Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2020 i Total Guitar

Welcome to one of the most ambitious issues of Total Guitar we’ve ever made – our rundown of the Greatest Guitarists Of All Time. It’s a phrase I use with trepidation, because I do feel that the creative endeavour of music can’t really be measured. A guitarist’s influence? It’s a subjective topic. Popularity, maybe? Well, 2019’s end-of-year album chart is dominated by pop; guitar music doesn’t feature heavily. The all-time best-selling albums list offers a little more food for thought, but if it was the source for our greatest guitarists we’d only end up cherry picking. Clearly we had to bite the bullet, pin our colours to the mast and make our own list. We began by compiling a list’ of 250+ guitarists – a bit of a problem, if…

“I did a version of Hammer To Fall on one of my Instagram micro-concerts. I invited people to jam along with that. There’s a hashtag (#jamwithbri) and loads of people did [jam along], so it’s great! The hashtags are great because it enables me to go and look for the interactions that people have entered into. “Hammer To Fall... I think it’s about attitude, really. Most people can play an A chord [laughs], if they’ve been playing the guitar for any length of time. That riff is an A chord and then two fingers added on to turn it into a D chord with an A bass. That’s the riff, really. “That’s all it is. But it’s about attitude. It’s about how you hit it and the emphasis on which…

Hand-made by Brian and his father in the mid-60s, the Red Special is amongst the most iconic guitars ever made, and the ingenious pickup-switching system the pair designed allows it to produce some unconventional yet instantly recognisable sounds. We asked Simon Bradley, the man who quite literally wrote the book on the Red Special, to tell us how it works and how to dial in some Queen-esque tones equipped only with a Strat or a Les Paul-style guitar. VOLUME AND TONE POTS Unusually, the volume pot is set furthest away from the switch array and is one of the secrets to how Brian gets so many different tones from a single boosted Vox AC30. He doesn’t use channel switching, so to obtain clean or light overdrive tones he’ll roll the…

Penned by Brian himself, Hammer To Fall is heavily based around Dr May’s guitar riffs, with the intro/ verse riff being one of the most famous in rock guitar history. The bulk of the song is in A, and Brian brilliantly uses the open A (fifth) string to glue the chords and riffs together seamlessly. Harmonically, the verses and choruses rely on A, D and E chords (a I-IV-V progression in the key of A), but Brian spices things up with inversions and lots of variations on the chord shapes. The bridge adds an F#m7 to the mix alongside some lush chords with ringing open strings. The guitar solo uses three different scales to create those memorable and singable lead lines. When playing any of Brian’s solos, pay special attention…

02 JIMI HENDRIX Voodoo Child style wah-wah tips Just two months after featuring Jimi on the cover of this very magazine we find ourselves talking once again about his influence. Perhaps it's no surprise. Jimi frequently tops online 'best guitarist' polls, and, so deep is his influence, there's a good chance you already use a raft of techniques and sounds he pioneered. It turns out you’d be in good company! Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Kirk Hammett and Ritchie Blackmore all cite Jimi as a major influence. Here, we'll take a look at three elements of his wah-wah approach on Voodoo Child (Slight Return). Truth be told, this song is a bona fide wah-sterclass and Jimi would never play it the same way twice. But these tips will give…

01 STEVE VAI IN HIS OWN WORDS In two interviews, with Guitarist and Classic Rock, the virtuoso talked gear and guitars, revealed the secrets of his creative process, and discussed the art of shredding... MY FIRST LOVE “Once I saw a guitar for the first time at the age of five, I immediately knew the infinite nature of the guitar’s ability to be expressive. It was this beautiful thing.” INSPIRATION “If I have to sit down and write a new song I’m usually not very good at it, but when I pick up the instrument, something will always come out and I’ll document it. I’ve got thousands of ideas and thousands of boxes of DATs. Sometimes you just know that something’s coming and there are many different ways…

BOB DYLAN By popularising simple and effective ways for acoustic guitars to accompany vocalists, Dylan has influenced every songwriting strummer and fingerpicker. TOMMY EMMANUEL Recognised by his peers as the world’s greatest fingerpicker (and equally gifted with a pick), Tommy’s recordings overflow with musicality. ALBERT LEE It’s surprising the world’s best country picker comes from Herefordshire. His pedal steel impressions and lightning runs are even more surprising. NILE RODGERS Le Freak, Let’s Dance, Like A Prayer, Get Lucky. Rodgers is the sound of electric guitar in pop music. STEVE CROPPER Cropper co-wrote and played with soul greats including Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, inventing genius economical riffs all pro guitarists should try to learn.…

