Innehållsförteckning för November 2022 från Total Guitar

I think it’s fair to say that every electric guitarist should know a little bit about the blues. Ever since Robert Johnson did his fabled deal with the devil at a crossroads in Mississippi, blues has informed and influenced more music than any other genre. From early rock ’n’ roll to hard rock, heavy metal, hip-hop and more, countless styles feature the phrasing, forms and harmonies of blues to this day. What this means for us guitarists is that there’s always plenty to learn from this enduring style – and we can apply those lessons to lots of other music that we love. With that in mind, this month we’ve put together what I believe is TG’s biggest ever blues feature. We kick off with seven pages of playing tips,…

SISTER ROSETTA THARPE Gospel singer turned blues guitar slinger dubbed the Godmother of rock ’n’ roll If you haven’t seen the video of this American gospel singer wowing a stunned English audience on a disused Manchester railway station back in 1964, then Google it. Said to have influenced legends including Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Bob Dylan, Sister Rosetta lost many of her religious fans when she moved from gospel into blues, but gained a whole new following. Cracking out scary licks on a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop or white SG Custom in open E tuning, her distorted guitar lines matched her powerful, heartfelt vocals. A trailblazing electric guitarist and superb singer, her place in blues history is assured. CHARLEY PATTON The founder of delta blues The 58 surviving songs…

GREATEST BLUES GUITARISTS There was always something otherworldly about Johnny Winter, as though he had one foot in this life and one in the next. The rake-thin Texan with the long blond hair and Gibson Firebird was all angles. And his style was all action, all attitude. He had the voice to match, too. Winter approached the electric guitar differently to most blues players, preferring a thumb pick and applying a country-esque, Chet Atkins-style approach to blues-rock, and would glean insight not just from blues guitar practitioners but from mouth organ licks, expanding his vocabulary on the guitar, and taking blues-rock forward. Winter started out young, and his big break arrived in 1968 when Mike Bloomfield invited him to play with him at New York City’s Fillmore East, where the…

Stevie Ray Vaughan brought physicality and soul to guitar playing, and he brought it in spades. The soul came through the speaker. The physicality was there for all to see. To watch him play, there were occasions in which SRV would throttle the guitar as though it were an arm wrestling contest at last orders in a Nantucket alehouse. His strings were the stuff of legend – 13s? No, 14s; 17s! Heck, some might argue he used piano wire. Either way, he went down the heavy-gauge route and had the dexterity to manipulate them as though they were dental floss. This, the fire in his belly, and the tone-gussying Tube Screamer playing mediator between Fender Strat and amp give him a range of dynamics that few, if any, players could…

Perhaps more than any other genre, blues is sporadically subjected to having its vital signs examined to ensure that it is indeed still alive and well. Every once in a while, however, a band comes along to loudly assert beyond all doubt that the grandfather of all modern musical genres is doing absolutely fine without any such fuss. Boston-based revivalist trio GA-20 are one such band. As modern practitioners of the lost sounds of mid-century Chicago blues clubs and juke joints, they first garnered recognition back in 2019 with their debut LP Lonely Soul. Next, they consolidated their rep as old-school aficionados with 2021’s Try It... You Might Like It: GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor – a full album in homage to Chicago’s legendary six-fingered bluesman. And with new album…

Rockschool’s pre-Grade One ‘Debut’ arrangement of this blues classic is based on Muddy Waters’ vocal line, mimicking his stylistic blues phrasing and creating a ‘question and answer’ pattern with the backing instrumentation. The small notation in the pick-up bar shows the drum pattern cueing the first full bar of music. There is also a shuffle indication at the top of the score, meaning that for each beat, where eighth notes are usually evenly spaced, they are now ‘swung’, i.e., the first eighth lasts longer than the second. This creates the characteristic blues shuffle groove, and will help you to play the rhythms of each phrase. The song can be played with one finger-per-fret in the 1st position, meaning that the first finger plays notes on the 1st fret, the second…

Laney has added to its SuperGroup valve amp line-up with the LA-Studio: a low-wattage valve amp that incorporates Two Notes’ Torpedo DynIR impulse responses. At its core, the LA-Studio is a 12BH7-powered valve head, featuring three ECC83 preamp valves, three-band EQ plus a presence control, and it can be switched between 3 watts and less than one watt at the output stage for cranked amp tones in environments where noise is an issue. It features four input channels – bass 1/2 or Treble 1/2 – each with their own gain response, and round the back there’s a Two Notes Torpedo module for delivering a high quality direct output. It comes pre-loaded with 10 impulse responses: two from Laney and eight from Two-Notes, and costs £849.…

