Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i Guitar World

I JUST FINISHED judging a music competition called “Unsigned Only,” which is designed for solo artists and bands around the world who are looking for exposure, recognition and a chance to get noticed by industry pros. This year, I judged the Rock and Blues categories. First of all, in case you’re worried about “the state of guitar,” have no fear; I heard so many great solos, clever new sounds and original approaches — it’s safe to say the guitar is in good hands, figuratively and literally! Secondly, we judges were asked to comment on individual songs, and this gave me the opportunity to whip out an old chestnut I’ve been preaching since the great Stevie Ray Vaughan walked the earth: “If you’re gonna play a I-IV-V tune, you have no…

“Like a Texas blues musician, I wanted to kick down the doors and burn down the building” THE BLUES HAS been an essential part of Austin-based Jackie Venson’s repertoire since she started playing guitar almost a decade ago. She specifically embraced the sheer intensity of electric Texas-based blues. “Every time I hear a Texas blues player, it’s just really strong,” Venson says. “They have a way of just commanding the entire room and just melting your face off. But it’s not a shreddy kind of melt your face off. It’s an intensity that only Texans have — I swear.” Despite this, she hadn’t made a strictly blues-centric album until her latest offering, Love Transcends. After a few years of playing the guitar, she had started “happily” wandering sonically, incorporating and…

STREET PRICE: $399 MANUFACTURER: Hughes & Kettner, hughes-and-kettner.com A built-in 50-watt amplifier and speaker output jack allows the AmpMan to drive an external speaker cabinet. Two fully independent channels allow users to instantly switch between clean/overdrive and classic rock (Classic) or saturated high-gain distortion (Modern). The built-in Red Box provides eight separate speaker cabinet simulation settings, with different settings stored for each channel. Pro-quality features include a built-in adjustable noise gate and footswitch-selectable FX loop with individual on/off settings in Smart mode. THE BOTTOM LINE: The Hughes & Kettner Amp-Man Classic and Modern are equally at home on the performance stage and recording studio, providing a wealth of excellent tones and highly versatile performance features…

I GOT RHYTHM, PART 23 Fun with compound meters LAST TIME, WE learned about 6 8 and 128 meters, which are basically eighth-note triplets in 2 4 and 44, respectively. These are known as compound meters, for which the time following each main, or “strong,” beat — where you tap your foot — is divided into three equally spaced triplets that are counted numerically. In 6 8 you count “one two three, four five six, and in 128 you count “one two three, four five six, sev eight nine, ten lev twelve.” Today, we’ll look at another compound meter — 9 8 — and also a cool, popular drum groove that combines two rhythmic elements that we explored previously — the tripletdriven shuffle feel and cut time, also known as…

“When you start to copy other people, you’re really chasing your tail” My early influences… There were two main guys for me; Eddie Van Halen and Angus Young. Angus was the first to get me really crazy excited about the guitar when I was a kid. I got a copy of Back in Black when I was about 8, and it really hit me and connected with me right off the bat. I was already dabbling with the guitar prior to that, but once I got that album, I began to take it seriously. A few weeks later, I got a copy of the first Van Halen album and that was it! I got my first real six-string... It was a red mini acoustic guitar that I used to bang…

FOR JOHN PETRUCCI, THE QUESTION ISN’T SO MUCH, “WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE PANDEMIC?” RATHER, IT’S “WHAT DIDN’T YOU DO?” EVER SINCE GLOBAL LOCKDOWNS KEPT MUSICIANS OF EVERY STRIPE OFF THE ROAD FOR MUCH OF 2020 AND WELL INTO THIS YEAR, THE DREAM THEATER GUITARIST HAS BEEN BUSIER AND MORE PROLIFIC THAN EVER. HE WROTE, RECORDED AND RELEASED HIS SECOND SOLO ALBUM, TERMINAL VELOCITY; SOON AFTER, HE GOT TOGETHER WITH HIS LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT SUPERGROUP MEMBER (BASSIST TONY LEVIN, DREAM THEATER KEYBOARDIST JORDAN RUDESS AND FORMER DT DRUMMER MIKE PORTNOY) TO BANG OUT LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT 3, THEIR FIRST RECORD IN 22 YEARS. THE GUITARIST ALSO PARTNERED WITH IRON SMOKE DISTILLERY TO INTRODUCE HIS FIRST SIGNATURE BOURBON WHISKEY (ROCK THE BARREL), AND BE EVEN CAME OUT WITH HIS OWN…

