Innehållsförteckning för September 2018 från Guitar Player

MY NAME MAY BE NEW TO THESE PAGES, BUT I’VE SPENT A FAIR AMOUNT of time on the Guitar Player team. From 2015 through 2017, I was content director of GuitarPlayer.com, where I kept our online readers up to date with news, videos, exclusive lessons and gear reviews. Prior to landing there, I’d already done the grand tour of guitar magazines. After a brief tenure at Guitar for the Practicing Musician, I dug in for an 18-year stay as executive editor of Guitar World, and even found time to help launch Guitar Aficionado, where I served as managing editor for much of the magazine’s nine-year run. I’m thrilled to make Guitar Player the latest stop on my excursion. The magazine’s reign is one of the music industry’s most enduring stories.…

JOIN THE GP COMMUNITY! SOUND OFF! GET EXCLUSIVE NEWS. COMMENT. CRITIQUE. SHARE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-NEWSLETTER. FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG TWITTER.COM/GUITARPLAYERNOW GUITARPLAYER.COM CHRISTOPHER SCAPELLITI Editor chris.scapelliti@futurenet.com MICHAEL MOLENDA Editor In Chief michael.molenda@futurenet.com ART THOMPSON Senior Editor arthur.thompson@futurenet.com PATRICK WONG Managing Editor patrick.wong@futurenet.com JUDE GOLD Los Angeles Editor judegold@gmail.com JIMMY LESLIE Frets Editor jl@jimmyleslie.com DAVE HUNTER Gear Section & Video Contributor dhunterwordsmusic@yahoo.com PAUL HAGGARD Art Director paul.haggard@futurenet.com…

THIS IS NOT A LIST OF LANDMARK prog albums but rather a collection of lesser-known, yet compelling releases which may have fallen through the cracks or deserve a second listen. Furthermore, European bands have often struggled to be noticed in the English-speaking world. As a result, some of these artists remain somewhat overlooked in the United States. Here are 10 paramount releases from the dustier corners of the prog universe. (Don’t forget to check out Nicky Garratt’s full-length interview beginning on page 42 of this issue!) PREMIATA FORMERIA MARCONI Per un amico Italy, 1972 PFM’s second, third, and fourth albums form a trilogy conceivably analogous to the first three King Crimson albums. These LPs have everything one seeks in symphonic prog: flute, electric and classical guitar, Mellotron, violin, soft and…

DEVELOPING THE CHOPS for prog-rock guitar can be as arduous as climbing Mount Everest. Fortunately, plenty of intrepid virtuosos have scaled the genre’s heights and learned a thing or two about mastering it. Here are ten innovators of prog-rock guitar to share timeless advice about tone, technique, songwriting, and more. STEVE HOWE “Try to avoid ordinary licks. If I’m watching somebody for the chords, I think about the relative minor and the relative minor 7th, and I’ll do away with the root note. I find it interesting changing from minor to major, and I always like to steer away from the obvious.” JOHN PETRUCCI “When we write, we’ll find the biggest room we can and just set up in a circle and jam. As ideas come, we’ll document them. After we…

THE MOLDY TROPE ABOUT “NECESSITY being the mother of invention” never rang truer for Johnny A than when a booking for his live band on Joe Bonamassa’s February 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive IV” cruise suddenly turned into a solo gig. “Joe’s team hadn’t realized that he invited me and the band,” explains A. “So when they called to confirm the gig, they didn’t have enough rooms available on the ship and they asked if I’d mind performing solo. I said, ‘Sure,’ and I thought, Well, I have six months to prepare. Should I do a seminar? A solo-guitar show? I had to figure it all out myself, and I don’t like to do things half-baked. I’ve got to compete in a great big world out there, so I always…

OVER THE YEARS, I HAVE come across many weird guitars that, while awesome to look at, lacked good tone or playability. I would say to myself, Man, this is so cool looking! If only it played in tune, or sounded better, or didn’t have half a baseball bat for a neck. I have regularly encouraged readers to bring a photo of a vintage weird guitar to a local luthier and have a look-alike made of it, but with modern appointments. The Italia Company has done this very nicely, and of course the whole Eastwood line embraces this approach. Legendary San Francisco Bay Area artisan Ronni Dinette is the maker of the gorgeous 2008 Dinette X-A-P shown above. Dinette employs three important build factors in any guitar: A weirdo, vintage, and…