MASTER THE I-IV-V PROGRESSION Get to grips with the most important chord progression and you’ll always know where you are in any 12-bar blues jam The most common blues chord progression is the I-IV-V (one-four-five), so called because the chords are built upon the first, fourth and fifth notes in the relevant major scale. So if we tell you that the notes in the key of C are C, D, E, F, G, A and B, it’s easy enough to tell that a I-IV-V follows the C (first), F (fourth) and G (fifth) chords. Still with us? It’s hard to remember the right notes for every key, but you can work out the right chords just by using the notes on the two lowest strings... BLUES IN E The notes…

So here we are at the end of our big blues lesson, and this is where you put everything you’ve learned into practice! Wit that in mind, we’ve produced four jam tracks for you to play over. The chord charts are below. Start by familiarising yourself with the chords, but beware! Some of the tracks are more riff-based, so the chords only roughly outline the movement. If we have a tip, it’s to try and learn a chord shape in the same area of the neck that you plan on soloing. This’ll help you to target some chord notes in your solos so that you’re not always thinking in terms of scale shapes. Each track is inspired by a blues icon – and we’re following three different key signatures so…

Still recording and performing at the age of 86, Buddy Guy has lived the archetypal blues story. His first job was picking cotton in Louisiana before he moved to Chicago at 21. He didn’t expect to become a star; he just wanted to live somewhere he could see the greats play. After starving for several months, he lucked into jamming with Otis Rush at the 708 club, where Guy caused such a stir that the owner phoned Muddy Waters to come and watch. With Waters’ patronage, Guy quickly landed a record deal, but his early recordings were watered down, without the distortion and feedback he used live. “I told [label boss] Leonard Chess we should get that sound on record,” he recalled later. “He just told me, ‘Ain’t nobody gonna…

JIMI HENDRIX In the tradition of many itinerant bluesmen before him, Jimi Hendrix spent his formative years travelling around North America, from his upbringing in Vancouver and Seattle, down to the birthplace of the blues, the Deep South. “I was largely influenced by blues artists when I first started,” he said, picking up inspiration from his father’s record collection and other musicians. “The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his old records when I was a little boy and it scared me to death. Wow, what is that all about?” It was in the South, though, as a professional musician on the ‘chitlin’ circuit’, that he developed his unique musical style, fused from a combination of Delta blues, R&B, rock ’n’ roll and…

GREATEST BLUES GUITARISTS You kind of get the impression from Joe Bonamassa that his position as the highest-grossing blues artist of all time is a little embarrassing – thrilling, sure, but it’s quite the affirmation. Perhaps this is why he has made it his life’s mission to widen the blues’ appeal. There’s the KTBA blues cruise, the label, the production, Nerdville... But ultimately, Bonamassa leads with his fingers when it comes to advocacy, toting a muscular, pyrotechnic style that not only references the 60s British blues scene, and the pantheon of electric blues greats, and classic rock and prog when the song requires it. DEREK TRUCKS The best slide player in the world right now As the nephew of Allman Brothers’ drummer Butch Trucks, Derek Trucks had music in his…

These days Jack White is reaching new heights in his career as a solo artist, having released two triumphant albums this year alone (Fear Of The Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive). Of course, he made his name in the early 2000s as one half of garage rock revival duo The White Stripes, and this month’s song is one of their biggest tunes. As it happens, it’s still a regular number in Jack’s solo sets today, too. Essentially, the song boils down to just three open chords and one barre. The rest of the shapes you see below are simple variations and passing chords – and none are a vital part of the song. If you can play G, C, D and F you should be able to get through the…

Traditionally, the guitar-building legend story goes something like this: person makes guitars, people like the guitars, person makes more guitars, finds widespread acclaim. Chapman Guitars took a slightly different path, starting with Rob Chapman building a following of his own, then a natural evolution into including his following in the design process of the types of guitars they’d like to see (and ultimately, buy). The brand has grown massively since those early days, though, and is now stocked in guitar shops around the world. One of its most recent models is the ML2 Pro, which takes the singlecut concept of the ML2 – discontinued a few years ago – and overhauls it for a fresh take on a contemporary singlecut. The spec sheet shows that the core design of the…

REVIEW Who says an amp can’t be on your pedalboard? It’s now a totally viable option, cab permitting, and what’s especially interesting is watching amp companies acknowledge this demand for flexibility alongside their more traditional amp lines. With Amped 1 Blackstar are joining fellow Brits Victory in that widening of appeal, but unlike that company’s V4 Duchess, Copper and Kraken, this 100-watt pedal unit does not feature valves. It does, however, cover a lot of needs for an amp. The first three pedals in the Dept 10 series last year were valve-loaded preamps, with two also debuting the company’s DSP speaker simulation technology Cab Rig. That features here too, but the additions elsewhere are striking; three preamp modes, six power amp response settings – like Blackstar’s Silverline range – and…