AT THE START of 2020, Chris Robinson and his brother Rich were anxiously preparing for a massive world tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their multi-platinum debut, 1990’s Shake Your Money Maker. The brothers had reconciled the year prior after several years not talking to each other, mostly due to a dispute over band ownership. They assembled a new version of the band, and initial performances appeared to reaffirm their passion for playing once again as the Black Crowes. However, COVID swiftly postponed future plans. But the Robinson brothers didn’t sit idly by. They teamed up with original producer George Drakoulias to create a remastered version of the album — which features the hits “Jealous Again,” “Twice As Hard,” “She Talks to Angels” and a cover of Otis Redding’s…

IN ADDITION TO offering a panoply of popular digital and tube amplifiers, Fender’s amp team has been firing on all cylinders by keenly reenvisioning many of their legendary tube amps, much less some overlooked original models. Speaking of which, guitarists won’t have to dig much further for these buried treasures than Fender’s ’68 Custom Pro Reverb and ’68 Custom Vibro Champ Reverb — two silver-paneled combo amps that have been totally revamped from their vintage counterparts in distinguishing ways that will appeal to many gigging musicians and the home-recording cognoscenti respectively. While I haven’t had the opportunity to check out the diminutive Vibro Champ Reverb, I did have the pleasure of reviewing the workhorse 40-watt ’68 Custom Pro Reverb, which combines the clean headroom of Fender’s Twin Reverb with the…

STREET PRICE: $1,799.99 MANUFACTURER: Jackson Guitars, jacksonguitars.com The multi-scale length neck with slanted frets ranges from 25.5 inches (high E string) to 27 inches (low B string) to provide accurate intonation and ideal string tension. A pair of Fishman Fluence Modern PRF-MH8 ceramic bridge and alnico neck humbuckers provide active and passive voices activated with the master tone control’s push/pull switch. THE BOTTOM LINE: Designed from the ground up as a high-performance 7-string model, the Jackson Pro Series Dinky DK Modern HT7 MS delivers stellar seven-string tones, outstanding playing comfort and a surprisingly familiar feel that will surely appease six-string players.…

WAHS UP! Anatomy of a slide solo in open E tuning, part 3 IN THE LAST two columns, we’ve been analyzing a slide guitar solo I played in open E tuning over a great backing track by guitarist Jim Oblon, examining two choruses at a time in each column. After playing the first two choruses of the solo, I engage a wah pedal for the next two choruses. This month, we’ll take a look at the fifth and sixth solo choruses, which also feature the use of the wah. To review, my guitar is in open E tuning (low to high: E, B, E, G , B, E), and I use a glass “bottle”-style slide, in this case an original Coricidin bottle from 1970, for nearly the entire solo, with…

SIXTH SENSE Using two-note forms based on 6th intervals to solo over “Electric Gypsy” THIS MONTH, I’D like to take a look at my approach to soloing on “Electric Gypsy,” a tune I wrote and originally recorded for my 1994 album, Ear Ecstasy, as a tribute to one of my biggest musical influences, the immortal Jimi Hendrix. The chord progression of the tune’s “verse” section is a simple, repeating four-bar pattern utilizing the chords D, A, Bm, and G, one chord per bar. As you can see, these are pretty straightforward chord changes, but sometimes it can be a little tricky playing over a progression built primarily from major chords. So let’s take a look at some note choice and phrasing possibilities. FIGURE 1 illustrates a 16-bar solo played over…

GUITAR: 1974 Gibson Les Paul Custom (bridge pickup), Bridge Volume: 10, Bridge Tone: 10 AMPS: 1975-76 Marshall JMP model 1959 Super Lead MKII 100-watt head (Presence: 5, Bass: 2, Middle: 6, Treble: 7, Volume I: 6, Volume II: 0, Input I top) into two Marshall 1960A and 1960B 4x12 cabinets with Altec 417-8H 12-inch speakers EFFECTS: MXR Distortion + (Output: 10, Distortion: 4), MXR Ten Band Graphic EQ (31.2: -2, 62.5: 0, 125: +3, 250: +7, 500: +10, 1k: +6, 2k: +3, 4k: -2, 8k: 0, 16k: +3), AMS DMX 15-80S Digital Delay (added during mix, settings unknown) STRINGS/TUNING: GHS Boomers .010-.046/Standard PICK: Fender Medium (351 shape)…

