Innehållsförteckning för April 2020 från Total Guitar

Last month, 00s indie revivalists The Strokes returned to the stage once more to perform at a Bernie Sanders rally in New Hampshire, showing support for the Democratic candidate alongside the likes of Vampire Weekend and Sunflower Bean. During their set, the group debuted a new song in the form of Bad Decisions and announced the release of their imminent sixth album, The New Abnormal. The band’s latest studio effort is to be released on 10th April and was recorded by Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La studios in Malibu, California. Eagle-eyed fans of the group may recognise Ode to the Metz and The Adults Are Talking on the track list, two songs which have been performed live in the band’s more recent (but still sporadic) performances. The album artwork is…

Following 2019’s Super Fly portable amp, Blackstar has recently expanded its acoustic stable with the addition of the Sonnet and Fly3 Acoustic (more on that later on p91). While the Super Fly is battery-powered and aimed at those wanting to perform ‘on the go’ (there’s an electric channel with overdrive in addition to the acoustic voicing and mic input), the Sonnet is a much more acoustic-specific amp. The Sonnet lineup comprises two models: Sonnet 60 and Sonnet 120 each with – you guessed it – either 60 or 120 watts of output power on tap. Key features for both amps include four inputs: microphone, instrument, auxiliary and bluetooth, as well as reverb (independent levels for each channel), phase switching to help manage feedback and a tilt-back stand to ensure your…

When we talk punk rock we often talk about three chords and those being enough to capture its whole aesthetic. As though that’s all you need. But that alone doesn’t get you there. You’ve got to find a way of capturing a punk intensity, of getting that attitude into a recording. The Chats, a gloriously unworked and uncouth punk trio from Queensland, Australia, applied a simple rule to the making of their debut album High Risk Behaviour: you get three takes and that’s it. As guitarist Josh “Pricey” Price tells it, forget rehearsals. Playing in The Chats isn’t an office job. “We’d just go into the studio with no songs and then whack for a day and come out with four,” he says. “And we don’t really know how to…

“Through my teen years all I listened to was SRV. I wanted to sound like him, dress like him, I wanted to be him. And I don’t regret that phase at all, it became the foundation of my playing, a more aggressive and relentless take on the blues. I noticed after a while that the faster I played, the more my picking hand would start locking up. It’s a natural human reaction because your brain is telling you that you are doing something intense. As soon as your picking hand starts locking up, all fluidity goes out of the window. You won’t have that natural flow. Thankfully, there are definitely shortcuts that make it easier. I looked into what SRV was doing, and even faster guys like Yngwie Malmsteen, and…

“The secret to playing great blues is emotion. You have to be true to what you play. It’s good to know the tradition and the roots, of course, but I like to mix the old blues with modern sounds. I use pedals to create interesting worlds. Blues can be played fast, slow, seriously or humorously. There are so many ways to express yourself. Theoretically the blue note is considered to be essential in blues music. It is a note somewhere between minor and major third that gives this longing, melancholic sound. When playing a blues solo, I try to tell a story, starting from a quiet, easy-going conversation, and letting it grow little by little, until the ‘words’ pour out fast and loud. I also like to use a lot…

SMOOTH  Words by Rob Thomas Music by Rob Thomas and Itaal Shur Copyright © 1999 EMI April Music Inc., EMI Blackwood Music Inc., U Rule Music and Itaal Shur Music All Rights on behalf of EMI April Music Inc., EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and U Rule Music Administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219 All Rights on behalf of Itaal Shur Music Administered by Downtown DMP Songs International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved SANTANA SMOOTH Intro solo The first four bars should be played in 12th position using shape four of the natural minor and harmonic minor scales. Shift down to 5th position in bar 4 for the tone bend on the third string. In bar 6, the lick is played mainly along…

Our backing track is in E major (E F# G# A B C# D#), but be aware that there’s a G note in the A9 chords – so target G instead of G# here. It’s not as simple as widdling through the major scale, however. Generally, we recommend using arpeggios based on the chords in the chart or two- and three-note chord shapes arranged as melodically as you can. The E blues scale (E G A B b B D) features some out-of-key notes, but its tense, edgy sound is well suited to melodic runs.…

