Innehållsförteckning för August 2015 från Guitar Player

PRS SE SANTANA STANDARD Goodies This new addition to the Carlos-approved SE Santana series features an all-mahogany body, a Wide Fat profile mahogany set neck, and a 24.5" scale rosewood fretboard with bird inlays. Other highlights include PRS-Designed tremolo and tuners, and PRS 245 humbuckers. Available in Antique White, Faded Tortoise Shell (pictured), and Vintage Cherry. Price $499 retail More Info prsguitars.com CARL MARTIN OCTA SWITCH MK3 Goodies A more pedalboard-friendly version of the original Octa Switch, the MK3 is a digital effects controller that allows simultaneous use of up to eight pedals in any combination. Eight loops, eight presets, two external switches, bypass switch, high-quality selectable buffer, mono input/stereo output. Powered by two 9-volt batteries or regulated power supply. Price $610 retail, $427 street More Info carlmartin.com DIGITECH DOD…

TECHNICALLY ASTOUNDING PICKERS abound, but rare is the artist that possesses his own instrumental voice, one you would recognize on a recording within a few bars. Listening to Wayne Krantz play, with his right-hand attack of doom and his left hand grabbing syncopated, complex chords on his Strat-style instrument, he is as identifiable as Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, or Thom Yorke (more on Yorke later). The Berklee graduate and teacher has recorded and/or toured with Steely Dan, Michael Brecker, and Billy Cobham, but it was his decade of legendary Thursday night trio gigs at New York City’s 55 Bar that helped him build a following and solidify his sound. The live 2 Drink Minimum was recorded there, followed by more bar recordings sold through the guitarist’s website. Signed by Abstract…

STEVE LUKATHER IS IN A band with Ringo Starr. You get a strong sense that if that was all you ever said about Luke, ignoring and dismissing all of the other work in his storied career, that would be just fine with him. To find out how he got this gig of a lifetime, however, it’s necessary to begin at the beginning… You play in a band with a Beatle. For a pop-rock musician, is there any senten in the English language that could be cooler? Probably not. For a guy my age, with my musical influences, it really is mind-blowing. How did you get the gig? Well, to back up, I originally worked with Paul on the Thriller record. He took a shine to Jeff Porcaro and me, and…

HOPEFULLY BY NOW YOU’RE TOTALLY JAZZED ABOUT working capos into your guitar life. Here are a few choices choices out there to do exactly that. Capo Clips If you’re not content to capo across just one fret, you might want to check out Capo Clips ($9.95 per Clip, Capo Clip capo $24.95, complete kit with everything $96). These consist of a plate or “Clip” with rubber feet that you clamp onto the guitar with a spring-loaded capo or with a specially designed Capo Clips capo. I took the E major Clip and positioned it on the A and D strings (2nd fret) and the G string (1st fret), to give me E major drone strings but keep all my other notes up the neck the same. It’s a little tricky…

HERE’S ANOTHER CASE OF “WHO’S playing it right?” that’s been stuck in my craw for decades. The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s debut, 1971’s The Inner Mounting Flame featured odd metric and exotic melodic twists and turns up the wazoo, so who would think that what appears to be the album’s simplest song with a main rhythm figure based on three bars of 4/4 could be so confusing? The figure in question comes from “You Know You Know,” and comprises two arpeggiated chord shapes (Gmaj7 - A) and three low-register single notes (E-G-E), as shown in Ex. 1. This is how most of us hear it—all of the action happens in bar 1 and we sustain the low E for two measures before repeating. Super easy, right? Well, not exactly. Try playing it…

OUR STORY BEGINS, ODDLY ENOUGH, with Norlin-era Gibson in 1980, where engineer Tim Shaw was tasked with designing a humbucker that would restore the company’s Les Paul and ES-335 reissues to some shade of their former glory. The results are widely considered to be the best vintage-voiced pickups Gibson produced since the early ’60s. Fast forward to 2015 and Shaw is Director of R&D at Fender. So where do they go when it’s time to concoct a great ’bucker for the American Standard Stratocaster? Bingo! The result is the new Fender American Standard Stratocaster HSS Shawbucker, a guitar that packs a boatload of history from the two biggest names in electric guitars. As has its predecessors, the 2015 American Standard differs from vintage-reissue Strats in its incorporation of several modern…