Cast your mind back to the mid-00s and you might remember Fender’s Aerodyne leftfield takes on some of its classic guitar designs. Now, Fender has revisited the Aerodyne series with the Aerodyne Special. The Japanese-made collection is a contemporary take on the Strat and Tele, with bound, scratchplate-less bodies, Babicz bridges, 12-inch fingerboard radiuses and matching headstocks. There are SSS and HSS Strat options, while the Aerodyne Special Telecaster comes with body-mounted controls. Both shapes are offered in a number of finishes with a choice of maple or rosewood ’boards. Prices start at £1299.…

If you’re anything like us, when you’re inspired to play guitar you’ll often find yourself gassing for new gear. The most versatile option is to go digital: there are loads ands loads of you amplifiers, foot-pedals and floorboards loaded with countless effects and amp models that’ll cover almost any conceivable playing scenario. But for the blues purist, analogue is the way to go. Read on as we run through some of the best gear options available today for the aspiring blues hound. And while tone is foremost in our mind here, we’ve also got one eye on versatility, too. GUITARS Your tonal journey begins with the instrument in your hands. We look at some of the best bluesy options around today SINGLE-COIL GUITARS Fender’s long-serving Stratocaster rules the roost when…

GREATEST BLUES GUITARISTS Of the legendary ‘Three Kings’, Freddie was the youngest and most raucous. His guitar style was fast and ferocious, with huge string bends and vicious vibrato, his vocals almost guttural in their delivery. Born in Gilmer, Texas in 1934, Freddie learned guitar from age six, but moved to Chicago while in his teens. Freddie would sneak into the blues clubs and watch legends like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and T-Bone Walker. He took onboard their stagecraft, marvelled at their musicianship and determined to make it big, just like them. But after continual rejection by Chess Records on Chicago’s South Side he finally struck a deal with Federal Records on the city’s West Side, where a hipper blues scene was burgeoning. Freddie became a hit in the clubs…

GREATEST BLUES GUITARISTS The writing on the walls of 1960s London said everything: “Clapton Is God”. Theologically unsound? Sure. But back then Clapton was providing plenty of evidence. He introduced himself with The Yardbirds before leaving for John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers. The band’s studio debut, simply titled Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton but most commonly known as The Beano Album, remains a touchstone. But more greatness was incoming, and Clapton was in a hurry. He formed Cream with fellow Bluesbreakers alumnus Jack Bruce and cut some of the most classic rock tracks of all time. The Marshall stack was expanding the possibilities, and Clapton’s ‘woman tone’ brought the electric guitar – in this instance his 1964 Gibson SG – closer to a soul singer’s voice than anyone had got…

GREATEST BLUES GUITARISTS Gary Clark Jr is a blues player but you might not have said that 30 years ago; the tent would not be big enough to accommodate all his stylistic turns through rock, folk, soul, and – look away, purists – hip-hop. But what is blues if not protest music and storytelling in verse, just like hip-hop? Clark’s talent lies in bringing all this together without it making a curate’s egg of it all. A song such as Your Land shows exactly what he is about, referencing Woody Guthrie, drawing a line through American history to confront the racism of today, and doing so with celebratory power. That’s where he is coming from philosophically. Tone-wise, his guitar sounds like electricity that’s geysering out of the earth. Whether he…

This month we’re looking at AC/DC’s iconic Back In Black album opener and staple in the band’s live show still today, Hells Bells. This is AC/DC at their rocking best, and, with trademark driving rock riffs, easy powerchords and some incendiary minor pentatonic licks, Hells Bells has something for every guitarist. The main riff is an arpeggio that outlines an Am11 chord – and, though not too technically demanding, it can be tricky to get the feel. Practise slowly while making sure to always target the right string. Beware of the tempo in the intro, though. It shifts from a stately 96 bpm to a mid-tempo 108 bpm by the time the whole band comes in, so make sure to match your timing with the gradual push of the track.…

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 getting hung up on hokey mythology or nonsense marketing speak: we aim to bring you bullsh*t-free opinions on the gear you’re interested in. WE CAN’T BE BOUGHT TG review scores are a true reflection of our experts’ opinion on the product they’ve been testing. You’ll never find a rating in our mag that has been bought and paid for. REAL…

We could start with some spiel about how much guitar players get for their money with a Squier compared to 40 years ago, but the brand started out very strong with Japanese-made instruments, and this is one with an RRP of £499, so is not exactly entry-level. Instead we should focus on the more interesting Squier narrative that’s been unfolding in more recent history: the brand is becoming increasingly distinct in its own right. In addition to affordable takes on Fender cornerstones, there’s plenty of alluring models exclusive to Squier. And if they can hold their own with the Mexican Fenders, that’s cause for real celebration. We’re here to find out. The 40th Anniversary models have come in two waves; the gold hardware/block inlay ‘Gold Edition’ example we have here…