01 BERT JANSCH Folk-blues pioneer Wizz Jones shares his memories of and reflections of the influential virtuoso In the mid-60s, it was Jansch’s folk and blues contemporaries in London, such as Roy Harper, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn, Ralph McTell and Long John Baldry who were the first to be mesmerised by this outrageously talented young troubadour from Edinburgh. Then Paul Simon, Pete Townshend, Nick Drake, Jimmy Page and Neil Young all latched on to Bert’s genius during the remainder of the 60s. In more recent decades, Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler, Beth Orton, Graham Coxon, Pete Doherty and Jonathan Wilson have all heralded the enduring influence of Jansch’s timeless music on their own work. Quite the legacy, then! Back in 2011, shortly after Bert’s death, Wizz Jones, who was one…

01 DJANGO REINHARDT Few have been as influential as the Belgian-born gypsy jazz pioneer Countless players of all styles have cited Django as an influence, from Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Beck, though it’s among the Gypsy communities of Europe that Django truly lives on. Exactly how he managed, with a badly injured fretting-hand, to play such incredible lead lines is still the subject of debate. Frankly, it’s mind-boggling - and his intensely swinging single-string solos, near impossible chromatic runs encompassing the entire range of the guitar neck, incredible arpeggio leaps across the fretboard and fearsome rhythmic drive have had musicians’ jaws on the floor ever since. Mere hyperbole? Certainly not! Together with violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Django was instrumental in developing the vocabulary…

ALEX TURNER His lyrics may overshadow his playing, but the Arctic Monkey’s spikey guitar lines communicate his sentiments equally well. NOEL GALLAGHER Perhaps only George Harrison has recorded more solos you can whistle... STONE GOSSARD & MIKE MCCREADY With their ingenious twin guitar parts, the Pearl Jam pair achieve sounds their heroes like Hendrix couldn’t achieve alone. JOHN SQUIRE 90s England didn’t produce many guitar heroes, but the Stone Rose was one in the tradition of Beck and Page. BERNARD SUMNER Thanks to his work with Joy Division and New Order, there isn’t an indie kid in the UK he didn’t influence. KIM THAYIL & CHRIS CORNELL The Soundgardeners set themselves apart with unique tunings and somehow making riffs in 5/4 and 7/4 sound catchy. ROBERT SMITH Goths, indie kids…

MISHA MANSOOR & MARK HOLCOMB The Periphery pair harness complex chords and rhythms to show 8-strings are no gimmick. LARI BASILIO Lari throws technical brilliance into melodic passages without sacrificing tone or musicality. ANA POPOVIC It’s rare a blueser can show such technical proficiency without compromising feel, but Ana rivals Robben Ford and SRV. SARAH LONGFIELD Any normal human would be satisfied with one decent fretting hand. Sarah’s utterly clean two-handed technique is just greedy... KING SOLOMON HICKS The blues has a fourth King, and he’s a 25 year-old from Harlem.…

Here’s the thing. Choosing our collective 100 favourite guitarists turned out to be just too darned tough for TG’s fanatical team of guitar nerds! So, armed with a ‘shortlist’ of over 250 players, we decided to ask you lovely readers to have the casting vote in an online poll on GuitarWorld.com. Here’s how it works. We took 170 guitarists from our big list and grouped them into six categories: classic rock, blues, heavy metal, shred, indie/alternative and a ‘best right now’ contemporary poll. Six categories and six polls later, we had some results. The winning guitarists make up 80 of the 100 you’ll see here. The other 20 are chosen by us. Read on for tips, profiles, interviews and lessons on all 100 players, including the man pictured here, Queen’s…

