Innehållsförteckning för September 2020 från Total Guitar

Formed in Sheffield in 2004, Bring Me The Horizon are one of the UK’s most successful metal acts, with six albums and two Grammy nominations under their belts. Inspired by the 1998 survival horror PlayStation game of the same name, Parasite Eve has an electronic rock sound with industrial influences from Mick Gordon (of Doom Eternal soundtrack fame) in the production style. The song is said to be part of a string of forthcoming BMTH releases entitled Post Human, the first of which is expected later this year. Guitarist Lee Malia plays the song in C standard tuning (C F B b E b G C) – so every string is tuned two tones down. Start by picking the sixth string while tapping your foot every four notes, making sure…

When it comes to the early 00s garage rock revival, three bands instantly spring to mind: The Strokes, The White Stripes and Swedish rockers The Hives. None of their contemporaries packed as much of a punk-rock punch as The Hives, and this big hitter from their breakthrough sophomore album Veni Vidi Vicious would become the band's signature song. There’s no special secret here – just good, old-fashioned raw energy. Those relentless powerchords are pounded out by the formidable right arms of guitarists Nicholaus Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem. It’s easy enough to play, but that pause in the breakdown can’t come soon enough for our worn-out forearms! If you’re going to play Hate To Say I Told You So, you’re going to need to practise more than you might think you…

THERE’S A ‘LIVING WITH NO REGRETS’ SENSIBILITY TO THAT GOLDEN RULE Video: bit.ly/tg336video The follow-up album to the commercial juggernaut that was 2007’s Puzzle, Only Revolutions is the light to the former’s darkness. And while the lyrics and rock fury could hint at sadness and depression, there’s a ‘living life with no regrets’ sensibility to That Golden Rule. Simon Neil’s opening riff is based around a simple sliding octave shape on the fourth and sixth strings. The song’s drop C tuning (CGCFAD) means the octave notes are played at the same fret – simply slide from the 8th fret to the 12th. The remainder of that epic intro is powerchord-based, this time on the three bass strings, and you’ll be moving around the 12th, 14th, 10th, 8th, 7th and 5th…

ANNIE CLARKE HAS DESCRIBED THE RIFF FROM CRUEL AS “ALI FARKA TOURÉ LITE” Citing a diverse mixture of influences that include David Bowie, Talking Heads, King Crimson, Jimi Hendrix and Tool’s Adam Jones, plus classic metal bands Metallica, Slayer and Pantera, it’s perhaps little surprise that Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, is something of an enigma in guitar circles. Spending three years at Berklee College Of Music before ultimately dropping out, Annie has developed a mastery of theory and harmony, but you’ll rarely hear a shred run or jazz chord emanating from her considerable collection of guitars, taking a sonically experimental art-pop direction instead. Clark has described her riff from 2011’s Cruel as “kind of Ali Farka Touré lite” - with its gentle hint of African tonalities and blues in…

The ambient sounds here on indie stalwarts The National’s 2013 single are reproduced beautifully in live shows – and a scout around YouTube tells us the Cincinnati five-piece use the same guitars most of the time. Aaron Dessner plays the fingerstyle arpeggios on his 1963 Fender Jazzmaster, providing that enduring hook line. Occasional washes of background noise come as twin brother Bryce gently taps his Silvertone 1446 (routed through overdrive, ambient delay and a long reverb) headstock against the ground. We know what you’re thinking, and nope, neither would we! Listen out at 2:02 when Bryce switches to his non-reverse Gibson Firebird to match Aaron’s arpeggios, but, crucially, playing a quarter note later each time. Expect this to sound utterly elating on a live stage as the two licks fire…

Recording electric guitars is different to recording acoustics – you’ll most likely be micing up an amp for starters – but many of the same ideas can apply. An electric guitar amp outputs fairly high sound pressure levels (SPL), so if you’re closemicing your cab with your amp cranked, you might want to consider using a dynamic mic or a condenser mic with a pad switch. Get close Many engineers like to close-mic amps and cabs with a dynamic mic and, believe it or not, placing the mic at different points in front of your speaker has a huge effect on the sound you capture. Start with the microphone 1cm-to-3cm away from the grille, pointing halfway between the centre and edge of the speaker. Moving the mic by just a…

“Less distortion can be more aggressive. Slayer never had tons of distortion on their guitars, Kerry just digs in like a motherf*cker when he’s playing. A lot of people tend to hide behind distortion with their rhythm playing. You’ve got all of these amps now with high-gain saturation, but you should be getting that punch out of your pick attack and digging in hard. If you can wind the gain down and play hard, you’ll get a better clarity to your sound. There’s definitely something to be said for the old-school guys who learned to play through [Marshall] JCM 800s without any pedals.”…

