Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Total Guitar

As you read this, you’ll either be gearing up for the final days before Christmas, or hopefully be using some welcome free time just after! Many of us feel like we don’t have as much time as we’d like to play, but the Christmas break is perfect for grabbing your guitar and figuring out some stuff. That might be some techniques, songs, getting a bit more in depth with the gear you’ve owned for a while (or have newly acquired!). If that’s the case, then this month’s cover feature is for you: 15 lessons based around your gear and the features you may have overlooked but, most importantly, we’ve coupled them with technique lessons. So, give them a try and make your gear work for you! Sadly, as 2017 comes…

1 “This is my signature model with Chapman Guitars: a ML3 BEA in Beersmoke finish. This is brand new for 2017 – I’ve been very fortunate to design two guitars with Chapman in the time that I’ve been working with them.” 2 “It’s got a T-type body – a two-piece alder – which is painted black. There’s a 5mm Canadian flamed maple top, which is really nice. It’s a three-piece padauk neck, an ebony ’board, stainless steel frets and we’ve got hipshot locking tuners. It’s quite a chunky neck. The old guitar [ML1 BEA] had a thinner neck, whereas I wanted something chunkier as I play a lot of riffier stuff on this guitar. It’s nice to have a fat neck to grab hold of.” 3 “Pickups-wise I’ve done something…

This month we’re looking at a couple of seminal riffs from Rage Against The Machine’s ever-inventive guitar slinger, the inimitable Tom Morello. Released in 1992, Killing In The Name was the lead single from the band’s eponymous debut. Famed for its brutally uncompromising outro, Killing In The Name is their best-known song, achieving an unlikely UK Christmas Number 1 position in 2009 following an online campaign against The X Factor TV show’s apparent stranglehold over the festive top spot. It’s a ‘must know’ riff for every rock guitarist. Key to the guitar part is drop D tuning (DADGBE) – where you lower the pitch of your guitar’s sixth string by two semitones to a D note. This creates a heavier sound and also allows you to play those weighty powerchords…

It was a simple recipe, and Malcolm Young used it for nearly four decades. He had a sunburst Strat in the early days (with Angus on an ES-335), but the torch was passed from George Young and co-producer/fellow Easybeats guitarist Henry Vanda in the form of a 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird that would be Malcolm’s mainstay: ‘The Beast’. Mal wasn’t precious about modding it; the cherry finish was stripped back to maple around the time of ’77’s Let There Be Rock tour. And with the guitarist leaning solely on the TV Jones bridge pickup, the neck and middle were taken out too. Gretsch’s Custom Shop recreated the guitar with the Malcolm Young Salute model in 2017 – complete with battle marks earned from decades on the road. His ealry tone…

Kenny Wayne is a man who knows all about how to get the tone that he wants. You don’t get several Dumbles built for you without a good reason! The Louisiana bluesman has clearly taken the time to understand the engineering behind the gear he chooses, and after 27 years in the business that means he has an immense amount of knowledge that all players can learn from. On this tour, he’s chosen a lighter rig for the European leg. It also means that with a fly-in rig for a player who owns originals and reissues for some of the key components, there’s sometimes a compromise or two to be made. But Kenny is cooking up a pretty killer tonal recipe here regardless. Let’s have a rummage and find out…

Carlos Santana’s soaring lead lines are legendary. His melodic playing style is the result of great phrasing, a rock solid sense of timing and accurate string bending – all of which are epitomised in this transcription of Santana’s Fleetwood Mac cover. Look at the solo section and you’ll see how sustained notes punctuate each lick. A great quick fix for your soloing technique – just add long notes! It’s easy to play too many fast licks, but they can sound meaningless and boring. Using them sparingly sounds impressive and leaves your audience wanting more. There’s only one bar of constant 16th notes at the end of the solo. This laid-back style is also evident in Santana’s use of vibrato, which is subtle and relaxed throughout. SOUND ADVICE Everything you need…