The Rolling Stones are one of the most famous bands in guitar history, but that doesn’t stop the persistent myths and mysteries around them – and one involves the tuning of the much-loved closing track to 1969’s Let It Bleed album. Keith Richards’ rhythm part on the song You Can’t Always Get What You Want has been the subject of conjecture amongst guitar-playing Stones fans for years. It isn’t C and F chords, and it apparently isn’t Keef’s usual open G with the bottom string removed. Now, one man believes he’s cracked it. LA-based pro guitarist Jon MacLennan says he has spent “hours and hours and hours” listening to the recording in order to figure out exactly what Keef is doing on the studio track – because the man himself…

Maybe it’s because Gretsch came of age at a time when rock ’n’ roll was the big bang moment for youth culture that it will always be a heritage brand. Maybe it’s simply a case of the classics never going out of style. But for all the revisions it has made to its line-up over the years since the Gretsch plant in Brooklyn, New York was a mid-50s epicentre of cool, there’s something unchanged about its guitars, as though they were unearthed in Grandpa’s attic. Take this month’s Jets. We’ll start with the baritones, the G5260 and G5260T, the T for tremolo. These have a 29.75-inch scale to accommodate low tunings such as baritone (B E A D F# B) or A standard (A D G C E A) without…

“FEELS REASSURINGLY CONTEMPORARY FOR A GUITAR THAT’S ALL ABOUT FINDING TONES THAT PREDATE THE COLOUR TV” If your eyes are watering and fretting hand is in paroxysms of psychosomatic tendonitis at the mere prospect of playing your go-to rock and blues riffs on the wide-open spaces of a 29.75-inch scale guitar, then worry not, the G5222 Double Jet returns us to familiar territory. In fact, after adjusting your style to get the most out of the baritones, the Double Jet feels like a toy. Its neck has got a fairly skinny profile – a “thin U,” says Gretsch – that welcomes all styles, with a short-ish 24.6-inch scale and a flat-feeling 12-inch fretboard with 22 medium-jumbo frets. This all adds up to feel reassuringly contemporary, despite being on a guitar…

When Fender launched a brand new effects line with six pedals at the beginning of 2018, few could have predicted just how enthusiastically it would embrace expanding it; there’s now 22 pedals and counting in a consistently impressive range that brings innovative features to the table. This is Fender’s first acoustic pedal in the family, and rather than a more ubiquitous reverb, compression or delay, they’ve gone for a dedicated overdrive. We’re intrigued! It turns out we are right to be. “HIGHLY EDITABLE, VERSATILE AND MUSICAL” Like the rest of the line, the Smolder has a hardy chassis, with simple and contemporary typeface making everything clear. Metallic brown is very much an ‘unplugged’ vibe too, right? The optional LEDS on the controls are a win for us too for dark…

Back in April 2019, New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain revealed he was undergoing treatment for cancer, and a GoFundMe page was set up to help offset the cost of medical bills. At the time of writing, almost $72,000 of the $80,000 target has been raised. Now, musicians and bands ranging from Keith Richards and Slash to Skid Row, Faster Pussycat and others have signed a one-of-a-kind Gretsch electric guitar, hand-painted by Dogs D’Amour frontman Tyla, to raise additional funds for Sylvain. The charity guitar is the brainchild of Tyla and his friend and business partner, Alan Hampton. Hampton, who owns a bar that has hosted performances from Sylvain and Tyla, had the idea of purchasing the Gretsch, a model played by both artists, and then have it painted and…

Got my first real six-string “My first guitar was a Strat that belonged to my Dad. I don’t know exactly what year it was from, but it was probably an 80s model. I must have been around eight at the time. In the beginning, my Dad taught me a few things, some blues and rock ’n’ roll stuff. Like a lot of players, when I learned the pentatonic scale I was suddenly able to jam along to a lot of my favourite records... That was probably my first big moment on guitar as a kid.” “FOR ONLY TWO FINFERS, DJANGO REINHARDT DEFINITELY GOT AROUND THE FRETBOARD...” Castles made of sand “I’d say my initial guitar hero was Jimi Hendrix. I saw some footage of him playing at Woodstock, I must…

AMERICAN FOLK The cultural and geographical isolation that helped shape the folk music traditions of the British Isles was conspicuously absent on the other side of the Atlantic, as American musicians readily adapted Old World songs for guitar, and the emergence of unique forms — bluegrass and country from the mountains, jazz and blues from the South — profoundly influenced the sound of contemporary American music. From Carter picking to open tuning, modern guitar owes much to the inventions of American folk. START WITH DAVE VAN RONK FOLKSINGER(1962) Regarded by many as a crucial link between America’s post-war folk revival 1 and the folk rock zeitgeist of Bob Dylan et al, Dave Van Ronk was a boho raconteur, a technically versatile jazz guitarist who reverse-engineered himself into a folk/blues fingerpicker.…

