Innehållsförteckning för January 2022 från Total Guitar

Welcome to the first Total Guitar Awards Issue! Back in November, TG conducted an online poll to ask readers of GuitarWorld.com to vote for their favourite guitarist of 2021. There was just one rule: the guitarists in question had to have released new music over the course of the previous 12 months. The votes flooded in in record numbers (nearly 90,000 were cast!) making this the biggest poll we’ve ever conducted here at TG Towers. The winner is revealed on p35, and, depending on which version of the mag you have in your hands, may be on the cover. I say ‘may be’ because this issue is a special edition of Total Guitar with two covers available to buy, celebrating both our first- and second-place guitarists, Tash Sultana and Greta…

1 Mdou Moctar Afrique Victime (Matador) Mdou Moctar is one of those rare guitar players who make us rethink the instrument. Some of the base ingredients to his sound might be familiar – a Fender Stratocaster, Roland Jazz Chorus 120 combos, a scattering of commonly found effects pedals. And he, like many of us who picked up the electric guitar post-1978, has cribbed techniques from Eddie Van Halen. But Moctar’s idiosyncratic style is cut from different cloth; it’s a rock ’n’ roll and skronky blues and psych-rock take on traditional Tuareg music, and the product of the most unorthodox guitar-hero origin story. Moctar grew up in rural Niger. When he saw the great ishumar pioneer Abdallah Oumbadougou in concert he knew he had to play. He just had to work…

1 Eric Gales I Want My Crown (feat. Joe Bonamassa) Christmas came early for blues fans back in August when it was teased that Eric Gales and Joe Bonamassa would be going head-to-head in what looked more like a boxing match than a musical collaboration. When the video finally arrived a few months later the pair were indeed found in a ring together, though thankfully no punches were thrown. Instead, the two friends unleashed some of the most life-affirming blues of 2021, taking turns to trade one dazzling lick after another over an epic minute-long solo section in A b minor. And while both players are undoubtedly masters of their scene, there’s a lot more to their lines than just pentatonic shapes – Gales occasionally mixing in Phrygian flavours to…

Arguably their best known song, Sharp Dressed Man was taken from ZZ Top’s commercial breakthrough album, 1983’s Eliminator, which propelled them from a not-so-well-known blues band to international superstars. The two solos in particular are dripping with Muddy Waters-inspired bluesy doublestops and quarter-tone bends. Guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons played the first solo using a slide. If you plan to do the same, make sure to position your slide directly over the frets for accurate pitching. Wear your slide on your third finger and use your first and second fingers for additional string muting. One particularly tricky aspect of Gibbons’ lead style is his use of pick and fingerstyle ‘hybrid’ picking, most notably after bar 21 of the outro. The idea is to allow you to pick notes on non-adjacent strings. You…

Using loop pedals, delay, drum machines and the odd synth, Tash Sultana creates fascinating soundscapes of dense guitar work, mixing styles and genres with a refreshing disregard for commercialism or fashion. Jungle was the third single to be released from their debut EP Notion, and Tash recently spoke to TG about the songwriting process. “It’s just a little four-chord song – sometimes that’s all you need. I had these four chords and a Loop Station, and I just jammed it. I started doing all these little diddles over the top of it, and they turned into a melody line. I put my phone on record and just started filming it. It’s funny that sometimes these things that you give no thought to end up being the biggest things that happen…

Welcome to this special issue in which we present the very first Total Guitar Awards – spotlighting the very best in the world of guitars this year. We asked TG readers to vote for their Guitarist of 2021. And you voted in your thousands. The winner is Jake Kiszka of Greta Van Fleet. The runner-up, Tash Sultana. Over the next 24 pages, we speak to Jake, Tash and three other guitarists who placed high on the list – Samantha Fish, Josh Middleton of Architects, and Joe Bonamassa – about the music they made this year, the gear they used, what they have learned as players, and who they would have voted as their guitarist of 2021. There are special awards for Mdou Moctar, whose inspirational Afrique Victime is TG’s Album…

1 Sam Fender Seventeen Going Under Since the release of his 2019 debut Hypersonic Missiles, Sam Fender has gone from strength to strength. He’s performed with Elton John and supported other legends such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young, as well as selling out his own arena headline shows across the UK. So it came as little surprise when the 27 year-old North Shields singer-songwriter scored his first top ten single back in July, taken from the second chart-topping album of his career to date. Taking influence from the driving rhythmic rock pioneered by Bruce Springsteen, this title track is undoubtedly one of the biggest guitar anthems of the last 12 months – thanks to its soaring hooks, jangly six-strings and heartfelt message, written as a letter to his 17…