Red Special pickup settings for iconic Queen songs These are the specific pickup settings used on some of Queen’s classics. Brian says that every sound available from the guitar was used somewhere during the recording of Bohemian Rhapsody and, if you get frustrated trying to find just the right tone, you’re in good company; it’s a battle he has every time he enters the studio. BRIDGE AND MIDDLE [IN PHASE] Tie Your Mother Down (riff), Play The Game (solo), One Vision (riff), Hammer To Fall (riff), Under Pressure (clean sounds) NECK AND MIDDLE [MIDDLE OUT OF PHASE] Bohemian Rhapsody (main solo), Somebody To Love (solo), Save Me (solo), We Are The Champions (solo) BRIDGE AND NECK [NECK OUT OF PHASE] Stone Cold Crazy (riff), Keep Yourself Alive (riff) NECK POSITION…

PAUL KOSSOFF AC/DC copied the Free legend’s frenetic vibrato and muscular riff writing, and All Right Now remains a masterclass in building excitement. MICK TAYLOR “Taylor was a very fluent, melodic player,” said Mick Jagger. With wah and slide, he create impressively vocal sounds. STEVE HACKETT Tapping before Eddie and sweeping before Yngwie, the Genesis wizard was also an early adopter of the guitar synth. STEVE LUKATHER His easy groove, wild bends and fluid runs made Toto’s guitarist the first call session player of the 80s. SCOTT GORHAM & BRIAN ROBERTSON Thin Lizzy drove the Les Paul and Marshall combination harder than anyone had before, defining the sound and licks of heavy rock guitar. TOM SCHOLZ Second only to EVH for defining 80s rock guitar tone, the Boston man invented…

JEFF HANNEMAN & KERRY KING Together they set the bar for speed and brutality in riffing. King’s dissonant, chaotic solos match Slayer’s songs perfectly. NUNO BETTENCOURT While others imitated Eddie, Nuno took his ideas to new places. His devastating syncopation gave Extreme funk where their peers had none. ACE FREHLEY Every American rocker’s childhood hero, Ace gave Kiss an endless supply of repurposed Chuck Berry licks. And he could FLY. WES BORLAND One of the few truly innovative post-Korn nu metallers, his Limp Bizkit work used tapping, whammy and 7-strings creatively. GEORGE LYNCH The Dokken man mastered playing ‘wrong’ notes the right way in a metal context. His sideways vibrato was much imitated. DEVIN TOWNSEND With one of the most devoted fanbases on earth, few musicians have produced a back…

TOSIN ABASI Abasi throws unexpectedly complex chords into his visceral 8-string riffing, then turns around and perfectly executes slap bass licks on guitar. STEVE MORSE Most shredders would not even attempt Morse’s fearsome alternate-picked arpeggios. His artificial harmonic melodies are equally scary and beautiful. JEFF LOOMIS While others battled with 3-and 5-string shapes, Loomis swept effortlessly across seven strings, dazzling with extended range arpeggios. RICHIE KOTZEN By 19, Kotzen had mastered every contemporary shred technique. He quickly tempered this with Hendrix-like soulfulness before losing his plectrum. GREG HOWE With palm-muted pull-offs, hammer-ons from nowhere on descending arpeggios, and inventive tapping sequences, Howe changed the legato game for everyone.…

01 JOHNNY RAMONE Johnny’s style has been in the DNA of every punk band since Every new electric guitarist should learn a Ramones song, but some people mistakenly think this means his style is easily replicated. Few realise Johnny produced that tirade of powerchords using all downstrokes – even live, when the Ramones often played at adrenalin- (or substance-) fuelled tempos far in excess of their albums. The sound is wildly aggressive in a way that down-up alternate strumming can’t match, and it directly inspired the rhythm styles of 80s thrash and 90s pop-punk, and any song that makes use of a regular eighth-note powerchord part carries Ramones DNA. 02 STEVE JONES Some of Steve’s best playing with the Sex Pistols was on debut single Anarchy In The UK.…

PAUL SIMON Crafting Fingerstyle parts that propelled his songs with Art Garfunkel to greatness, Paul Simon has since become a magpie to folk music of all cultures. JOHN RENBOURN Collaborating with Bert Jansch and Pentangle, the UK solo acoustic guitar pioneer opened up new tunings alongside medieval and jazz influences. ED SHEERAN Boosting acoustic guitar sales everywhere, Sheeran has made loopers an essential accessory and confirmed the guitar’s continuing relevance. BEN HOWARD With his unusual pick-and-go technique, eclectic tunings and partial capo, Howard has a distinctive sound that is deservedly acclaimed. MICHAEL HEDGES Enormously inventive musician whose two-handed, percussive approach transformed modern acoustic technique. His star fans include Pete Townshend and Steve Vai.…

