec it in their high-end Charvel and Ibanez guitars,

It’s our old pal basswood for the body again, on this occasion topped with a quilted maple veneer to add some eye candy. While original US ’Birds had through-neck construction, our guitar has a bolt-on

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respectively. It’s lightweight, offers excellent sustain and doesn’t overpower the tonal voice of the guitar’s pickups.

maple partner capped with a rosewood ’board and 24 jumbo frets. Add a pair of high-output humbuckers and a quality licensed Floyd Rose, and all of the key metal food groups have been represented.

You don’t get fancy EMGs with this guitar then? No, they’re high-output passive in-house humbuckers. They sound reasonably sweet clean, but they’re at their happiest digesting large amounts of distortion. We like the bright response of the bridge unit – it cuts through a mix like a machete – while the neck pickup has more thickness than a reality TV star. Back off the filth a bit and you get a perfectly usable blues tone from this fearsome-looking beast.

Does it deliver the goods?

At a Glance

At a Glance

Key features: Basswood body,

bolt-on maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, 24 extra jumbo frets, licensed Floyd Rose double- locking vibrato, 2x ESP Designed humbuckers Left-handed: No Finish: Charcoal Metallic Contact: Selectron UK 01795 419460 www.espguitars.com

It’s closest to the LTD in terms of feel. The neck is chubbier than the Jackson, and it ships with heavier gauge strings. It comes across more like a heavy riffing tool than a super-fast shred machine. The pickups pump out plenty of power and again work best when teamed with high-gain distortion.

Key features: Basswood body with quilted maple veneer, bolt-on maple neck, rosewood fingerboard with 24 jumbo frets, licensed Floyd Rose double-locking vibrato, 2x BC Rich high-output humbuckers Left-handed: No Finish: Trans Black Cherry (as reviewed), Trans Black, Black (£479) Contact: Rosetti 01376 550033 www.bcrich.com


the tg test

Head to head Which of our big four is the king of the hill?

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he Jackson X Series Soloist couldn’t be more 80s if it wrote a Christmas song with Bob Geldof or starred in a camp fighter pilot movie with Tom Cruise. Its secret is that ultra-slim ‘speed neck’ with the 12- to 16-inch (305mm to 406mm) compound radius rosewood fingerboard. That radius shift allows easy fretting of chords over the first few frets – the 305mm (12-inch) bit – and a seriously low action, with effortless string bending, at the 406mm (16-inch) section beyond the 12th fret. The BC Rich and LTD share a 350mm (13.75inch) radius, which is pretty flat, but doesn’t offer quite the same low action as the Jackson. The Soloist also wins with its active EMG arsenal. The EMG 81 and 85 (bridge and neck respectively) is about the ultimate 80s metal mix. Offering more clarity than the traditional passive pickups found in the LTD and BC Rich, these pups really are worth the extra money.

As you’d expect, our Floyd guitars hold their tuning perfectly

Some snobs dismiss the Floyd as a tone killer. Nonsense. It’s just a different tone In terms of hardware, the Floyd Rose is the great leveller. All three Floyd-loaded guitars here retain their tuning perfectly, and we would expect nothing less. Some gear snobs dismiss the Floyd as a tone killer. Nonsense. It’s just a different tone. The whammys on all three guitars are floating, too, so you can pull up on the bar should you wish. That gives the Mockingbird, F-200FR and Soloist a more open, bright ‘springy’ tone than a hardtail model, or a guitar with the Floyd set on the body (as preferred by Eddie Van Halen). The Fret-King Esprit V is a whole different kettle of metal. Its tone and feel is beefier than the other guitars. It has an old Gibson vibe that is more Southern rock, Foo Fighters and Queens Of The Stone Age hirsute rock ’n’ roll than 80s Sunset Strip widdly showboating. You’d be hard pushed to find a better guitar to beat out heavy 70s riffs on for the money. Shredders on the other hand would be advised to start their search with the Soloist… Total Guitar january 2017

The AX8 uses the same sound tech as the Axe-Fx II

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final verdict

Which modeller is the right one for you?

