Innehållsförteckning för April 2022 från Total Guitar

Line 6 has announced its new Catalyst amps - a trio of combos featuring HX-level modelling and more. With 60-watt (£342) and 100-watt (£465) 1x12” versions, and a 200-watt (£603), 2x12”, each amp features 6 line 6 HX Original amp models ranging from clean to high gain. Also on board are 18 effects, and dedicated reverb section offering a further six models. There’s connectivity, too, with an effects loop, XLR line out, power amp input for using the amp as a powered speaker, and a four-channel USB audio interface which also allows for deeper editing via the free Catalyst Edit app for your computer or iOS/Android device.…

As you’re probably aware, multi-FX pedals have had a big resurgence in the last couple of years, and Boss’ latest do-it-all box sees the Japanese effects giant come out swinging. The GX-100 features 23 amp models swiped from the flagship GT-1000, all of which make use of the brand’s AIRD technology (that’s Augmented Impulse Response Dynamics, acronym fans!). There’s over 150 effects on-board too, but with 15 assignable ‘blocks’ per-patch, and some impressive connectivity - including an effects loop for integrating standalone pedals and even an amp channel switching socket - plus plenty of control via eight assignable footswitches and an expression pedal, the GX-100 is making a strong case as the centrepiece of your rig. The whole lot is edited by a decent sized touch display and intuitive controls,…

There’s a huge amount to learn in your first lesson before you even start playing any music: how to hold the guitar and your pick; string names and numbers; fret numbers; and where to put your fingers. This is all completely new to TG’s content editor, Paul Elliott, who this month takes his very first guitar lessons with ace TG tutor, Jenna Scaramanga. For the next few months you can watch Paul’s progress. And, if you’re a new player yourself, why not follow our lessons and improve your own playing? JENNA SAYS... In a first lesson, I want students to have a go at both chords and single-note lines. Paul and I started with an AC/DC-style open G5 powerchord. It’s more common to start with major chords, but the songs…

It’s February 2022, and Turnstile are thrilled to be back in the UK. When Baltimore’s hardcore heroes last played London in two years ago, they didn’t know when – or if – they’d be back. As guitarist Pat McCrory recalls, “The world was shutting down. We had to play a London show and then fly home instead of the rest of the tour. We all caught Covid on the way home, and we’re like, ‘This might be the last show in London that we play.’” To everyone’s relief, Turnstile have come back harder than ever, and Pat is buzzing. “We just played the Roundhouse and Nottingham Rock City, and the shows have just been purely magic.” The quintet - Pat McCrory plus vocalist Brendan Yates, lead guitarist Brady Ebert, bassist…

1996 SEPULTURA Although Sepultura formed a whole decade before Korn, the Brazilian metallers’ classic 1996 album Roots took some major cues from the Californians. The album even featured guests spots from Korn singer Jonathan Davis on Lookaway and drummer David Silveria on Ratamahatta, and was produced by Korn’s go-to guy Ross Robinson. “Sepultura adopted our nu-metal sound for a couple of records, which was really flattering,” says Korn guitarist Brian ‘Head’ Welch. “But at the same time we were like, ‘Ross, why are you giving our tone away?!’” 1999 SLIPKNOT Slipknot’s first album was released five years after Korn’s, and though they would end up surpassing them commercially, the members of Slipknot have always been open about their admiration for Korn. “I feel like people have forgotten how explosive and…

He’s the Smiths guitar wizard who inspired a legion of indie guitarists to experiment with jangly tones. And, from the Madchester scene and 90s Britpop to later acts like The Killers, The Decemberists and The Drums, Johnny Marr’s influence is truly lasting. Notably, he’s created his legacy without languishing in one band for four decades – Marr’s influence comes from the breadth of his career’s work with acts such as The The, Electronic, Modest Mouse, The Cribs, and in more recent years as a solo artist. Here, we’re looking at some key elements of Johnny’s playing style; parts of his playing that were at the core of the sound of The Smiths in the 80s, right up to today’s solo work. Our tab examples showcase some of the technical and…