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…

Brothers In Arms is famous for Mark Knopfler’s gently overdriven, beautifully melodic electric lead guitar. Here, however, we’re looking at Rockschool’s version, which has been rearranged for acoustic. It’s important when playing chord melodies (using chords to outline the tune) to bring out the top line. It doesn’t take a huge amount of effort and you don’t need to hammer the strings hard – just a fine adjustment to pick the relevant notes a little louder will do the trick. You’ll need to play either fingerstyle or with a hybrid ‘pick and fingers’ technique to do this. There are several passing chords in Rockschool’s arrangement that aren’t on the original. The second chord in bar 8 is one – an inversion of a D chord. An inversion is where a…

For years, Blackstar’s best-selling HT Venue range of valve amplifiers has been the benchmark in the highly-contested mid-price market, where the Venue amps have become go-to favourites for working players. So, replacing or upgrading them becomes a nail-biting challenge. There’s the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, but for Blackstar, standing still has never been an option – it’s why the company was formed in the first place. So, after nearly three years and possibly the most intensive R&D project in the company’s 10-year history, here we are with the new, improved MkII HT Venue, and the amp that could well become the range’s bestseller, the HT Venue Club 40 1x12 combo. The new HT Club 40 looks reassuringly familiar, with the same front-facing control layout,…

Spoiler warning: we are huge fans of Shergold’s Masquerader. The revival of the British brand, under the ownership of Barnes & Mullins and creative stewardship of Patrick James Eggle, has thus far been restricted to the Masquerader’s S-style double-cut, but that’s fine by us. The mahogany body and Seymour Duncan pickups are ever-present but there are a variety of spec options, particularly with regard to pickup configurations: there’s the awesome SM01-SD, with its Seymour Duncan Trembucker/P90 combo; the super-versatile SM02-SD with a Trembucker in the bridge and two SSL-6R single coils in neck and middle positions; while the SM03-SD has a three single coils, with two vintage SSL-2 singles and a Seymour Duncan Hot Tele lead pickup in the bridge. This month’s Masquerader, the SM04-SD, is a dual-humbucker model, complete…

CHRIS BIRD For much of this month, Chris has been widdling away, jamming along to Phil Capone’s transcription of Santana’s Black Magic Woman (turn to p64 to find the full tab). As a proud long-time PRS owner the big man has just the right guitar after all. “For my life, though, I can’t think why I didn’t opt for one with bird inlays”, he says. MICHAEL ASTLEY-BROWN This issue, Mike experimented with DigiTech’s cunning SDRUM pedal, which produces drum sounds from your guitar strums – a process that left his six-string brain discombobulated. Throw in some long looks of wonder at PRS’s updated – and hypnotic – Multi-Foil finish, and he was left in a proper gear-induced daze. ROB LAING It’s that festive time of year but Rob’s a little…

“MY FIRST GUITAR WAS A SILVERTONE. IT  WAS LIKE PLAYING A CHEESE GRATER...” The first cut is the deepest “My father had a really nice guitar when I was young but mine was not so good. My father had a 1963 Gibson Hummingbird then right after that he got a nice, old Martin D-28. But my guitar was a Silvertone. It was like playing a cheese grater, the strings were high and it hurt my fingers. I was about six or seven.” Dream on “I wanted my father’s guitar when I was a kid. I loved it, I loved the old brown Gibson case with the pink lining. I loved the smell of the polish, I still remember all of that. My father took me to…

EMPEROR OF SAND MASTODON Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher are really on their A-games with lead and riffs here, taking us on a journey into fire on Jaguar God and going super-size anthemic for Clandestiny. It’s also their strongest in terms of vocals dynamics. For an album concerned with death lurking in its conceptual shadows, it’s wonderfully life-affirming; Mastodon are still very much alive and kicking as one of our generation’s greatest rock bands. Download Streambreather HOW DID WE GET SO DARK? ROYAL BLOOD Difficult second album? Nope, definitely not here. In fact, on this outing Mike Kerr is bringing an even, fatter tone to the party with his hybrid bass/guitar sound. There are riffs to match; Hook Line And Sinker sounds like Them Crooked Vultures channelled straight…