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o, four great guitars for your appraisal. Yet some are greater than others, or more suited to certain jobs, if you want to be diplomatic. The fact is, the Jackson is the most sorted guitar in this line-up. It takes us back to a time when squeezing the maximum tone and playability from the bare essentials was everything. These days, the smart money says the fatter the neck the better, but we like the fact that the X Series Soloist defies that

Jackson X Series Soloist

trend and delivers a seriously capable shred machine at a killer price. The BC Rich and LTD offerings are evenly matched despite the price difference. These are good metal all-rounders. If you play heavy stuff, you’ll find yourself at home here. The chubbier necks will appeal to more players than the Jackson’s lollipop stick, we reckon. The obvious termite in the anthill is the Fret-King. Beautifully put together with a gloriously old-school feel, the Esprit V offers

LTD F-200FR

Fret-King Esprit V

Best for speed freaks

up some tasty clean tones in a line-up that feels more at home with heavy gain. It can do brutal though. It’s not a million miles from the concept of a Gibson Explorer, so since we’re talking metal, think of it as the kind of thing James Hetfield would warm to. The bottom line is, if it’s metal mischief you have on your evil mind, the world is your bivalve mollusc. There’s never been a better time to shred, thrash or bludgeon on a budget. Now, choose your weapon…

Best for retro rockers

BC Rich MK3 Mockingbird Best value for money

Best for looks 105

Features sound quality value for money build quality Playability overall rating

SU M M AR Y


SU M M AR Y


SU M M AR Y

SU M M AR Y

Best buy award

Features sound quality value for money build quality Playability overall rating january 2017 Total Guitar

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Best buy award

Versatile modulation pedals


DigiTech Nautila

£129

Naut your average chorus…

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his sea-worthy offering from DigiTech delivers chorus and flange effects via an armada of controls. It offers up to eight chorus and four flange voices at once, as well as a drift knob, which transitions between waveforms. It’s a lot to get your head round, but it sounds excellent, packing one of the richest flangers we’ve heard – as well as a hugely flexible chorus, which you can set to emphasise highs or lows via the appropriate knob. The drift control is most apparent on slow flange sweeps, but can deliver vibrato sounds and almost uni-vibe textures at faster chorus rates. Adaptable swirls, ahoy!

Features sound quality value for money build quality Usability overall rating

MXR Phase 95

£106

This isn’t just a phase… it’s two!

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he Phase 90 is the classic phaser, beloved by EVH and all who treasure a good analogue whirl. Several mini, ahem, tributes have cropped up of late, but the Phase 95 is MXR’s response. Here, the 90 circuit appears in both the modern ‘block’ and smoother vintage ‘script’ incarnations, but so does the Phase 45, a two-stage phaser that won fans for its subtler take. In short, MXR has nailed it. The 45 works brilliantly for faster rates where the 90 gets a little too ‘woaw’, while the script 90 is the definitive rock phaser, especially with a dollop of gain post-effect. Accept no imitations.

SUMMAR Y

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hile overdrive, wah and delay are a guitarist’s bread and butter, modulation effects are the delicious icing on top of your tonal cake. Whether it’s the subtle throb of a vintage vibe or an all-out phase assault, the right mod can add a sense of movement to your playing, or emphasise that crucial moment. Imagine Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love without Eddie’s momentary yet extreme use of flange, or Come As You Are minus Kurt’s eerie Small Clone warble: those riffs simply wouldn’t bend your ear in the same way. And that brings us to the quartet of pedals in front of you, some of which riff on some old classics (MXR Phase 95, Pigtronix Quantum Time Modulator) and some that bring something entirely different to the table (DigiTech Nautila, Boss MO-2). And with that, let’s bring on the mods…

SUMMAR Y

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Best buy award


pedal round-up

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Reinvigorate your riffs and chords with these four flavours of flexible flange, chorus, vibe, phase, and much more besides…

Boss MO-2 Multi Overtone

£119

Pigtronix Quantum Time Modulator

Mo Modulations, No problems

Pushing the envelope filter

A

A


ll-analogue manipulation is the name of this piggy’s game, which delivers both chorus and proper pitch vibrato. The clever bit is that each pedal’s depth and rate can be controlled either by picking dynamics, or a regular modulation control, or a mix of the two. That makes it a handy stomper to leave on for a song, only to hit a big chord and have the modulation shimmer at that crucial moment. A series of fabled bucket brigade chips gives the tones a darker, syrupy CE-2/Small Clone vibe – it can add a little hiss, but neither setting messes with your core sound. A great find for pedal boffins.

SUMMAR Y

SUMMAR Y

t its core, the MO-2 is a pitch-shifter with adjustable modulation, but there’s more to it than that. The MO-2 is fuelled by Boss’s player-responsive Multi-Dimensional Processing. So, while its octaver/rotary sounds approach EHX’s Organ Machines, it blends with your guitar sound rather than emulating a different instrument. Three octave modes (octave up; octave up and dry; and octave-up, octave-down and dry) are paired with a modulation texture that blends chorus, vibrato and rotary. It sounds a little plastic-y on its own, but add some effects and a splash of gain to the mix and it really comes alive.