For over 50 years Billy Gibbons has been retooling the blues, and infusing it with timeless gih-tar. His musical ear, soulful style and tasty Tex-Mex tone – his own ‘Texas mud’, as his friends in Depeche Mode aptly put it – are vital ingredients in ZZ Top’s irresistible mix. The sad, untimely passing this year of bassist Dusty Hill – Gibbons’ bandmate of 50 years – may ultimately mean the band itself passes into history, but in 2021 The Reverend’s third solo album proved that, in his 71st year, he remains a powerful creative force. Hardware was recorded with drummer Matt Sorum and engineers Mike Fiorentino and Chad Shlosser at Escape Studios, deep in the California desert. With his peso in his pocket, Gibbons flourished in this remote and arid…

Total Guitarreaders voted you the number two guitarist of 2021, second only to Jake Kiszka... That is actually very lovely to be honest. I wasn’t really expecting anything from it. On the nominations list there were a lot of incredible guitarists with a lot of longevity, like your Santanas and John Mayers and all of that. And Jake Kiszka, he’s a good guitarist. Actually, he’s a very good guitarist. I quite like Greta Van Fleet. So thank you to everyone who voted for me because I really wasn’t expecting this. Do we get a cute sticker or a lollipop something? We’ll see what we can do. Who have been the standout guitarists for you in 2021? I’m very heavily inspired by John Mayer actually, and Santana, which is why I…

If you were into new-fangled rock ’n’ roll back in the early 60s here in the UK, you’d probably have started plucking on a British or European-made guitar: Vox, Burns and Hofner, for example, were all satisfying the demand, and of course, Watkins – whose Rapier range looked the part. In short, the Rapier 33 was a Stratocaster copy but one that certainly had its own thing going on. Quite why the original guitar had a slanted middle pickup is anyone’s guess; then, as now, it marks the Rapier 33 out as a bit of an oddball. But, hey, that’s part of the appeal. Today’s sharp Chinese build quality gives this Rapier 33 much more credibility than the originals. We get a slab okoume body – a far eastern mahogany-alike…

Use a bridge humbucker and a saturated distorted tone with plenty of mids and try using a boost pedal to keep the low palm-mutes tight and aggressive. The track is played in drop B tuning (B F# B E G# C# from low to high). This is the equivalent of dropping every string down by three semitones, then dropping the bass string down another tone. If you’re using a guitar that’s usually in standard tuning, use a set of strings at least two gauges heavier to keep the tuning stable – so, if you usually use .009s, try a set of .011s or even .012s.…

For their new album, Servant Of The Mind, Volbeat have taken their signature metal-meetspsychobilly sound up a notch. Penned by Michael Poulsen, the band’s mastermind, frontman and rhythm guitarist, the record was borne out of a short period of relative calm: at home in Denmark with the family during the lockdown necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic – but you wouldn’t guess so from listening to it. The riffs are huge, the tones are dark and foreboding, and the riotous pace barely lets up throughout. All in all, the writing and recording process took only three months – a creative outburst that surprised even Michael himself. He recalls: “I was even asking myself, how the f*ck did you come up with all this in such a short time? But I think…

Electro-Harmonix Soul Food £75 Loved ‪ by pros and amateurs alike, EHX’s Klon-style transparent overdrive pedal is incredible value, and a pedalboard essential for players of all styles. It can be used as a tone-sweetener, a boost, or for adding touch-sensitive grit to your sound.‪ D’Addario Nexxus 360 £30 The ‪ accessories giant’s first fully USB rechargeable headstock tuner is a nifty, omnidirectional little unit. Simply clip it to your guitar’s headstock – or your bass – and rotate it so you can see the bright LED screen, and tune up. You’ll get 24 hours of tuning, er, charge. ‪ Shubb Paua Pearl Capo £19.50 If ‪ you own an acoustic guitar you need a capo, likewise if you play electric guitar and intend on doing some Keith Richards-esque open-tuning…

By now you’re probably confident with classic two-note fretted powerchord shapes. There’s another way to play powerchords, though. Most associated with AC/DC, open powerchords sound bigger and looser than fretted ones. They’re perfect for hard rock and classic metal, and essential for playing like Van Halen, Ozzy, Maiden, and any of the bands they influenced. Mastering these powerchords shouldn’t take too much work either, because they’re based on shapes you probably already know. Open powerchords take the five basic open major chords (that’s C, A, G, E, and D) and remove the major 3rd. To play them, first identify the note(s) you need to remove (we’ve done that for you with our fret boxes). Then form the chord shape as normal. For any notes you don’t want to hear, rest…