PAT METHENY Since deciding it was rude to copy Wes Montgomery, this giant has continually expanded jazz vocabulary in harmony and instrumentation. GEORGE BENSON Watch Benson sing his guitar lines while he improvises: this is an outrageous musical ear and unfailing sense of melody. SHAWN LANE He could play faster than anyone, but wisely remembered to include rhythm and tunes. Guthrie Govan and Paul Gilbert were awed. FRANK GAMBALE Sweep-pickers the world over owe a debt to Gambale’s videos. His prolific output includes six albums with Chick Corea…

Penned by frontman Kelly Jones whilst on tour in 2004, Dakota emerged from Jones’ search for a new sound, ultimately achieving international success for Stereophonics including their first UK number one single. This feel-good song contains the hallmarks of modern alt-rock guitar playing: a driving rhythm, catchy melodic hooks and a chordal riff; all of which take centre stage in this Rockschool arrangement. The repeated eighth notes in the introduction need to be rhythmically even in order to complement the characteristic synthesiser sound on the backing track. Following this, there are chiming lead guitar tones for the first half of the verse which create space in the track (note the rich sound of the D# in bar 10). For these and the vocal melody section that follows, fingering positions need…

As this month’s mag production schedule was nearing its end, we began to consider the guitarists who hadn’t made our top 100. Had the polls delivered a representative spectrum of guitarists? Had we forgotten anyone vital? You see, making a longlist of guitarists is easy; cutting them back to 100 is the real challenge, and many of our favourite players had to fall by the wayside. For me it was Jeff Buckley, and for one key reason. A guitarist who will be evaluated on just one official album - 1994’s Grace - and a raft of posthumously released live recordings, demos and cover versions, Buckley’s musical style resolutely defies categorisation – an amazing player, without doubt, but his highly individual style just wouldn’t fit within the categories of this month’s…

What does it mean to you to come in at number one in Total Guitar’s poll of the greatest rock guitarists? “I’m absolutely speechless. I’m blown away. I have to say it’s completely unexpected. Obviously I’m deeply touched that people feel that way about me. I’m not under any illusions that, technically, I’m even on the tree of great guitarists. I guess this tells me that what I’ve done has affected people, and that means a great deal to me. I will never claim to be a great guitarist in the sense of, you know, a virtuoso. I guess I just try to play from my heart and that’s about it.” Perhaps you’d reflect on the players who came behind you in our poll? Jimi Hendrix was second. “Oh my…

1. FINGER VIBRATO Brian’s elegant vibrato is a cornerstone of his playing Make sure you're able to bend up to a note and add vibrato below the pitch you’ve bent to for a typical Brian style vibrato. 2. GUITAR VIBRATO Brian’s pick-hand rarely strays from the guitar’s vibrato arm Keep one or two free picking-hand fingers in contact with your guitar’s whammy bar. Brian uses it on chords, arpeggios, solos – everything, really! 3. PICKING DYNAMICS You know about Brian’s preference for a sixpence, but… Despite using a metal coin for a pick Brian’s touch ranges from firm to very gentle, even switching to fingerstyle at times. 4. CLEANING UP Every guitar has a volume control. Use it for clean tones Brian’s signature cleans aren’t always that clean. Often he'll…

Hammer To Fall moves through different tonal centres and the solo itself takes a journey through three scales. The first part of solo is in B Mixolydian (B C# D# E F# G# A) which has a light bluesy quality. Next, the solo moves into C major (C D E F G A B), which Brian plays in a linear fashion, snaking his way up and down the scale, using occasional b 3rd (E b ) and b 7th (B b ) intervals too. The triumphant ending moves to A major (A B C# D E F# G#). You can see where the modes change in the notation by looking at the key signatures: B has five sharp signs (#), C has no sharps and A has three sharps.…