£229

At a Glance Type Chorus/flange, phaser,

pitch-shifter/modulation and chorus/vibe pedals

Power requirements:

DigiTech: 9V power supply (not supplied); MXR: 9V power supply (supplied); Boss: 9V battery, 9V power supply (not supplied); Pigtronix: 9V or 18V power supply (supplied) Contact: Sound Technology 01462 480000 www.digitech.com Westside Distribution 0141 248 4812 www.jimdunlop.com Roland UK 01792 702701 www.roland.co.uk John Hornby Skewes 01132 865 381 www.jhs.co.uk

Features sound quality value for money build quality Usability overall rating january 2017 Total Guitar

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t h e ga s station Fitting new pickups can really enhance your guitar’s tone

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Fix Your GUITAR

Switching pickups Want to give your guitar a tonal overhaul? We’ll show you how to swap out your old coils for some shiny new pups! Words: Ed Mitchell

L

ast month, we showed you the basics of how to solder stuff together, and also promised we’d talk you through the process of retrofitting a set of new pickups to your electric guitar – well, now that time has come! Learning to fit new components to your guitar is a real time- and money-saver. It saves time, because you don’t have to drag your gear all the to your local music shop or luthier’s holdout and then wait a few days or whatever to


get the stuff back. Money? Well, you fix it, you don’t pay a repair bill, of course! Buying a set of new pickups that will offer a noticeable boost in your guitar’s tone can cost a couple of hundred quid or more. Having them fitted by a tech will add upwards of £50. It can also help you better understand how your guitar works, so there really are many reasons why doing the job yourself makes sense! So, stick on your safety goggles, plug in your soldering iron and let’s get stuck in!

what you need

Soldering iron with stand and cleaning sponge 60/40 rosin core solder Helping Hands Solder sucker Solder mat Safety glasses Snips

Skill level Intermediate

What’s The Deal With… Coil taps? For years now, guitar players have taken to describing any device that turns a humbucker into a single coil as a ‘coil tap’. Nope. Some guitars do indeed have coil-taps, but many others have a coil-splitter. And there’s a big difference. In the case of the coil-splitter, an onboard switch, generally a push/pull function on a tone knob, switches one coil of a humbucker (which has two coils, natch) off. A humbucker with one coil down is now a single coil… ’nuff said. In a coil tap, the control dials out a chunk of the pickup’s copper winding to reduce its output which in turn gives it more of a single-coil voice – taps can also be found on some single-coil pickups, again to reduce output. Both options do a grand job. The bottom line is you’re getting two sounds from a single pickup but hey, it’s good to know the difference… even if the technical jargon gets a bit muddled!

fix your guitar

1

Gather all your kit together on your work bench (aka your dining table). We talked you through all the gear you need last time but it’s also listed opposite for quick reference. Before we start, make sure your work surface is protected by your solder mat, open a window for ventilation and put on your safety glasses – yes we mean it!

2

Before we can install the new pickups, the old ones need to come out. Locate the control plate. On a Strat or Tele that plate will be on the front, but our guitar has it on the back. Remove the plate - carefully storing the screws – then have a good look around inside. If the plate won’t pop out, try sticking some tape on it and pulling.

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3

Take a good look at the wiring inside the guitar. Before you do owt else, make a note of where the pickup wires are. You can follow them with your fingers. In the old days we’d draw a diagram of where the wires were soldered. These days, you can just take a few snaps of the details on your phone.

4

5

6

You would normally remove the strings from the guitar before swapping out your pickups. You can loosen them and try to keep them out of the way but it’s not really worth the annoyance. If you’re fitting new pickups, it makes little sense to refit old strings, but whatever you decide to do, get strings out of your way…

Eyeball the wiring diagram that came with the pickups. If you didn’t get one – say the pickups are second hand – a quick Google search should sort you out. Hopefully, the pickup wiring in your old and new pups will be the same. If not, you’ll have to work out which are the hot and earth wires before you proceed.