WALRUS MAKO M1 Universal Audio’s Astra dazzled us last year with its quality recreations of classic modulation units in one pedal, but now Walrus have their own High-Fidelity Modulation Machine that could become an inspirational source for all your chorus, phaser, tremolo, vibrato, rotary and filter. Nine onboard presets and 128 available via MIDI is certainly going to come in very useful, with the onboard Lo-Fi control allowing players to warp and degrade the six algorithms. £319 www.walrusaudio.com SQUIER CLASSIC VIBE BARITONE CUSTOM TELECASTER The temptation to add a baritone to your collection may have reached tipping point with this double bound 27-inch-scale beauty. Available in Black and 3-Colour Sunburst, it continues Squier’s recent Tele extended excursions that began with the Paranormal Series Cabronita, with Fender-designed alnico single-coil pickups, C-shape…

“GNARLY FUZZ COMBINED WITH SPECTACULAR TONES” Guitar history is full of instances where recordings have been made all the more distinctive by either the use of a piece of broken equipment or perfectly serviceable gear being pushed to extremes. The first recorded fuzz sound apparently came about via a faulty studio preamplifier, while overloaded desk channels were the key to the incendiary guitar sound on the Beatles’ Revolution. EHX’s Ripped Speaker pays homage to those sort of lo-fi distortion tones which of course can also come from a damaged speaker cone, perhaps the most celebrated being the sound of The Kinks’ You Really  Got Me, which came about after Dave Davies sliced his speaker with a razor blade. Basically a fuzz pedal, the Ripped Speaker has the expected Fuzz and…

This month sees indie folk act Big Thief return with their fifth studio album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. Following on from the twin releases of U.F.O.F. and Two Hands in 2019 before solo albums from three of the group’s members, Dragon finds the band at their most experimental and ambitious to date – a sprawling double album covering a variety of styles, yet sounding distinctly like the Brooklyn four-piece. At 20 tracks though without a single instrumental, the guitar playing of Dragon always serves the song first and foremost, creating a bed of texture to propel the melody rather than to distract from it with unnecessary six-string self-indulgence. But guitarists Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek nevertheless conjure up numerous ways to colour the world of each…

When it comes to setting up your guitar, sometimes it’s not enough to go ‘by-eye’ alone. MusicNomad has developed its Keep It Simple, Setup (KISS) concept in order to make adjusting the most important settings on your guitar easy and accessible. Priced at £58.50, its six-piece Setup Gauge Set includes everything you need to check the nut height, neck relief and string action on your guitar, with a handy set of gauges preset to common and standard heights. Also included are two radius gauges, MN’s innovative Pick Capo, a 24-page guide on how to use it all, and a handy case to keep it all together.…

AIRD Modelling There are 23 of Boss’ AIRD amp models inside – that’s the same modelling found on the flagship GT-1000. Connectivity & Control There’s a lot going on here, with an external effects loop for hooking up your favourite hardware pedals, switching your amp’s channel, and plenty of assignable footswitch controls. Digital functionality As well as a fully functioning USB audio interface, the GX-100 can connect to the Boss Tone Studio for deep edits, and there’s a Bluetooth audio/MIDI adaptor (sold separately) for streaming audio.…

1 FRETTING HAND POSITION Paul was naturally inclined to keep his palm tight to the neck, but this makes it hard to fret. Keep a gap between palm and neck to give your fingers room to move. 2 FRETTING ONE NOTE Next up, fretting. The idea is to press firmly on the string, close to the fretwire but not on top of it. Good fret-hand position makes reaching across to the bass string easier. 3 PARTIAL G5 CHORD Strumming just the four thinnest strings, this chord helps you get used to fretting two strings at once. Here, the dots tell you where to fret and the numbers tell you which of your four fingers to use. 4 FULL G5 CHORD The challenge with this big G5 chord is…

When we think of the innovators who shaped heavy music through the decades, Korn deserve recognition alongside more obvious names such as Iron Maiden, Metallica and Soundgarden. Formed in Bakersfield, California, Korn were, after all, the first metal group to popularise seven-string guitars – the band’s two guitarists, James ‘Munky’ Schaffer and Brian ‘Head’ Welch, using the subsonic weight of the added B string to explore new uncharted tonal depths, thus inspiring players from bands such as Fear Factory and Meshuggah to follow suit and embrace a whole new world of low-end. Korn’s self-titled debut album, released in 1994, was a true game-changer - its mix of heavy riffs and hip-hop rhythms shaping the sound of nu-metal and influencing generations of bands from Slipknot and Linkin Park to rising stars…