A Marshall valve amp and Gibson Les Paul guitar are the essential ingredients in Scott Gorham’s 70s sonic mix. He famously played a ’69 Deluxe and a ’57 Goldtop which was refinished in Sunburst before coming into his possession. For extra flavour, an MXR Phase 90 pedal can used in the breakdown. A wah wah pedal will help bring to life the rhythmic, muted notes played in unison with the snare drum. The rhythm guitar tone in the verses and choruses is fairly clean. You could down the gain on your amp or switch to a cleaner channel, but the most authentic results will come from having the amp set on overdrive and turning down the guitar’s volume knob for the cleaner sounds.…

BLACKSTAR LIVE LOGIC MIDI CONTROLLER 1 The British amp gurus have made a departure here – but it’s a welcome one. A six-button controller for use with with any music hardware or software with MIDI compatibility. The potential here is to make life with MIDI easier as a guitarist on stage and in the studio – whether that’s with your DAW or as an interface for your MIDI-compatible pedals. Blackstar’s software also makes changing its functions simple. £129, blackstaramps.com STERLING BY MUSIC MAN JARED DINES STINGRAY 2 The only StingRay model with 24 frets and hot-rodded dual humbuckers? YouTuber Jared Dines is making his debut signature model count. It’s certainly struck a chord with players as the initial run sold out fast. Expect wider availability in the future. “I wanted…

Though the company dates back to the mid-70s when it was mainly specialising in aluminium neck basses, it was a chance encounter between co-founder Dennis Berardi and Eddie Van Halen’s management on a flight in 1981 that led to the virtuoso teaming up with Kramer. It is rumoured that the guitarist promised to make them the biggest name in the trade – if he didn’t succeed, he certainly came close. The following decade led to some fruitful partnerships and a host of high-quality instruments renowned for uncompromised playability. By signing up the guitar players in bands like Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe and Whitesnake, in addition to Eddie’s endorsement for his first mass-produced signature, Kramer became the go-to brand for loud guitars with equally loud looks. It all came to an…

RICHARD HENSHALL “One of my favourite tracks on [new album] Virus is Carousel. In a Tool-like fashion, we wrote this one in drop D tuning, which is always a good excuse to let loose a bit on the guitar. It has a Grohl-inspired intro, some Gojira-tinged riffs in the middle section and some back-to-back solos from Charlie and I, so it generally covers a lot of ground stylistically. When we’re finally able to tour again, I’m also looking forward to playing The Messiah Complex. This one contains some of the most intense riffing on the album and is almost certainly the trickiest song we’ve ever written as a band. It should be fun for the crowd to watch us sweat our way through the finger gymnastics on this one! Another…

Kirk Hammett knew that paying visit to Peter Green was the right thing to do, and yet the Metallica guitarist couldn’t shake the feeling that it could all go wrong. As “the caretaker” of Peter Green’s stage-weathered 1959 Gibson Les Paul, aka Greeny, the famous ’Burst with a magical tone secret that Green sold to the late Gary Moore in 1970 for $300, Hammett felt it in his bones. He would visit the former Bluesbreaker and Fleetwood Mac guitarist at Green’s home in the Isle of Dogs, London. He would take Greeny, pay his dues, and talk shop with the player whose preternaturally gifted feel and tone gave BB King “the cold sweats” and set the benchmark for British blues. And yet the whole idea was giving him the heebie…

What The Hives blasted out in punk aggression, The Strokes made up for with considered, textured parts - and to prove the case here’s Exhibit A, Last Nite, the second single from the latter’s debut. Kicking off with a series of octave eighth notes in C, it’s a simple opener. Enter guitar 2, which moves between F and G octaves. On its own, this is another straightforward part, but over the C it implies the uncoloured harmony of 4th and 5th intervals - a bit like shifting between a sus4 and a powerchord, but cannily divided between two guitars. As the verse kicks in, there’s a shift to the ‘straighter’ harmony of basic major and minor barre chords. Once again, simple enough, but Valensi and Hammond Jr. bring in a…

THOM YORKE ONCE SAID THAT BODYSNATCHERS “SOUNDS LIKE WOLFMOTHER...” Released to near universal critical acclaim, the seventh album from the oh-so-enigmatic Oxford lot saw the band striking a balance of the experimental electronica of Kid A and Amnesiac with the more guitar-focussed material of the 90s. Bodysnatchers is a notable highlight - a lo-fi alt-rocker with Thom Yorke taking the main riff and Ed O’Brien jamming the sparser rhythm parts before trading riffs with resident six-string polymath Johnny Greenwood. Wanna play along? You’d better invite a couple of guitar-playing pals over to help you tackle those layered up lines. Live, Thom, Ed and Johnny all play electrics, but there’s an acoustic guitar buried in the original mix, too - plenty of fun for everyone! Thom’s opening riff is the most…