AT FACE VALUE, THE IDEA OF PUNK ICON NICKY GARRATT doing prog-rock appears laughable, and perhaps even politically incorrect amongst socio-stylistic musos who compartmentalize sounds into scrupulously delineated genres. Meticulous types would place Garratt—who was a member of the U.K. Subs from 1976 until 1983, and founded the punk label New Red Archives in 1987—firmly into the, well, punk category. But all manner of butt-puckered pigeonholing gives way to chaos as soon as one discovers Garratt has been musical director for prog pioneer Nik Turner of Hawkwind, worked with seminal kraut-rockers Brainticket, and now leads his own prog-revival band, Hedersleben. What gives? Better get out that old Dymo Labelmaker and rearrange your record bins, folks! Although it may be a natural progression for you, it’s likely a head spinner for…

ONE OF THE HALLMARKS OF PROG rock is the use of intricate rhythms and unusual meters (a.k.a. time signatures). For those of you who are just getting into exploring this kind of music, I’m happy to say that, if you can groove well in the common meters 4/4, 2/4 and 3/4, then you can, with a little mental training, groove in any time signature. All odd-metered grooves result from various combinations, or multiples, of twos and threes. Think about it: 5 can be broken down into 2+3 or 3+2; 7 equals 2+2+3 (4+3), 2+3+2, 3+2+2 (3+4); nine equals 5+4, 4+5, 3+3+3, and so forth. Laying down a groove in any odd meter requires locking into the count and coming up with an appropriate repetitive chordal or single-note rhythm figure. Here…

HAVING STEPPED UP ITS GAME WITH A host of new acoustics and electrics this year, D’Angelico is broadening its palette in the solidbody realm. These fresh and alternative-minded models are available in both the upscale Deluxe Series and more budget-conscious Premier Series (as reviewed here), all of which include styles and features calculated to appeal to players from rock, alt, indie, punk, garage, surf, and beyond. All three guitars were tested through a tweed Fender Deluxe and a Friedman Small Box head and 2x12 cab. PREMIER BEDFORD Designated the “offset” of the lineup, the Premier Bedford marries a quirky mix of style cues to a handy set of features. Key among the latter are a roomy yet easy-bending neck (1 11/16" at the nut and 24 ¾" in scale length),…

POWER ATTENUATORS ARE TYPICALLY designed to reduce the power from an amplifier so that it can be played at a high volume setting to create output-tube distortion, all while reducing the actual power that hits the speakers. The Power Station PS2 Integrated Reactance Amplifier does that task extremely well thanks to its reactive load circuitry that essentially works like a dummy speaker. An amplifier driven into the Power Station behaves as though it’s connected to real speaker, so the sound and feel are preserved. But the PS2 (which updates the previous PS1, reviewed May, 2015) has more to offer because it also features a built-in amplifier that produces 50 watts via two 6L6 output tubes, with a single 12AX7 handling preamp and phase-splitter duties. The power amp is central to…

Thank you to our most loyal readers who have participated in our Gear Giveaway contests over the past two years. It has been an absolute blast and honor for me to be on staff as Guitar Player’s Gear Coordinator and have a chance to spoil you with our abundance of review gear. I also want to salute my mentors and bandmates Michael Molenda and Patrick Wong for their amazing leadership, and for allowing me to “ride their coat tails” in the journalism side of the music biz. Guitar Player won’t be the same without Mr. Molenda’s impassioned and “groovy” musings on all things guitar, music, and life. This month, I owe a huge thank you to Barry Cleveland and the generous staff at Line 6 for offering up their FBV…

Vibramate String Spoiler $39 street The String Spoiler is a string retainer designed to fit onto a Bigsby Vibrato for easy string changes. It can be installed easily without any modification or special tools and comes in gold, silver, and black finishes. vibramate.com ToneWoodAmp $249 street This pocket-sized device enhances an acoustic guitar’s natural sound with different effects, all of which emanate organically from the instrument’s soundhole and body. Use it “unplugged,” or connect it to any amp or P.A. system. tonewoodamp.com MXR Smart Gate Pro $399 The rackmount version of the Smart Gate has three selectable noise-reduction ranges, two discrete channels with a sync function to link them, selectable ground lift, remote switching, and true bypass. jimdunlop.com Takamine LTD-2018 Gifu-Cho $3,199 street The LTD-2018 is an NEX-sized acoustic-electric guitar…

BLACKBERRY SMOKE’S CHARLIE Starr is a throwback, a renaissance man, and a rebel. One look at his long hair and mutton chops tells you this cat rolls his own, and his deep trick bag of sweaty riffs and smoky leads is derived from ’70s rock, blues, and country. Starr and I once had the same agent, and my band and his played many shows together. Now, almost two decades later, we both get invited to take part in arena concerts, jams, and music festivals. Keeping in tune with his rebel spirit, Starr bent the usual framework of this column to put his own spin on it. “I can’t pick just five players,” he says, “so I’m gonna break the rules and go with my top five guitar duos and trios.”…