ROUNDUP WITH THEIR DISTINCTIVE ORANGE covering and hieroglyphic control labels, Orange amps have been a sort of boutique alternative to the more mainstream British rock amps. Orange got its start in 1968 when London recording studio/music shop owner Cliff Cooper couldn’t find a supplier for new amplifiers, and was basically forced to design his own amp, which he called the “Orange.” Cooper managed to get one into the hands of Peter Green, and that led to Fleetwood Mac having an Orange backline for their first U.S. tour. Subsequent adoption of Orange amps by Stevie Wonder (amazing in itself on a number of levels) and Jimmy Page helped the brand become a serious option for a lot of major players in the 1970s. The company stopped production in 1980 and went…

IN 2008, AUTHOR MARTIN MCQUADE— a research consultant for Bing Crosby Enterprises— interviewed Les Paul for a planned article on his musical relationship with Crosby. The interview produced a 40-page transcript, but it was never published. Now, to honor what would have been Les Paul’s 100th birthday, GP is excerpting part of McQuade’s interview for the next few issues. We feel it’s an excellent “lost” discussion, and it’s a great way to honor two transcendent musicians—Les Paul and Bing Crosby—on the occasion of Les’ centennial year. Last month, Les concocted a scheme to get Crosby to hear his act at NBC in Hollywood in 1943. In this installment, we discover how he fared… So your subterfuge to bluff your way into NBC worked? Yes. It did! I was very lucky.…

WANT TO BE IMPRESSED? GO TO allmusic.com and check out Luke’s credits. It’s page after page of A-list sh*t, and for a variety of artists in a variety of styles that will surprise you. Some sessions, like for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, are well known. Others, like dates with Roger Waters, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, and Chet Atkins, are not. It’s an astounding body of work even if you don’t factor in the records he did with a band called Toto. I asked Lukather to recount what he remembered about these sessions, in terms of the gear, the playing, and the overall vibe. Let’s talk about Lionel Richie’s “Running with the Night.” He called me and said, “I want you to play a solo on this song…

ORIGINALLY FORMED IN COLORADO DURING THE LATE ’90s, the Yonder Mountain String Band recently self-released its sixth full-length studio album, Black Sheep [Frog Pad Records]. For this album, the band’s lineup expanded to a five-piece, including founding members Adam Aijala (guitar, vocals), Dave Johnston (banjo, vocals), and Ben Kaufmann (bass, vocals), along with the additions of Allie Kral (violin) and Jacob Jolliff (mandolin). Black Sheep is the first time the Yonder Mountain String Band has used a five-piece lineup throughout an entire record. Johnston: It’s what you would call a traditional bluegrass lineup. And it’s the first time that we’ve really worked in that format at length. It’s fun, because with five instruments, we can explore different kinds of space and musical real estate. Jolliff: It’s the first album I’ve…

IN CELEBRATION OF OVER 50 YEARS of guitarcraft, Takamine recently introduced a limited-edition “NEX”-sized guitar called the LTD2015 Renge-So. Named for a flower that grows at the base of Mt. Takamine in Japan, this black beauty presents said flora on the fretboard and pickguard in beautifully executed inlays of green heart abalone, mother-of–pearl, and blue stone. Other cosmetic details include a multi-ring rosette with a circle of abalone, black-and-white binding on the top and back, and single white binding on the neck, headstock, and heel cap. The Takamine logo is also inlaid in abalone on the black-faced headstock. Top it off with a flawless gloss finish on every surface, and you’ve got a guitar that commands attention from the moment it’s lifted from the included hardshell case. In the playability…