He has long been revered as one of the most technically astounding and musically gifted guitarists on the planet, but on his new album, The Elephants Of Mars, Joe Satriani set himself one heck of a challenge. “I thought: I need to raise my own bar,” he says. “I want a Joe Satriani record to sound better, have better compositions, more interesting arrangements, and, somehow, I’ve got to get my playing to be better.” In this mission, he stuck to five simple rules - as he outlines here... Never ignore the gift of inspiration Very often, a little cinematic reel starts to go off in my head. I was taught at a very early age never to let that go, never ignore the gift of inspiration because you can’t manufacture…

The Smiths really kicked in with me in 1984 with Hatful Of Hollow, which is still a lot of people’s favourite Smiths album. They hadn’t become a massive band at that point, hadn’t had millions of hits, so they put this sort of strange compilation out full of sessions and one-off singles, and it’s brilliant. This Charming Man is what really switched me on to them. It was so offensive, but so erudite and articulate – I absolutely loved it as soon as I heard the intro. Morrissey was choosing different notes, words and phrases to everybody else. Mike Joyce’s drums were sensitive and beautiful, and I hadn’t heard bass playing like Andy Rourke’s since [The Jam’s] Bruce Foxton. And Johnny Marr was right in the centre of it. They…

From 1970 onwards, Blackmore’s preference was for a Fender Strat with a scalloped fingerboard, run through Marshall Major 200-watt heads (modified with an extra output stage), spiced up with a treble booster, and played so hard that he even snapped the whammy. His tone on Smoke On The Wateris surprisingly not as distorted as you might think; Jon Lord’s Hammond organ sound actually provides a lot of the weight in the overall sound.…

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…

Digital is digital, right? If you have digital effects they should be able to be configured to run as a plug-in on a computer or in a pedal, it’s just a matter of having the necessary DSP. We’ve recently seen Universal Audio, a massive name in studio plug-ins, moving into pedals for the first time and putting some of those in their UAFX modulation, delay and reverb pedals. Now it’s the turn of IK Multimedia and it’s maybe surprising that they haven’t done it before, considering how long their Amplitube guitar amp and effects emulation software has been around. IK has released four pedals; one each for Modulation (X-Vibe), Delay (X-Time) and Reverb (X-Space) and another (X-Drive) for all the dirt sounds. The pedals all feature both mono and stereo…

Léa Sen is a polymath: the 22 year old writes, plays, produces and mixes everything on her own records. But she’s clear where her inspiration starts: “Guitar is my number one thing,” she says. “It’s the thing I pick up before anything else. It influences everything I do. I actually struggle writing melodies on top of a song, but when I have a guitar in my hands, the way they work together just comes very naturally. That’s really my challenge: ‘how can I take those electric sounds in my head, more experimental ambient stuff, with guitar fingerpicking and make it all work together?’ That gets me going every day.” Born in France but living in London, Sen’s music has a broad-minded quality that draws from many styles. Latest single Hyasynth…

Once Human have established themselves as one of the most distinctive metal bands of modern times. Guitarist and founding member Logan Mader reveals the gear used for the LA-based quintet’s latest album, Scar Weaver, and looks back his recent reunion tour with his former band, Machine Head. What can people expect from Scar Weaver? We didn’t rewrite the script - it sounds like Once Human and it sounds like an evolution of our last album - which was called Evolution! Notably, it’s a bit heavier. When it goes heavy, it’s even more brutal and more disgusting than ever. On the other hand, it’s quite melodic and even beautiful at times. Was this heaviness influenced by you reuniting with Machine Head for the 25th anniversary tour of the band’s classic 1994…

Nova Twins’ mix of grime-y urban punk and bass-heavy groove has garnered guitarist Amy Love and bassist Georgia South praise from the likes of Tom Morello, who personally invited them to open for Prophets Of Rage. The pair also recently helped Fender launch their new Player Plus range of guitars. And, with new album Supernova due in June, our expectations are high, fuelled by lead single and this month’s riff, Antagonist. Played in drop D tuning, the hefty guitar riff is delivered in unison with the bass, with help from an octave pedal (one octave down, naturally) to stand up to the weight of the song’s gargantuan bottom end. With the octave effect thickening the guitar tone, there’s no need for powerchords – this is a one-string riff played at…