As we entered 2021, things did not look great. The UK was locked down with no clear indication when things would improve. NAMM, the world’s largest music trade show, was cancelled. Planned stadium tours by Guns N’ Roses, Rammstein, and Green Day were postponed to 2022. It was a good thing for our mental health that we were at least quarantined with our guitars. Appearing in TG’s January issue, Tom Morello and Covet’s Yvette Young reminded us that guitar creativity was very much alive, even if we couldn’t go and see it in person. Lockdown had a silver lining, though: an avalanche of new music as artists emerged from a year in their studios. Foo Fighters were first out of the gate, with Pat Smear comparing Medicine At Midnight to…

1 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Pleura Generally speaking, the heavy side of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard tends to dwell more in 70s garage rock worship than anything overly distorted or hellishly metallic. There are occasional exceptions, however, such as the riff that arrives 30 seconds into Pleura, which could easily have been penned by the Iron Man himself, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, and sat on early 70s masterpieces such as Master Of Reality or Vol. 4. Performed in C# minor, bouncing between the root and minor seventh, it’s the little trills in between that add melodic depth – utilising the second, minor third and perfect fourth intervals to decorate the groove and widen their sonic range. It’s hard to know exactly which pedals in their…

You have been voted Total Guitar readers’ favourite guitarist of 2021. How does that feel? Wow! That’s very sweet. I’m grateful for the amount of support that was provided. I’m grateful to have been nominated for something like this. Greta Van Fleet’s second album, The Battle At Garden’s Gate, saw you expanding your sound. What songs on the album are you most proud of? Well, all of them to be honest! But there are certain ones that stand out because of the guitar, like The Weight Of Dreams, where there’s a linear or progressive solo at the end of the song that spans maybe four or five minutes. I think it’s an achievement for guitar playing in the contemporary world because there aren’t really records where you can put a…

ELECTRIC GUITARS WINNER 1 CORT G300 PRO £749 This new-for-2021 G300 Pro has the sort of specification that a few years back would only come from a high-line or Custom Shop maker. Turning its back on the vintage obsession of many, the G300 Pro is progressively forward-looking yet remains the sort of instrument that’s equally at home with high-octane shred as it is with pristine pop/ funk, classic rock and hair metal. Receiving TG’s coveted Platinum Award in our June issue, the specs are seriously impressive, with a Gotoh 510 trem, Graph Tech nut, Seymour Duncan pickups and a beautiful deep caramel roasted maple neck. Find one before someone realises they’ve cocked up the pricing. It really is that good. 2 EPIPHONE JOE BONAMASSA ‘LAZARUS’ 1959 LES PAUL STANDARD £799…

Everybody Hurts was recorded for REM’s 1992 Album Automatic For The People, and was later released as a single in 1993 to widespread critical acclaim. The song has a simple message, sung powerfully by vocalist Michael Stipe and instantly recognisable by simple, guitar arpeggios from guitarist Peter Buck. Rockschool’s Grade Two arrangement is for two guitars and can be played with or without the backing track. The part opens with the arpeggio pattern, which can be played fingerstyle or with a pick and must be rhythmically smooth and even. From bar 5, we have a mix of arpeggios and vocal melody, so try to make the melody notes stand out (you can pick these up by checking out the original recording). This arrangement is great for working on your picking…

1 HARLEY BENTON GOTOH SC AND DC Gotoh tuners and bridges on sub-£300 guitars? If you’re buying this Thomann brand’s value-packed electric guitars as a modding platform, or just like the idea of even more value being packed in, these guitars are very good news indeed. Add in rosewood fingerboards and, for the DLX models, stainless steel frets... Well, these present a crazily good spec on paper and some tempting finish options, including Pelham Blue, High-gloss Black, Satin Daphne Blue and Satin Shell Pink. From £253 www.harleybenton.com 2 SOLIDGOLDFX ETHER MODULATED REVERBERATOR Few things in the effects world get us as excited as the words ‘modulated reverb’ and the “vast ambient and shimmering soundscapes” the Canadian company promises here explain why. A darker take on shimmer that devolves as it…

It can be said that many trends are cyclical and, broadly speaking, music and fashion tastes have been recently following a trend of borrowing cues from 20 years previous. To further back up this spurious claim with another, it looks like black satin guitars are back. Or is it more that they’ve never been away, but that they’ve just caught this particular reviewer’s eye and brought back memories of the early noughties when the black satin look was definitely in? Fast forward to 2021, which sees LTD ushering in a new batch of stealthy numbers, bolstering its Black Metal range to a now plentiful 12 guitars. One of the company’s most striking silhouettes has to be the EX and ESP/LTD’s spikier than thou version of the Explorer, which makes its…