COUNTING AND PLAYING IN ODD meters really isn’t any more difficult than counting and playing 4/4—if you know the ground rules. We’ve already discussed 5/4 and 5/8, so let’s move on to 7/4 and 7/8. While a 5/4 pulse adds one beat to its 4/4 counterpart, a 7/4 pulse subtracts the last beat of every other bar, creating a rhythmic “skip” of sorts. A 7/4 or 7/8 pulse results from playing seven quarter- or eighth-notes at a given tempo, as shown in Ex. 1a. To count time in 7/4, tap your foot on every beat, accenting the downbeat (beat one) on every repeat. (And don’t you dare count “sev-en” as two beats!) To count time in 7/8 (depicted here at twice the 7/4 tempo), tap on every other beat—one, three,…

DIPINTO’S PENCHANT FOR PAWNSHOP aesthetics rises to a new level with the Galaxie 4 Deluxe, which gives a nod to Juan Mirò with its asymmetrical shape, Sonic Blue/White finish, and ’60s-era “serape” plastic for the pickguard and headstock overlay. A quartet of playful looking rocker switches activates the four humcancelling single-coil pickups, and the Volume and Tone pots are topped with gold-reflector knobs that could be straight off an early-’60s Airline table radio. The Galaxie 4’s mélange of eye-popping elements coalesce in a pro guitar that features a medium depth, bolt-on neck with a wide-ish profile that is topped with a 25 ½”-scale rosewood fingerboard carved to a 12” radius. It’s a comfy setup with low action and smoothly finished frets, and overall, the guitar gets good marks for playability.…

MODERN POWER GRIDS CAN PUT OUT a tremendous amount of voltage, and that is not something that always bodes well for tube amps. Vintage amps, as well as many modern hand-wired boutique models, are optimized to handle 117 volts maximum, and I’ve seen much higher readings coming out of the walls at studios and clubs around the country. Those extra volts can mess with your tone and lead to blown fuses and/or a trip to the repair shop. So what can you do to keep tube amps at a safe voltage? A Variac variable transformer is one possibility, but those things are heavy and can be easily misadjusted to deliver higher than normal voltages. Modern alternatives are available from Furman (furmansound.com)—which makes a series of professional-grade power conditioners, including the…

QUICK HISTORIES OF THE ROOTS OF GUITAR LUST CLOSE YOUR EYES, THINK “ACOUStic guitar,” and odds are you’re picturing a Martin dreadnought. And this one is the epitome of the breed: the ultimate rhythm cannon. Loud, clear, and with enough projection to chunk it out behind a strident banjo and wailing fiddle, yet still sweet and rich enough to sing with single-note flatpicking runs or purr soulfully behind a swinging ballad. This is the pre-war Martin D-28 (circa 1938, in this case), universally acclaimed as the finest dreadnought ever built. It’s the guitar of Hank Williams, Clarence White, Norman Blake, and countless others— Elvis Presley among them—in its slightly later incarnation. The top of the line for “non-presentation models.” For serious pickers who didn’t want all the abalone and pearl…

“IT’S GOOD TO BE AT THE NEW ORLEANS Jazz & Heritage Festival,” announced Pete Townshend at the annual music bash held from April 24 to May 3, 2015. “I’m going to play some jazz later, and you’re going to hate it!” Well, the Who didn’t play any jazz at its first American festival appearance since Woodstock, and neither did Lenny Kravitz, Buddy Guy, the Meters, Elton John, or Vintage Trouble, who all primarily honored roots rock and soul. Townshend can still generate tons of verve from a single windmill, and he also deployed his Stratocaster’s whammy bar frequently, as well as doing some two-hand tapping. At the very end of “My Generation,” however, he caught himself in a moment of frivolous flash, laughing over the mic, “What the f**k am…