Video: bit.ly/tg336video Arctic Monkeys’ resident songwriter-in-chief he may be, but Alex Turner can’t take credit for R U Mine’s ostinato riff, which was penned by bassist Nick O’Malley. And what a riff it is, delivered initially by Turner and fellow guitarist Jamie Cook before O’Malley makes it a triple attack, playing in octave-down unison on bass. We’ve played through the opening riff in our video lesson - a fairly simple riff in F# minor based in 2nd position with occasional leaps up to the 7th and 9th frets. So far, so simple then, but beware of the variations that follow in the form of F# minor pentatonic runs on the three bass strings. Timing is key to that massive ‘wall of sound’ effect. In live shows, Alex plays the song…

In 2017, Australian psych rock septet King Gizzard pulled off a daring feat of releasing five full-length albums in one calendar year, with tracks ranging from free jazz to stoner metal. Though the critically-acclaimed run was littered with highlights, Polygondwanaland opener Crumbling Castle might be the pick of the bunch. Across nearly 11 minutes, the band’s three guitarists trade intricate riffs on top of complex polyrhythms that continue to build towards a dramatic half-time sludge coda. When guitar-playing frontman Stu Mackenzie spoke to TG recently, he described the prog-rock giant of a track as “the hardest song we’d ever made.” Stu is known for his rare, unconventional guitars, but his main tone heard here can be achieved with a single-coil Strat and his preferred Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp –…

Re-amping is the process of taking a guitar track that’s already recorded and sending it back out to a mic’d guitar amp for re-recording. This technique is particularly handy if you find that you’re unhappy with your original amp sound and want to correct it later. Your audio interface will send the signal out at a higher level than your guitar amp is designed to receive, so to re-amp effectively, you’ll need a re-amping box.Radial (www.radialeng.com) produces a range starting at around £90. The diagram above shows a re-amping setup.…

DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT (IT’S CAUGHT ME IN ITS SPOTLIGHT) Words and music by Philip Parris Lynott. Copyright © 1977 PIPPIN-THE-FRIENDLY-RANGER MUSIC CO. LTD. All Rights Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL - POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Used by Permission of Hal Leonard Europe Ltd. THIN LIZZY DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT Intro The track kicks off with just drums and bass jamming that famous riff. This line makes a return later in the breakdown where there is a chance to double it on the guitar. The first figure you need to play is the rhythmic, muted notes brought to life with a wah pedal. These mutes appear as a punctuation point at the end of each section. THIN LIZZY DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT Verses 1…

After the acoustic intro, most of the chords are either implied by the synth sounds or the overall harmony of the clean electric arpeggios. If you want to strum along through the whole track, the intro chords sound great throughout. You’ll notice that the simple addition of a few open strings to standard chord shapes make the chords sound less obvious and more complex. RADIOACTIVE Words and Music by Daniel Reynolds, Benjamin McKee, Daniel Sermon, Alexander Grant and Josh Mosser. Copyright © 2012 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., IMAGINE DRAGONS PUBLISHING, ALEXANDER GRANT and JMOSSER MUSIC (BMI) All Rights for IMAGINE DRAGONS PUBLISHING and ALEXANDER GRANT Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. All Rights on behalf of JMosser Music (BMI). Controlled and Administered by Bluewater Music Services Corp. All…

As far as build quality goes, there is very little in difference between these models. They all feel rugged and reliable, with the same dependable double-locking Floyd Rose system to ensure tuning is held no matter how much use or abuse it receives. All of these guitars are fitted with an allen key holder on the back of the headstock and come with Seymour Duncans – so really it just boils down to which best suits your needs. Anyone needing a neck pickup will naturally rule out the Baretta Vintage, but there are plenty of rock players out there that will appreciate the simplicity of one angled humbucker in the bridge. It’s also worth noting that for only £50 more, the Pacer Vintage benefits from two humbuckers fitted with the…

Even if you know nothing about the band, you’ll recognise Josh Homme’s angular C-tuned riffing on QOTSA’s alt/stoner rock classic No One Knows. 2002’s Songs For The Deaf album is far from ‘commercial’, but its lead single helped the band break through with mainstream chart success and greater radio play than ever before. Having Dave Grohl behind the drum kit can’t have hurt either! At the heart of those staccato chords is Homme’s dry and unusual neck-humbucker driven tone. The QOTSA brain trust keeps its own counsel on gear, but this much we know: Homme is a vintage gear aficionado, favouring guitars by Ovation, Maton and Motor Ave. He loves Ampeg’s VT series combos. Having played a Maton MS500 in the No One Knows video, we’d bet one would have…