WHILE NOT SPECIFICALLY RELATED to the style of classic prog-rock composition, progressive guitarists should always consider the balance of technology, technique, impassioned rawness, and humanity when writing guitar instrumentals or songs. As technological advances change music—in both composition and improvisation—guitarists are obliged to navigate tension in order to successfully achieve rhythmic fluency, and to avoid being either sloppy or too coldly precise. Though seemingly counterintuitive, technicality and emotionality are not mutually exclusive. After all, music is mathematical. We play in time signatures, count out parts, and even tap our feet “in time.” Below, I discuss four artists who have mastered what I call “mathematic emotionality.” I hope that you check them out—their approaches will inform your own methodology of composition. VULFPECK’S CORY WONG A contemporary funk guitarist, Wong cites a…

FOR ALL THE LOVE AND lust devoted to the hallowed Gibson PAF humbucker, we’d wager the gnarly old P-90 is just as well loved and has likely been responsible for just about as much classic rock and roll, too. The P-90 is the original “fat single-coil,” and it was the premier Gibson pickup for nearly 10 years before the design team developed the humbucker. Unveiled in 1946, it graced all of Gibson’s high-end archtop-electrics before landing on the groundbreaking Les Paul gold-top of ’52, and it has been beloved ever since for its thick, gritty, yet articulate tone. The P-90’s ingredients are simple, but they come together in a way that has established a sound that can’t quite be repeated in any differently configured design, and which many vintage-guitar fans…

RELEASED IN 1971, JACK JOHNSON—later reissued as A Tribute to Jack Johnson—was the sound of Miles Davis interpreting the rock and funk music of that era. The aesthetic of Miles was filtered through the unique voices of a Mount Rushmore–worthy group that included guitarist John McLaughlin, drummer Billy Cobham, bassist Michael Henderson, keyboardist Herbie Hancock, and saxophone player Steve Grossman. Jack Johnson was the first Miles Davis record I purchased, and it was the perfect introduction to Miles, McLaughlin, and free jazz-rock. I dug it right from the start, despite the fact that McLaughlin’s guitar sound sometimes reminded me of Leigh Stephens of Blue Cheer. In addition, some of his string bends were suspect to my young ears, because I was accustomed to the stately sounds of Jeff Beck on…

AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT FROM A CAT WHO WRITES GP’s Vinyl Treasures column, Jim Campilongo’s adoration of recorded music goes deeper than the final resting place of the Titanic. Having encyclopedic recall of so much crazy-good music is definitely a boon when producing your own albums, and as Campilongo spun through his vast mental catalog of releases last year, he opted to record the Jim Campilongo Trio’s latest album totally live. “I wanted to chronicle this part of my life and share the new songs I had written, but I also wanted to document this crazy trio that sounds like the Who meets Miles Davis in the best setting possible—which, for us, is onstage,” he says of Live at Rockwood Music Hall NYC [Blue Hen], whose eight tracks were culled from…

WITHIN THE HALLOWED CATALOG of progressive rock music created during the late 1960s and early ’70s, a handful of groups are responsible for a surge of excelled musicianship and composition that flourished during the birth and heyday of this highly creative and musically and lyrically sophisticated sub-genre of rock. This pantheon of pioneers includes extremely talented and forward-thinking musicians, well known for routinely pushing their musical abilities to new heights of creative and technical achievement. While there are several bands and individual musicians that come to mind, it’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees and progressive rock legends Yes that arguably take home the largest trophy, as they’ve built their respected legacy using a distinct approach of artistic discovery and musical self-expression for 50 years, which is extraordinarily impressive.…

FIRST THINGS FIRST: IF YOU ARE A Telecaster purist (and there are lots of you), I have an important word of warning—do not Google “Fender’s Limited Edition Parallel Universe Strat-Tele Hybrid.” I know how easily upset you are—you practically break out in hives if you see a Tele updated with a six-saddle bridge, so the twisted visage of Tele body sporting a Stratocaster’s pickguard, pickups, and tremolo system might just send you screaming into the night. That said, there are guitars in Fender’s adventurous 2018 Parallel Universe series of model mash-ups you may like, and perhaps even love. One such instrument is the wildly versatile Limited Edition Parallel Universe American Elite Telecaster HSS, shown here. Yes, the Elite HSS does have a six-saddle chrome bridge, but don’t start hyperventilating just…

THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYS AN essential and often very different role in prog music than it typically does in twangy folk rock. Prog acoustic is the stuff of minstrels in the courts of kings, descended from European lute music, and often played on nylon strings with classical and flamenco flair. Alex Lifeson’s intros on seminal tracks such as “A Farewell to Kings,” “The Trees,” and “La Villa Strangiato” exemplify how an acoustic guitar can take a song from the realm of merely amazing to the stuff of legend. His steel-string playing has always paralleled the power of his electric prowess. “Whenever I’ve used acoustics,” says Lifeson, “I’ve tried to keep the same sort of intent that Pete Townshend had in his acoustic parts regarding the kind of weight they carried…

A (Truly) Final Note from Editor Boy Well, I was supposed to be on to my new adventures after the August 2018 issue. However, it took a while longer than anyone expected to find an awesome editor to carry the magazine forward. So myself, managing editor Patrick Wong, and group art director Paul Haggard ended up producing 99.4-percent of the September issue you hold in your hands. The very good news is that you now have a new editor of Guitar Player: Christopher Scapelliti. Christopher jumped into the editor’s chair on June 15, just in time to help us button up some edits and work with the team on the editorial transition to the “Scapelliti Era.” Christopher is a long-time Guitar World staffer who ultimately held the title of that…

AFTER DISGRUNTLED SAN FRANCISCO native Amory Kane packed off to London in the late ’60s, he experienced a bounty of Zelig-like moments with music legends while he made a name for himself as a psychedelic folk-rock artist and session guitarist. “During 1967’s Summer of Love, I could no longer hold back my desire to meet the Bluesbreakers and all the other fabulous musicians in London,” says Kane. “I was disenchanted with the crumbling San Francisco hippie scene and the lack of musical work in the Bay Area. Somehow, the gentle enlightenment scene had taken on a hard, druggy edge and the safety of the crowd had become the jeopardy of being in the crowd. Not a year after I left, Altamont happened.” In these exclusive excerpts from his upcoming autobiography, Memories…

PROGRESSIVE ROCK IS AMONG THE MOST versatile musical forms. The genre is teeming with musicians who helped it grow from a form of mainstream pop in the mid ’60s to a style of music that, by the early ’70s, placed greater emphasis on experimentation with respect to composition, instrumentation, and sound. This rock-driven approach established deep roots in America, Britain, and Europe, beginning with bands like the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, and Frank Zappa, before reaching a popularity peak in the 1970s as Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and other greats came to the scene. Every decade since has witnessed the continued evolution of prog rock courtesy of bands like Rush, Marillion, Styx, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, and, more recently, Animals As Leaders, the Mars…

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN ATTRACTED to the wonderful guitar tones created by progressive guitar players. King Crimson, in particular, were a true driving force with their ambitiously varied musical ventures. Of course, you can’t talk about the group without tipping your hat to Robert Fripp, King Crimson’s founder and a tone guru known for his distinctive overdriven, endlessly sustaining lead guitar style, which he created with his “Frippertronics” tape-looping technique. There are so many landmark King Crimson recordings to choose from, but I wanted to start chasing the tone on “Level Five,” a track from the band’s 2003 album, The Power to Believe. The song has the kind of heavy guitar riffs that the group became known for, played over a cacophony of drum grooves. I love this track because it’s…

JUNE MILLINGTON HAS sage-like wisdom and extraordinary depth as a player. I was blown away by the story of her and her sister Jean’s band, Fanny—which broke out in the mid ’60s as one of the first all-female rock and roll bands to enjoy major-label status. They were as serious about their playing as any of the guys, and they worked just as hard to be competent on their instruments and tight as a group. Fanny came up in the California music scene alongside the Grateful Dead, Santana, and the Jefferson Airplane, and though they never broke out with a million-selling hit record, their place in the history of rock is undisputed. Fanny had an amazing run. Yeah, we did. We were a hardworking band, let me tell you. When…

TOSIN ABASI IS USED TO GOING FAST, BUT FOR the past half hour he’s been stuck in midday L.A. traffic. “It’s okay,” he says with a resigned chuckle. “Sitting still gives me a chance to get my thoughts together. I probably couldn’t give you articulate sentences if I was racing along.” The funny thing is, speed usually offers Abasi the perfect platform for expression. When he came to attention in 2009 with the release of Animals as Leaders, his solo-project-disguised-as-a-band album, Abasi’s ruthlessly frenetic, ultra-sophisticated, and dizzyingly virtuosic approach to instrumental rock—performed on both 7- and 8-string guitars—hit the progressive-metal scene with the velocity and force of a comet. With the addition of co-guitarist Javier Reyes and drummer Matt Garstka, Animals as Leaders began to function as an actual group,…