“Scales. Everyone talks about them, but what are they?” Basically, a scale gives you a skeleton set of notes to make music with. A musical scale climbs up through a sequence of notes (ascending) and back down (descending), almost always using the same notes. “Okay, they sound boring. What’s the point?” Scales have a bad rep because some people focus on the misapprehension that if you learn them you’ll be forced to do endless scale practice instead of playing real music. Not so! Scales are music’s building blocks – the basis of the music you love. They are used in riffs, solos and to make chords. Ignore them at your peril. “That makes sense. Where do I start?” The minor pentatonic scale is used by loads of guitarists, so it’s…

There’s a well of unimaginable darkness and intensity driving Code Orange’s latest album Underneath. So much so, that it feels almost more soundtrack than metal – adding digital squelches and heavily-effected samples to the nightmarish onslaught of chainsaw guitars and crushing beatdowns. The Pittsburgh noise merchants, who won a Grammy nomination on their last album, 2017’s Forever, now stand as one of the most important extreme bands of the last decade. Speaking to TG in the cafeteria of a London hotel, guitarist Reba Meyers explains the secrets to their devastating sound, and how employing hip-hop sampling techniques helped them make heavy metal even heavier... Since your last TG interview, you released the LTD RM-600 with ESP. What were you looking for in your very first signature guitar? “Honestly, I was…

“I’m not sure where it comes from, because we come from two different places”, Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford related to TG’s sister mag Guitar Player in 2019. “He’s [Joe Perry] not schooled at all, so it’s totally a “feel” thing for him, whereas I did a lot more studying of the guitar. So you’re seeing two different approaches, but they work really well together. Ultimately, you want to have both sides.” What Brad is explaining is the intangible secret of the Aerosmith groove machine. Even if you can play like Perry or Whitford, the band’s sound is the sum of two distinct parts. Joe’s take on this? “I listen to what Brad’s playing, and he listens to what I’m playing, and then we just try and mix it up, right down…

As well as contemporary heroes like Gary Clark Jr. and Lauryn Hill, there was one lesser-known name credited as a guest musician in the liner notes of Eric Gales’ Middle Of The Road album – generally considered the best blues release of 2017. That name was Christone Kingfish Ingram, who despite only being 16 years old at the time of recording his contributions for the track Help Yourself, played with the conviction and authority of an old blues master, much likes Gales himself. He’s been since spotted promoting the new Vintera series by Fender, covering Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ hit I Put A Spell On You on a Seafoam Green Strat. And as far as promotional material goes, they couldn’t have picked a better rising star to help translate their legacy…

West Midlands prodigy Joanne Shaw Taylor has gone from being one of the most exciting blues newcomers and lead guitarist in Annie Lennox’s band to one of the genre’s most respected players, having inked a major label deal for last year’s sixth album Reckless Heart. That said, she hasn’t forgotten where she came from, swearing by her very first electric (a 1966 Fender Esquire bought on Denmark Street) above all else. “I don’t think I’m a traditionalist, but I wouldn’t say that I’m pushing boundaries like Jack White,” she once admitted. “I think I’m a mixture of influences. I’m not predominantly a blues player, but obviously that’s a huge influence on me. There’s the rock and classic rock – Free, Paul Kossoff, Gary Moore, Clapton and all kinds of 60s…

“The big turning point for me was seeing how Hendrix approached playing rhythm; until that moment, rhythm and lead had been two distinctly separate art forms. Obviously its lineage goes back further to the likes of Curtis Mayfield, but seeing how effortlessly Hendrix intertwined melody and harmony was revolutionary. Any combination of the two that I work into my playing undoubtedly has its roots in those early days of emulating Jimi. For me, the major pentatonic scale is infinitely the most musical – I find it easier to be lyrical and expressive in that context. I know that’s totally the opposite to a lot of players, who prefer minor, but I wouldn’t say that I ever really made a point of practising one more than the other. In hindsight, I…

“Music is not something you can fake. You have to tap into your heart and soul, displaying that through your instrument and then following your own instincts and intuitions. I certainly feel like there are a lot of players out there that have a deeper vocabulary than I do, especially in other genres. But I work hard on crafting an emotional experience through my solos. In each song, I’m trying to convey a different emotional story – even if the licks are similar from one song to the next, it’s how they’re woven together that tells the story in a different way. That’s where instinct comes in, knowing when to build it all up and bring it back down. Even something as simple as a slide across the strings, with…