Before you unscrew the pickups, desolder their wiring from the controls. Take your time. You don’t want to scorch the guitar’s finish or any other wiring. Heat the spot where the wire is soldered to the pot or switch. When the solder melts, gently pull the wire to free it. Don’t yank the bugger, as hot solder can splash back on you! JANUARY 2017 Total Guitar

t h e ga s station

7

With all the pickup wires removed, you can now unscrew the old pickups. Start with the bridge unit. Carefully remove the screws, with the correct size screwdriver to avoid wrecking the heads, then pull the pickup from the guitar. Repeat the process for the neck pickup – if you’re replacing that too – then prepare the new pickups.

8

9

It’s time to install the pickups, wires first. Threading the wiring through the body and into the control cavity can be a pain, so instead thread some solder through the body until one end is in the pickup rout and the other is in the control cavity, wrap it around the new wire and then slowly pull it through. Trust us, it’s much easier!

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11

12

‘Tin’ the ends of the new pickup wires away from the guitar. Your Helping Hands are your amigo here. Apply the tip of the soldering iron to the end of the wire and allow the solder to flow onto it. As we mentioned last time, a good coating of solder should be shiny not dull so keep your eye on the quality control at all times.

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Heat up your iron and don your safety goggles. Now, with the help of your wiring diagram establish which wires are to be connected to ground and which are hot. Apply heat to the tabs with the tip of your iron. When the area is hot introduce the solder. Next reheat the solder and dip the end of the wire into it and hold…


Install the new neck pickup first. Once it’s screwed in place, fit the bridge unit. If you fit the bridge pickup first you’ll make it harder to thread the neck pup’s wiring through the body as it has to pass through the bridge pickup rout. Make sure you know which pickup wire is which, if in doubt, distinguish one with some tape first!

Allow the hot solder joint to cool naturally before giving the wire a gentle tug to make sure it’s secure. Blowing doesn’t help – the moisture in your breath can damage the integrity of the connection. Once done, you can test the new pickups by connecting to your amp and tapping the pups with a screwdriver – now to rock!

the playlist

The Playlist AFI guitarist Jade Puget on Stray Cat strutting, struggling with Hendrix, and soloing by himself…

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he first song I remember hearing Off The Wall – Michael Jackson

“My mom listened to a lot of soul, R&B and Motown, so I remember hearing early Michael Jackson, Jackson 5, a lot of Prince, some Temptations, some Cream. I remember the song Off The Wall – when I think of my childhood, I remember hearing that all the time, so it must have percolated and permeated my brain!”

The song I wish I’d written… The Sound Of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel

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“I remember when I was a kid, being really impressed with Paul Simon’s guitar playing – I still am! He’s one of the most underrated players. His fingerpicking and his chording, and the way he writes is just incredible. And what just stuck with me i s hearing The Sound Of Silence for the first time… I always remember being struck by his guitar playing.”

The song I could never quite master… Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix “I don’t really try to play that much of other people’s stuff, but I did learn Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix, but I couldn’t quite get it, so I sort’ve took Jimi’s version and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version and kind of hacked it up so I could at least get the nuances. That’s my favourite Hendrix song, and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version is really beautiful, too – so it turned out really cool!”

Hear it!

Listen to Jade’s playlist on Spotify bit.ly/tg288puget

To introduce someone to our band I’d play them… Bleed Black – AFI

“We’ve had an eclectic mix of stuff over the years that really runs the gamut, but the first thing that comes to mind is one off Sing The Sorrow called Bleed Black - because that has tempo, flow… it has half-time, melodic bits… it kinda has a bit of everything of us.”

The song I play when trying out new gear… Sultans Of Swing – Dire Straits “If I was sitting down with some new gear, I’d just do some general shredding, which I like to do, even though I don’t bring a lot of that into AFI, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for that type of band. I’ll just sit here for an hour and solo by myself! But also, I’ll play the first solo section of Sultans Of Swing [laughs] - that’s such a beautiful guitar sound, y’know? And you don’t want some super-heavy guitar tone to test stuff out!”

My favourite guitar solo is… Angel Of Death – Slayer

My favourite song to cover… The Hanging Garden – The Cure “Either Ziggy Stardust, or The Hanging Garden by the Cure – which is a really old one [AFI covered it on 1998’s A Fire Inside EP]. I was just talking to Davey [Havok] about that one the other day, actually, and about putting it back in [to the set], because it’s such a fun thing to do.” Total Guitar january 2017

“There’s a couple, because stylistically you can do so many things in a guitar solo. One of my favourites of all time is Slayer’s Angel Of Death, because it’s just insane… and then it just gets more insane as it goes on until it’s SO over t he top.” AFI’s new album, AFI (The Blood Album), is released on 20 January 2017 on Concord Music Group records.

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