THE MUSIC CAPTIVATED HIM THE FIRST TIME HE EVER heard it—so much that he ultimately made himself a promise to someday perform it with its creator. And in a near film-script-style fantasy of “things going right,” Gary Lucas did just that. Somehow, Lucas managed to transform a fan-to-artist relationship with the enigmatic and multitalented Don Van Vliet into a deep musical collaboration, joining Van Vliet’s Captain Beefheart band as a guitarist in 1980. In fact, Lucas—who has also worked with Jeff Buckley, Lou Reed, and others, as well as crafted a successful solo career—is still conjuring all things Beefheart 36 years after Van Vliet’s last album and retirement from music to pursue other artistic passions, and 18 years since the frontman’s death in 2010. Last year’s beguiling and intense The…

I CAN STILL REMEMBER THE THRILL of dropping the needle on the opening cut from King Crimson’s first album, In the Court of the Crimson King, and marveling at the cover art while taking in the 30 seconds of proto-steampunk industrial sound effects that preface “21st Century Schizoid Man,” and then, ka-boom! The song literally explodes with a powerhouse riff unlike anything that preceded it. Many more complex riffs and figures occur throughout the piece, which was jointly written by the band—bassist and vocalist Greg Lake provided the opening figure, woodwind and keyboard player Ian McDonald added the chromatic climb, guitarist Robert Fripp devised the form and embellished it with speedy single-note ensemble figures, drummer Michael Giles decorated the arrangement with precision and panache, and Peter Sinfield penned the lyrics—but…

AS ONE OF THE FOUNDING LUTHIERS OF the Fender Custom Shop, Michael Stevens has been back in the guitar press in recent years as part of that facility’s 30th anniversary celebrations, with specific note of the Founders Design Esquire that he contributed to Fender’s special Anniversary series. But Stevens has been with us all this time, building guitars, basses, mandolins, and other stringed instruments in his workshop in Alpine, Texas, that are among the most revered electric instruments in the world. If you haven’t encountered his work through these intervening years, well, that’s likely because they are rare beasts, built one at a time by hand, entirely to custom order. It’s worth noting that, between his early FCS work and his own builds, Stevens has made guitars for Danny Gatton,…

THE STRAIGHT EIGHT IS THE FIRST new OD pedal in several years to be introduced by Plush, the pedal-making arm of Fuchs Audio Technology. It offers a standard set of Level, Tone, and Gain controls and is equipped with a rotary OD Mode switch that selects between eight overdrive tones. In each mode the gain, compression, and waveshape are altered to produce sounds that range from bright overdrive to more compressed high-gain tones. The Straight Eight is a rugged affair featuring a die-cast aluminum housing. Its circuitry is laid out on a PC board, with the pots, jacks, and footswitch all chassis mounted. There’s a jack for external 9v power and space inside for a battery as well. I tested the Straight Eight through a Sound City SC30 combo and…

IN RECENT YEARS, PRS HAS BEEN building on its stellar reputation as an electric guitar manufacturer by expanding into the acoustic market with such notable models as the Private Stock Alex Lifeson Thinline that made GP’s list of 10 Great Signature Acoustics in 2015. This year the company added a whopping six new models to its SE series, which echoes the American-made Private Stock line but features instruments built overseas that sell for under a grand. Of the six new SE models, half are in the Tonare “Thunder” Grand body style, while the others—including the A50E on review here—sport the Angelus “Angel” Cutaway body style, whose shapely Venetian cutaway allows welcome access to upper-position playing. You’d never know that this is a “budget” PRS by looking at it. The A50E…

> Rother formed Neu! with drummer Klaus Dinger in Düsseldorf in 1971. The band is acknowledged as one of the founders of krautrock and had an essential influence on prog, punk, post-punk, ambient, and electronica. > Having performed in a short-lived lineup of the pioneering German group Kraftwerk in 1971, Rother has an unassailable electronic-music pedigree. > Neu!’s “motorik” 4/4 groove—pioneered by Dinger and Can’s Jaki Liebezeit—influenced artists such as David Bowie, Ultravox, and Joy Division, and provided Rother with a simple, pulsing, yet resolute platform from which to weave his guitar and keyboard melodies. > After running out of money while making their second album, Neu! 2 (1973), Rother and Dinger created remixes of the band’s previously released single, “Super”/“Neuschnee,” to fill side two of the record. It was…