01 STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN IN HIS OWN WORDS In 1988, just two years before his death, the blues master spoke to Guitarist about his music, his brother Jimmie, his love for Hendrix, and the guitar he called “My First Wife”. PLAYING “I just play a lot. To sit down in my room and play, because that’s what started it, that’s like going back to square one. And it’s fun! It’s fun to sit around, even if it gets frustrating.” BIG BROTHER “I learned a lot from Jimmie and he tells me he’s learned a lot from me. He started playing when he was in junior high, when I couldn’t have been more than eight. A friend of my father’s brought over a guitar and handed it to him…

CHET ATKINS Almost his every touch displayed astonishing technique, but if you didn’t try to play his toe-tapping tunes, you’d never know. MERLE TRAVIS Do you have an entire technique named after you? Country, folk and rockabilly would all be unimaginable without Travis picking. CARL PERKINS He fused country and blues, wrote Blue Suede Shoes and recorded the definitive version. Rockabilly guitarists still learn all his licks. BO DIDDLEY The ‘Bo Diddley rhythm’ has been used by Guns n’ Roses, George Michael, the Stones, U2 and hundreds more. DUANE EDDY When someone asks for a ‘twangy’ guitar sound, they’re (perhaps unknowingly) the latest to be inspired by Eddy’s tone. LINK WRAY Wray – and his knackered speaker – invented distortion. Think about that and be thankful next time you plug…

01 PRINCE The Purple One’s ambition knew no bounds, just as he refused to be restrained by any one genre. An underrated guitarist as well as a songwriter-extraordinaire, here are five things you can learn from his sensational playing. “IF YOU DON’T HAVE RHYTHM, YOU MIGHT AS WELL TAKE UP NEEDLEPOINT OR SOMETHING” There’s a famous Clapton anecdote; you’ve probably heard it. Slowhand was said to have been asked, ‘What’s it like to be the best guitar player alive?’ To which he responded, “I don’t know, ask Prince.” But did he ever actually say that? Well, no, he didn’t. But the fact a completely fabricated quote (that’s also been attributed to Hendrix on Rory Gallagher) has been widely accepted speaks volumes about Prince Rogers Nelson, whose sudden death on…

RON ASHETON He formed the Stooges with Iggy Pop, giving him a better claim than most to having invented punk. JOAN JETT Jett’s power chords and anthemic songwriting paved the way for women in punk rock. TOM VERLAINE ‘Punk virtuoso’ might sound like an oxymoron, but Television’s frontman incorporated avant garde influences to prove punks could play. GREG GINN Black Flag’s founder was pivotal to developing hardcore and post-hardcore, bringing to punk jazz influences, breakbeats and, most shockingly, playing slowly. JOHNNY THUNDERS Not many people can say they influenced The Smiths, Guns n’ Roses andThe Sex Pistols, but Thunders can. CHRIS STEIN Blondie’s six-stringer expanded his palate by drawing on reggae, disco and punk simultaneously. DAVID BYRNE Talking Heads were so experimental there was barely a sound they didn’t try,…

The third single (released St Patrick’s Day 2017) from Sheeran’s triumphant third album ÷, Galway Girl features a heavy Celtic influence – the result of a collaboration with Irish folk band Beoga, who co-wrote the song. The song was huge worldwide hit and achieved multi-platinum status, topping the charts in Ireland and peaking at no 2 in the UK and USA. With only a few chord shapes it’s a quick and easy song to learn. You will need to put a capo on your guitar’s 2nd fret to play along with our backing track, which we’ve recorded in Ed’s original key of A major. You can keep this nice and simple and just strum along or you can add a little more detail – which you can glean from our…

01 JOHNNY MARR IN HIS OWN WORDS The most influential guitarist of his generation on his evolution from The Smiths to Electronic and Modest Mouse, and why the shortest solos are the best. As told to TG’s Henry Yates THE EARLY 80s “Guitar culture had many crimes and criminals. There was some good stuff, but the art of the song had disappeared. Pop had become very manufactured. Rock was about virtuosity, and machismo was lurking everywhere, or else it was about ‘groove’, which often implies a fear of chord changes. I’ve tried to wipe out the memories of poodle-cuts, but The Smiths was definitely a reaction.” TO SOLO OR NOT TO SOLO “When people talk about a ‘guitar solo’, they’re generally talking about a pentatonic break in classic rock,…