1 “Sick of Spiraling” Bachelor The new Bachelor album is truly Jay Som and Palehound at their most shreddingest yet! Cruising indie rock for the poet’s soul. 2 “Didn’t Want It” Glitterer An anthemic rocker with a whole lot of sunburnt fuzz left on the driveway after last night’s house party. 3 “Bat Macumba” Os Mutantes The inventors of all things psychedelia. Groove, style and tone for days. 4 “Spiderlegs” Danny Malone Acoustic glitter and homemade break-beats for songwriters who dream in tape. 5 “I Was a Lover” TV on the Radio Chopped-up, razor-sharp ruminations from the celestial realm. No moment on Return to Cookie Mountain goes unnoticed.…

IN THIS LESSON, I’d like to demonstrate how I play all the signature themes, riffs and rhythm parts in the new Dream Theater song “Invisible Monster,” which appears on our latest album, A View from the Top of the World. The track was born out of our desire to compose a song that’s played at mid-tempo. After we had written a lot of songs for the record that were very proggy, very dark, instrumentally driven, long and bombastic, with lots of playing from each band member, it was drummer Mike Mangini’s idea to write a mid-tempo piece that would balance well against the rest of the material. So this song is intended as a shift in gears to another side of the band’s music. That said, the song came naturally…

THE INDUSTRY’S VERY first “amp in a box” products (i.e. sophisticated devices in a pedal-format that provide a wide variety of tones for direct recording or plugged into the front of an amp) starting appearing on the market just about three decades ago. Introduced in 1991, the Hughes & Kettner Tubeman was a highly acclaimed product that proved that a small, compact device could truly deliver genuine amp tones. The Tubeman was the first of several “amp in a box” products introduced by Hughes & Kettner over the years, with each new product improving upon an already great thing. So, here we are 30 years later, and Hughes & Kettner has introduced an entirely new generation of these products: the AmpMan Classic and AmpMan Modern. Simply put, all those years…

STREET PRICE: $1,399.99 MANUFACTURER: Fender, fender.com The single Celestion Neo Creamback speaker utilizes a neodymium magnet that greatly reduces weight but offers up plenty of shimmer and growl in its focused voice. The reimagined ’68 Custom Pro Reverb reduces the cabinet size for portability and weight, and is now a single-channel combo with an added middle tone control. THE BOTTOM LINE The updated Fender ’68 Custom Pro Reverb is an impressively refined combo that meets the needs of guitarists who want half the firepower but all of the tone of higher-headroom amps.…

“WHY THE BIGHORN?” It’s a fair question posed by owner and builder, Connor Baldacci, about his flagship guitar in his online blog for his nascent company, Baldacci Guitars. Having worked the Cheyenne Frontier Days festival in Wyoming, Baldacci noticed that generally, most artists played either Teles or a combination of Les Pauls and PRS guitars, and this observation eventually became the impetus for his design of the Bighorn Standard — a sleek, offset guitar that merges the simplicity of a Telecaster but also gracefully possesses the double-cut, carved maple top refinement of a PRS. But if I were to answer Baldacci’s initial query, I know that there are players who want the real deal (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but there will always be players who want something familiar…

STROLL WITH ME How to play the slide-infused “Soul Stroll,” part 2 LAST MONTH, WE examined the “A” section of a tune I wrote and recorded with the Koch-Marshall Trio called “Soul Stroll,” which is one of the tracks on our latest release, From the Up’Nah. This time, we’ll look at the “B” section. “Soul Stroll” is built from a two-guitar part, one that lays down the rhythm track and the other adding a single-note melody, which I perform with a slide. FIGURE 1 shows the underlying rhythm part. In bar 1, while holding a B5 power chord on the A and D strings, I add a little descending bass figure on the low E string and repeatedly play the same one-beat figure, which is based on a 16th-note rhythm.…

ALTHOUGH RANDY RHOADS had previously played on the Hollywood club scene for several years and recorded two albums with Quiet Riot (released only in Japan), most of the world did not discover the phenomenal young guitarist until after he started working with Ozzy Osbourne in 1980. “Crazy Train,” the first single from Osbourne’s debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, introduced Rhoads to millions of new fans, and the guitarist made a great first impression with his blazing technical solos and buzzsaw riffs. The midrange-heavy tone of Rhoads’ guitar on “Crazy Train” divides many metal guitar tone aficionados, with detractors arguing that it sounds small and boxy while supporters counter that it fits the track perfectly and brings Rhoads’ playing rightfully front and center in the mix. I personally agree with…