NOT MANY MUSICIANS CAN SWITCH FROM DANNY ELFMAN–STYLE PIANO TO HEAVY RIFFS LIKE BELLAMY Back in 2010, TG proclaimed Muse frontman Matt Bellamy our Guitarist Of The Decade. Fast forward 10 years, and it’s a judgement that’s aged well. Bellamy remains one of the most creative, boundary-pushing players of the century so far. Today, Matt’s a majority shareholder in Manson Guitar Works - the brand that evolved from famed UK luthier Hugh Manson’s custom-built models into an internationally recognised innovator of guitar design. The Muse frontman has been fiercely loyal to Manson for the last 20 years, and the company is expanding Matt’s range of signature guitars to include more affordable models such as the MBM-1 (reviewed last issue). This means more players can access a slice of Matt’s creative…

Every time we hear this track from the Ohio garage rock duo, we’re transported straight back to 2011 and many hours spent scratching our heads trying to figure out how the hell to dial in a sound for those pitch-drops in the opening riff. Is it a DigiTech Whammy pedal? Is it a pitch shifter controlled by an expression pedal? Turns out it’s neither, and guitarist Dan Auerbach’s method is much easier. The secret behind the sound is the use of a Boss PS-5 Super Shifter pedal. Essentially, this pedal removes the inaccuracies inherent in trying to accurately control a real-time treadle-operated pitch shifter. Just tell it how far to downtune and how long it should take to do so and it’ll perform the pitch change for you while you…

TURNER COMPOSES ELITE GUITAR POP EVEN WHILST BARELY TOUCHING THE INSTRUMENT Not only the lead vocalist and chief songwriter for one of the most successful British groups of the century so far, Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner also takes care of the band’s lead guitar duties. For those unfamiliar with the world-conquering Sheffield four-piece, Turner’s playing is far more versatile and impressive than one might expect. Not content with settling into any one style for too long, Turner’s playing has evolved from scrappy, Buzzcocks–style powerchords and post-punky monotone riffs (Whatever People Say I Am..., Favourite Worst Nightmare) to desert rock fuzz and spooky broken chords (Humbug), to psychedelic open chords and 70s glam rock soloing (Suck It And See, AM), with detours into acoustic folk strumming and hip-hop inspired rhythms along…

Asked what he thought the future holds for guitar music, Polyphia’s Tim Henson told TG last year: “I see it being less guitar-centred, and more musical. Because I hope that guitar music dies. I want it to die a painful death, because so much of it is just bullsh*t. I feel like people should focus more on the music itself and use the guitar as a tool to make music, versus ‘I’m going to play guitar music.’” We’re not quite sure we agree with the sentiment, but it’s fair to say no guitar convention is safe in Henson’s expert hands - and that makes him, alongside fellow guitarist Scott LePage, one of the most creative players around today. The opening lines of G.O.A.T. give you a bite-sized insight into the…

This month, we’re super excited at TG Towers to bring you a track written especially for the mag by Animals As Leaders, T.R.A.M. and Mestis guitarist, Javier Reyes. Javier’s AAL bandmate Tosin Abasi recorded a video lesson for the magazine back in 2015; we’re huge fans of the band (and Javier’s own side project, Mestis), and the duo’s influence on modern progressive guitar music really can’t be overstated. Usually seen playing extended-range eight-string ESP electric guitars, Javier draws on tech-metal, classical and Latin influences to create emotional and ultra-contemporary sonic soundscapes. Javier’s piece draws from this background but is written for standard-tuned six-string guitar, which means everyone can have a go! Entitled Some Kind Of Way, it’s a medium tempo piece, but there’s a relaxed feel in the vein of…

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…

It’s interesting how Kramer – a company that took a sizeable chunk out of Les Paul sales over the 80s – now find themselves being brought back to life by Gibson. This latest collection is certainly worthy of the brand’s heritage, with wild finishes and no options for fixed bridges. It is, after all, what Kramer were famous for – and they still are, looking how much the American-made originals go for second-hand. Perhaps it’s the sheer affordability of the Pacer Vintage that makes it such an enticing instrument. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better Floyd-equipped Superstrat under £700, especially considering the custom aesthetics of the tiger striped Orange Burst and the inclusion of real Seymours instead of anything outsourced or ‘Duncan Designed’. But the old Sambora signature really…

£159 While IK Multimedia has long been a proponent of software modelling, its latest product is more of a creative tool than a full-blown interface. At its core, the Z-Tone is a DI box. Yes, there are hundreds of DIs available, and they sit somewhere between stands and gig bags on the list of Boring Yet Useful Purchases. They’re the guitar equivalent of broccoli: you know it’ll do you good, but you never really want it. Interfaces start at round £20, and many even have instrument-level inputs allowing you to plug your guitar in directly, so why would you need this? Well, the Z-Tone DI takes various features from IK’s Axe I/O to offer you greater control over your direct signal, as well as additional flexibility on how you’re routing…