Kurt Ballou may not be a household name, but his influence is far reaching. As the driving force behind metalcore pioneers Converge, he’s helped push heavy music in a new direction and in doing so he has cemented his importance for a new generation of musicians. After being made redundant from his job as a biomedical engineer in the 90s, he dusted himself off and built God City Studios, which relocated in 2003 to Salem, Massachusetts, and has become a mecca for heavier underground artists. One of his first recording projects was Cave In’s ’98 seminal LP Until Your Heart Stops, another album that helped define the sound of the-then embryonic metalcore scene. His more recent credits are no less impressive, including everything from Irish math-rockers BATS, to post-metal supergroup…

Taken from Sheeran’s second studio album, x, this track was originally released in 2014 and was subsequently remixed by Rudimental and released as a joint single in 2015. It’s Ed’s original version that we’re looking at here – a quick and fairly easy tune to add to your repertoire. Ed plays Bloodstream with a capo on the 4th fret and in an unusual E7sus4 open tuning. It’s very easy to adopt this tuning; all you have to do is lower the pitch of your guitar’s third string (G) by three semitones to an E note – resulting in EADEBE. The chords are incredibly easy; two are played hitting open strings only! For an authentic rendition, use the fingerpicking outlined in the tab. Less experienced guitarists can simply strum along, playing…

RISING UP New documentary celebrates acoustic mavericks There are talented acoustic virtuosos spread far and wide around the world, yet they still seem to be the unsung heroes of guitar playing. Now a new documentary is aiming to shine the spotlight on some of the world’s finest fingerstylists. Acoustic Uprising is directed by Australian guitarist Drew Roller and features insight from a stellar cast including Tommy Emmanuel, Kaki King, Mike Dawes, Newton Faulkner, Jon Gomm, Thomas Leeb and Andy McKee. The film explores the mindset of the one-player composer and what drives them to dedicate their lives to musical expression through a rich knowledge of technique. “I’ll never forget the first time I witnessed a fingerstyle performance, the ceiling instantly become the floor and I became obsessed,” says Roller on…

Welcome to the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome*) Station! Every issue, 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 CURATION 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. FACE-VALUE REVIEWS We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge it on whether it looks good, sounds good and plays well – not by the name on the headstock. NO SNAKE OIL You won’t find us…

ORANGE ROCKER 32 COMBO Orange’s super-groovy Rocker 32 combo may cost a little more, but it is a 2x10 and true stereo that opens up many intriguing possibilities. VOX AC30VR Vox’s AC30VR features the clever Valve Reactor output stage, using a 12AX7 as a small output valve to produce proper valve dynamics and warmth. FENDER HOT ROD DELUXE III The latest version of Fender’s long-running mid-price combo is a scorching three-channel powerhouse, featuring a beefy Celestion G12 speaker and Fender’s classic spring reverb effect.…

If 2017 has proved one thing to us – apart from unpleasant political fallout and the unlikely comeback of bum bags – it’s that the mid-priced acoustic market is one of the most exciting, gear-packed places to hang around right now. With the quality on offer for the money, the need to trade up again to the high end is becoming a little questionable. And Sigma has proved to be the dark horse in that regard; still a surprisingly unsung brand that began as an affordable offshoot of Martin and came back as a separate entity, albeit with its estranged big papa’s shape influence and a continued commitment to quality touches for the price point. Here, though, Sigma seems to be looking over at Gibson’s LG parlour-sized flat tops for…

Whereas analogue delays work via a bucket-brigade chip passing a charge through a capacitor line, digital delays record a sample of audio and then replay it. This means that they have a great deal of flexibility in their application, not to mention a distinctively pristine tone. Many pitch-shifting effects, modulations and loopers are simply special-purpose digital delays under the hood. Today, however, our concern is delay chips doing what they do best: making us sound like stadium-rock heroes, ambient space cadets or masters of post-rock atmospherics. The power of processors in stomp-boxes has shot up in recent years, so we’ve picked several of the best multi-function compact digital delays that you can find on the market and dived headlong into a sea of repeats. Boss DD-7 £155 CLASSIC? WHO, ME?…