Young Sydney four-piece The Lazy Eyes could very easily end up becoming your favourite new psychedelic rock band. There’s a striking maturity to their self-produced and self-recorded debut album Songbook, which bears the mark of musicians with wisdom far beyond their years. Drawing influence from the Australian indie/psych movement around them, with Tame Impala and King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard leading the charge, there’s also a jam band mentality to The Lazy Eyes’ songs that harks back to The Beatles and the avant-garde ‘krautrock’ movement. The music they make is hypnotic, with singer/guitarist Harvey Geraghty and fellow guitarists Itay Shachar kicking in some truly phenomenal modulations to spice up their hallucinatory tones... There’s a song on your new album called Tangerine– could that be a reference to late 60s…

Launched roughly a decade ago, designed by engineers Cosmos Lyles and Paul Dowd, the EverTune bridge is a device that uses a spring and lever system to maintain string tension – offering a whole new level of tuning stability for guitar players. The aftermarket upgrade has proven to be particularly popular with metal guitarists who tune down, with the likes Devin Townsend and Trivium’s Matt Heafy singing its praises for almost singlehandedly fixing all their tuning issues. Models for T-style and G-style six-stings to ones for seven and eight-strings range from $295 to $395 in price and sold direct through the company’s website. “All our guitars are now fitted with EverTune bridges, which has saved us a lot of time,” notes Munky. “It was an invention long overdue for guitar.…

“MY GUITAR’S NAME IS JUNIOR. THAT’S FAIR SINCE ALL THE BOYS NAME THEIRS AFTER FEMALES!” Since she was a teenager playing the West Midlands pub circuit, Joanne Shaw Taylor has been hailed as one of the finest contemporary blues guitarists to emerge from the UK scene in recent memory. But until September last year, she’d never cut an album that was pure blues from top to tail. Cue The Blues Album, a record produced by blues megastar Joe Bonamassa, and stuffed full of deep cuts from the likes of Little Milton, Albert King and Magic Sam. It was an album that Joanne had always wanted to make, and it was met with widespread acclaim. Now, two years after her last tour was curtailed by the pandemic, Joanne returns to the…

Simone Marie Butler has played bass for Primal Scream for the past decade, in which time Johnny Marr has made guest appearances at several of the band’s gigs. Johnny recently returned the compliment by inviting Simone to his Manchester studio to record on Fever Dreams Pts 1-4. As Johnny says: “You really get to know what a band’s about when you’ve got them very loud in your ears. Two of the three songs Simone’s done were really built around the groove, which was why I had her in mind when I was writing them. She’s on three songs: Lightning People, which I was specifically saving for her, Counter-Clock World, and a moody one called The Speed Of Love, which she did a really amazing job with. I’d played bass on…

When John Frusciante made his 2009 solo record The Empyrean, he invited Johnny Marr to play on several tracks. From there, a deep connection was formed between the two musicians. “It was really fun,” John recalls. “I got to see how Johnny’s creative process worked on the guitar. He’s very unorthodox: in The Smiths’ stuff, the guitar is often a thing blending in with the band, but when you actually see the way Johnny comes up with things, and the way he thinks through the instrument, it’s just totally unconventional. And it was amazing to see that creative process at work fitting into the context of a pre-recorded piece of music. “Johnny is an extremely nice person as well: mild-mannered, no ego there or anything like that. When we were…

MODEST MOUSE – DASHBOARD Appears at: 0:00-0:09 Marr would join US indie rockers Modest Mouse in 2007, recording a full-length album and an EP with them. His offbeat funky rhythm work propels the track along with attitude, making use of Johnny’s trademark partial chords. THE CRIBS – WE SHARE THE SAME SKIES Appears at: 0:00-0:20 This is classic Marr: a deceptively fiddly arpeggio delivered on his stalwart Fender Jaguar. Based around C#sus2/E and F# chords at the 4th and 2nd frets respectively, you’ll need to take care not to fall off the fretboard as you play the open second string and the 4th-fret string bend. JOHNNY MARR (SOLO) – TENEMENT TIME Appears at: 0:21-0:35 Set against a backdrop of grinding bass and grungy distorted barre chords, this melodic lead lick…

Many of us like to swap pickups on our guitars but it can be quite a faff. The beauty of the Relish mounting system is that you can swap pickups in no time at all and re-voice your guitar instantly. Relish offers a range of their own pickups ready to load in as well as Bare Knuckle and Seymour Duncan. Here in the UK, Sound Affects now offer a large range of Cream T and Seymour Duncan pickups ready to load in (more brands will follow) from £239 for a set. They’ll also fit the Relish backplates to any humbucker you may already have (£99 for a set or £59 for one and that includes return postage in the UK).…