Though not on the original recording, Billy Ray Cyrus has been seen jamming out these chords on acoustic guitar in live shows. If you’re singing along solo, simply move the capo higher or lower to suit your pitch. The capo makes for some complicated chord names, but don’t worry about that! All the shapes are easy to play and we’re sticking with the un-capo’d names in the song sheet so you won’t get confused. Finally, position your thumb around the back of the neck to keep the sixth string muted out. OLD TOWN ROAD Words and Music by Trent Reznor, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jocelyn Donald, Atticus Ross, Kiowa Roukema and Montero Lamar Hill Copyright © 2019 Form And Texture, Inc., Sunnageronimo Publishing Inc., Songs By MPA, Songs Of Universal, Inc.,…

Any moving electrical part on your guitar is can wear out. Tone pots and jack sockets are especially prone. And it’ll come as no surprise that switches can become crackly or fail mechanically too - just like this month’s repair job. The old switch doesn’t have any ‘clicks’, so it won’t stay in position, and, as such, it’s earned itself a ticket to the landfill. Here’s the thing though; the new switch has a different pin layout which confuses things a little; there’s a more complicated circuit than expected to keep an eye on too. To boot, we’ll show you how to ID pickup colour codes if you have an unusual pickup. The switch we’ll be, erm, switching is an Oak Grigsby 3-way item which will replace the bust no-namer…

The New Blues? You could say that Peter Green invented that back in 1968. Sure, first as guitarist for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (where he replaced Eric Clapton) and then as the guitarist/frontman and creative force behind the original Fleetwood Mac, Green was key to the British Blues Explosion – arguably the third wave of blues after ‘country blues’ (acoustic) and ‘urban blues’ (electric). And, yeah, these days the music of the British Blues Explosion is the orthodoxy – classic rock, dad rock, the preserve of blues bores the world over. But there was always more to Peter Green than blues vamps and old-timey shuffles. Between March 1968 and May 1970, Green’s Fleetwood Mac released six singles that redefined music. With Black Magic Woman, Need Your Love So Bad, Albatross, Man…

WHITE STONES Opeth four-stringer revisits his death metal roots… As the bass player in progressive rock visionaries Opeth, it would be fair to say it’s usually Martín Méndez’s bandmates Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson being interviewed for this magazine. That all changes this year with the arrival of Martín’s new death metal project White Stones and their debut album Kuarahy (named after his birthplace in Uruguay), on which he played six-string as well as covering the lower register he’s known for. “I’ve always written music but never really presented anything to Mikael for Opeth,” says Martín, calling from his Barcelona home. “This all came from having fun. After writing six songs I felt there was something good there, so I called up some local friends. The singer has been my…

When Fear Inoculum – the Californian prog-rock band’s first album in over a decade – dropped last year, Tool proved they’d lost none of their magic. At the heart of the band’s signature sound is guitarist Adam Jones’ use of drop D tuning. Achieving this tuning is simple enough – all you do is drop your sixth string down from E to D, so your tuning is D A D G B E (as opposed to the standard E A D G B E). So many of the band’s iconic riffs, such as Jambi, Schism or Forty Six & 2, would either be impossible to play, or sound very different indeed played any other way. Part of Adam’s riffing approach is to create repeating, meditative hooks with a hypnotic quality,…

“I feel that in my career, everything I’ve hinted at, from Sink Or Swim to The ’59 Sound to playing with Bruce and all that stuff, everything has been a hint and a partial viewing to what I truly hear in my heart and I’m trying to do. And I’ve never achieved it, and I’m demanding of myself that it will happen.” Brian Fallon told us that just over a year ago. So today, as we read those words back to him when we meet in the cafe of London’s Rough Trade East record shop to discuss his new solo album Local Honey, we have to ask him – did it happen? “I feel that this is step one,” he smiles. “The door is now opened, walked through. I have…

For a genre so deeply and tragically entrenched in history – stretching back one and a half centuries – the blues finds itself in a defiantly rude state of health in 2020. The world is a very different place now, and still far from perfect, though truth be told the potency of pentatonic scales, 12-bars and flat fives to the human ear has never waned, largely thanks to the musicians keeping this form of expression alive. For this month’s special, we wanted to celebrate the players who have been doing precisely that – whether it be dedicating their lives to faithful recreations of the sounds of the past or finding new ways to reinvent a very classic formula by introducing country, jazz or hip-hop tonalities. As an art form, the…