1 DON’T FORGET THE DOWN Even if you’re hitting the strings with upstrokes, you should still do ‘ghost’ downstrokes to help with timing and feel. 2 UP UP UP Pick a little harder to put some ‘snap’ into your upstrokes and help emphasise the highest-sounding strings. 3 RELEASE YOUR GRIP Release pressure on the strings, keeping your fingers in contact as you do. This helps give a short, snappy ‘staccato’ sound. 4 NO OPEN STRINGS! You can’t silence open strings using the ‘grip release’ technique, so play only fretted notes if you want a snappy sound.…

In the 1960s, America grew a style of music that would become a forerunner to the punk scene of the following decade. Emerging from rock ’n’ roll roots, garage rock is a raw, loose style, named with the idea that grassroots bands were practising in their garages, not big studio spaces. Much like punk, technique and production values were of little importance, though some players such as the influential Link Wray were quite accomplished. Acts like The Sonics, The 13th Floor Elevators and The Stooges popularised the genre and there was a resurgence in the early 2000s when bands like The Hives, The Strokes and The White Stripes were influenced by the early pioneers. This month’s fast-paced garage rock-style backing track uses some easy chords and an infectious riff for…

Otis Rush came to prominence playing on the West Side Chicago blues scene in the late 1950s. A left-handed player, in the early days he would be seen playing right-handed guitars flipped over – and this is key to his distinctive phrasing. Played this way, the treble strings are ‘on top’, meaning string bends on these high notes must be ‘pulled’ rather than ‘pushed’, and every chord, scale and lick has a different feel all together. Even when playing real left-handed guitars he prefers ‘upside down’ stringing, but, thankfully, there’s no need to go to such extremes to get an authentic Otis vibe – just be aware of his method and you can get started with this month’s lesson. The first three examples are inspired by Otis’ late 50s/early 60s-style…

“YOU HAVE TO EVOLVE INTO THE ARTIST YOU’RE MEANT TO BE. I’VE BEGGED, STOLEN AND BORROWED FROM SO MANY PEOPLE...” “You can’t separate me from my music. The two of us are one,” says veteran Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel. Throughout a career spanning over five decades (he joined his family’s band on the road while still a child) he’s kept to the mantra of keeping things simple; with no on-stage persona, gimmicks or PR stunts. It’s just him and a guitar, and that’s how it’s always been. “The bottom line is, you’ve gotta have good songs. You could have all the ability in the world and a bunch of mediocre songs – nobody’s gonna care,” he says. His early role models, Chet Atkins and Hank Marvin, taught him the power…

Developed as a tool to help dial in custom EQs for artists, Blackstar’s Infinite Shape Feature (ISF) is a patented technology. The passive three-knob guitar EQ network of bass, middle and treble controls is a fundamental part of traditional guitar amp topology. Classic American and British designs have different versions, which helps create their unique voicings. The ISF control allows you to adjust the response of the tone control network between these traditional voicings, so you can find and create your own signature sound. ISF is a passive circuit, so it responds musically, simultaneously moving bass, mid and treble responses while, the tone controls remain fully interactive.The ISF control is variable between all the traditional responses allowing you to design your own sound.…

The first song I remember... Tears Of A Clown – Smokey Robinson & The Miracles “My mum used to listen to a lot of Motown when we were kids. I remember vividly being in the back of the car as the tape player blasted this song out on near full volume. Tape. Yes I’m that old.” The song that made me want to write… Let Me In – REM “It was probably something from Monster by REM. When I was young I initially had no interest in guitar or bands in general. I was more into electronic music with artists like the Prodigy. I used to hate hearing these songs coming through the wall that separated my room from my sister’s. She was constantly playing REM, Marion et al. One…