GREETINGS FELLOW NERDVILLIANS. Thanks for having me back for more exciting adventures in Guitar Safari. Today we have a find from 1940: a Gibson ES-150 guitar with accompanying lap-steel and amplifier. My trusted guitar tech, Mike Hickey, found this trio in Vermont on one of his twice-monthly guitar store crawls. One of the many interesting things about this set is the very transitional pickup used on this model. Many people look at it and think, “Well it must have been modified.” Not so. It actually is 100-percent stock, but was only made for maybe two years. I have learned that with Gibson, there never is an absolute start or finish date on any model. Gibson had no idea that these would be collectible, nor did they care. Another thing that…

“THE WORD WAS THE FIRST ACTUAL STUDIO recording I ever did,” recalls pedal-steel prophet Robert Randolph. It was a watershed moment. The “sacred steel” gospel guitar tradition kept so close by the House of God Pentecostal Church for many decades had finally been unleashed. Randolph was the genre’s Hendrix, and Luther Dickinson played a somewhat Chas Chandler-like role by introducing Randolph’s gospel to a wide audience as the Word, a band consisting of the North Mississippi Allstars with brother Cody Dickinson on drums and bassist Chris Chew, plus Randolph and jazz organ whiz John Medeski. “Arhoolie’s Sacred Steel compilation changed my life,” says Dickinson. “Medeski and I had already booked sessions to record a gospel CD when we discovered Robert Randolph’s track “Without God” on the second Arhoolie compilation, Sacred…

IT’S A RELAXED ATMOSPHERE AT THE TOTO rehearsal in Los Angeles. Band members and techs are milling about, tweaking gear, checking levels, and getting things straight. Steve Lukather walks in, tells a few jokes, plugs in, and begins auditioning sounds. Even though the band leaves for Europe in a few days, his settings are not finalized. He’s still futzing, kneeling in front of his two Bogner half-stacks, pulling out low end, boosting mids, adjusting gain levels. He runs through a variety of tones, kicking a few pedals in and out. When he launches into a single-note line, it’s undeniably Luke. The way he slides into a note, the way he bends so perfectly, and the way he works his silky whammy bar technique all add up to a style that…

IN HIS TYPICAL SELF-EFFACING STYLE, if you ask Steve Lukather to show you something on guitar, he will protest, “I’m not a teacher! I am not a teacher!” Whatever. The guy has a metric ton of knowledge to share, and there’s plenty to be gleaned from his riffs on Toto records. Take Ex. 1, for instance. This is the riff from the song “Running Out of Time” that opens the latest record and opens the current tour. It’s a great example of Luke’s ability to put a fresh spin on time honored phrases. It starts with an Eadd9 arpeggio, but two things keep it from sounding normal: the fact that it starts on the “a” of three and it lands on the flat 5 (or sharp 4). Bend that note…

GEAR INTEL I’M STILL SHOCKED BY HOW MANY guitarists I meet who don’t use capos, but maybe I shouldn’t be. I was once one of them, thinking they were some sort of crutch for those who couldn’t play barre chords. But when I started to explore the music of Paul Simon (and George Harrison, James Taylor, and others), I found that capos were essential tools that opened up tons of possibilities. Later, when I got heavily into recording and layering guitars, I learned that a capo was indispensible in the studio. So, for anyone who still hasn’t gotten onboard, there is no time like the present. Capos are one of the cheapest ways to expand your sonic palette, so buy one or dust off your old one and think about…

TO REITERATE, STRONG, MEMORABLE melodies are generally not the result of simply playing ascending and descending scales—they result from reorganizing scale tones into myriad melodic configurations. As we saw last month, a melodic motif is a short pattern of notes whose interval structure—which can be represented numerically—has been adapted to a given scale. Keep in mind that all rules from last month’s three-note melodic motif workout also apply to the four-note melodic motifs shown below. Thus, in the following examples, “1” represents the root, “2” represents the 2nd scale degree, “3” the 3rd, and so forth, and any melodic motif may be attached to any rhythmic motif. Each of the 24 four-note melodic motifs in Ex. 1 is applicable to any seven-note scale. Apply them to the major scale and…