“That sounds tricky, right?! There are limitations to what you can do because the essence of the blues (I-IV-V and the pentatonic scale) is the tradition. And if you alter that too much it will turn into something else. But there’s a lot you can do to sound more unique. I might switch from using a plectrum to fingerstyle to ‘feel’ the notes a little more and find the right texture. I might pick up a slide, having learned a lot from Elmore James, Roy Rogers or Johnny Winter. Or, I might introduce outside notes into my pentatonic framework, using all kinds of notes through 9s, flat 9s, 6ths, flat 6ths, major 7s. I might use the altered scale on any 5th chord. I find the ‘approach note pattern’ in…

“I’ve had a lot of mentors in my life. New York City and Harlem isn’t really a big blues town compared to Chicago or Texas or Memphis, so a lot of my inspiration came from listening to records. Thanks to YouTube I’ve spent countless hours watching the three Kings, as well as some modern players who are equally amazing, like Eric Gales, Joanne Shaw Taylor or Tyler Bryant. I guess the only real way to play the blues is to live it. I know that’s a funny thing to say - obviously the original blues guys went through a much rougher time in history. Practising and listening to the right records is great but there’s nothing like going through your own heartbreak. Being in New York, there’s a lot of…

Considered by many to be the greatest slide player alive right now, it should come as no surprise that Derek Truck’s earliest musical memory was hearing Duane Allman on The Allman Brothers first live album At Fillmore East, as well as the slide pioneer’s contributions on Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek And The Dominos. There was something about the power of a slide guitar, he once told this magazine, and its ability to emulate the human voice. A big part of that came down to the microtones available to slide players – those notes in between the semitone divisions across the fretboard. “There’s no distinction between one note and the next: you’re hearing every inflection in between,” he once noted, while also admitting picking up a slide…

It speaks volumes that in the list of guest performers involved with Mick Fleetwood’s Peter Green tribute night at the London Palladium in February – dotted in amongst an all-star cast including luminaries such as David Gilmour, John Mayall and Billy F. Gibbons – the only ‘younger’ name belonged to Jonny Lang. The North Dakotan gospel rocker doffs his cap to many of the old blues legends, though perhaps one more than any other… “There are so many legendary blues musicians still alive,” he recently noted. “But I guess for me Buddy Guy is the big one, he’s probably the guy when it comes to the proper legends. I remember seeing him play at some point very early on in my career, just watching him go crazy on stage. He…

It would be fair to say singer/guitarist and multiple Grammy winner Gary Clark Jr. has a complicated relationship with the blues. On one hand, he learned virtually everything he knows about music from growing up in Austin, Texas – starting with his experiences at the local Baptist church where he backed the choir and later at Antone’s, the club in which Stevie Ray Vaughan and his elder brother Jimmie had famously cut their teeth some decades prior. These early years were pivotal in moulding Clark as one of the most commercially successful, critically revered and musically diverse guitar heroes of the modern age – a man who’s played with everyone from BB King and Jeff Beck to Alicia Keys and Foo Fighters and comfortably held his own... “The first time…

Carlos’ tone has been the stuff of legend since the earliest days of his career. He was one of the first players to switch to Mesa/Boogie amps in the early 70s, and still uses his original MkI combo. On Smooth, he played his own signature PRS Santana II guitar. Opt for an overdrive channel on your amp with plenty of gain dialled in to get that famous singing sustain. Roll off some of your guitar’s volume in the verse and chorus for a cleaner tone, then turn up again for the intro/interlude/ solos. Santana also varies his pick attack to create greater levels of expression and dynamics, so don’t be afraid to experiment!…

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…

“I tune my guitars down a semitone. You get more bottom end, a richer bass. I use heavy strings, 13s, and tuned down they’re slack and nicer to play. “I’ll often tune my high E down to D, so that when you play a C, G and A Minor letting that D on top ring out gives the chords a nice, open feel. I use open D tuning a lot too – D A D F# A D. I’ve always loved that tuning; strum the open strings and you’ve got a lovely chord.” As for his fingerpicking, that John Martyn influence comes through: “He only used his thumb and first finger, which is pretty amazing. You look at his hand and it’s so fast. I pick with those same fingers…

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…