Innehållsförteckning för December 2022 från Total Guitar

You might be familiar with Warm Audio thanks to its meticulous recreations of classic analogue studio gear and now its turned its attention to two of the most revered overdrive pedals of all time with the Centavo and WarmDrive stompers. Thanks to the incredibly faithful visuals, you get no prizes for guessing that these are based on the Klon Centaur and Hermida Audio Zendrive, respectively, and both pedals promise accurate recreations of the originals. Best of all, both pedals clock-in at a fairly non-boutique £165 (WarmDrive) and £199 (Centavo).…

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ✓ Rhythmic syncopation✓ Palm muting✓ Single-note riffing Unstoppable is the second single from the eighth Disturbed studio album Divisive. Dan Donegan plays this syncopated groove riff in drop C# tuning, using notes from the C# Locrian mode (C# D E F# G A B). The opening pattern starts with a C#5 powerchord played with four alternate strums, followed by two palm-mutes. This repeating six-note phrase played against the 4/4 backbeat creates an interesting syncopated groove. Next play a G5 powerchord at the 6th fret with eight alternate strums. Go back to the open C#5 for four more strums, then play single notes on the 6th and 5th frets, followed by a dissonant sounding minor 7th chord using the open sixth string and 3rd fret fifth string…

BRIAN MAY In the new box set edition of Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle, the beautiful single Face It Alone is one of several previously unreleased tracks featured in The Miracle Sessions, which offers a fascinating, candid glimpse into the band’s studio process. Microphones capture snippets of conversation as they lay down demos, unfinished pieces, plus early takes of songs that made the cut for the final album. “I won’t do the fancy bits,” says Brian May before the original take of Khashoggi’s Ship, and he rattles off a blistering blues lick to show his bandmates the bits he means. “I’ll do ’em later...” Had they been fully realised, any of the five ‘new’/unfinished tracks here could have sat comfortably on the final album. Brian takes the lead on two…

Every now and then, usually right around the time people are starting to feel like they’ve heard it all, an artist will come along and reinvent a sound or style in ways radically different to what came before, daring to dream and open up the floodgates for a new era of noise. These things can certainly be said of Polyphia – the Texan quartet led by Tim Henson and Scott LePage, whose combination of virtuoso guitar heroics and unabashed genre hopping has broadened their appeal to well beyond that of your average rock group. On latest album Remember That You Will Die, for example, they’re collaborating with the likes of Rodney Jerkins (Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga), Y2K (Doja Cat) and Johan Lenox (Kanye West) – borrowing as much from the…

ST. VINCENT Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is one of the most well-known and commercially successful artists at the forefront of cutting edge guitar today. The Oklahoman singer-songwriter already has three Grammy awards to her name and has performed at the ceremony onstage with pop sensation Dua Lipa. But despite having one foot in the mainstream, Clark’s unorthodox approach to guitar fully embraces the avant-garde. St. Vincent’s 2017 LP Masseduction cracked the top ten in both the UK and the US, and its electro-pop sound saw Clark rethinking the tonal palette of her guitar rather than abandoning it in favour of synths – something more typical of the genre’s core sound. Masseduction’s title track features heavy, fuzz-centric riffing that sounds far closer to a saw wave synth than an electric…

If there’s one thing we can be sure of it’s that your first guitar has a monumental impact on you as a player. Put the right guitar into the hands of a child and their playing career will be accelerated, sending them speeding down the road to rock stardom, whereas an ill-fitting axe will put the brakes on their progress entirely. Clearly, Epiphone agrees, as they’ve created an entire collection of guitars specially designed as a gateway for budding guitarists – the Epiphone Power Players. Like something out of a Rick Moranis-led 80s flick, Epiphone has pointed their shrink-ray at their most famous instruments, turning them into short-scale shred machines that are sure to fit even the smallest of hands. This isn’t Epiphone’s first venture into the world of miniature…

Positive Grid has debuted OMNYSS, a new guitar plugin suite that promises “massive tonal exploration” thanks to three all-new guitar amps and six pedals powered by its Bias 2 platform. Operating as a plugin within your DAW, or in standalone mode, OMNYSS’ trio of amp models range from the pristine cleans of Etheria, the modern high-gain Aggralith and the “visceral” aggression of Viscerus. Each amp also houses its own ‘BlackBox’, delivering sonic experimentation from synth-inspired pad, lead and octaver sounds respectively. The virtual stompbox FX section serves-up the Z Gate, Cypher Drive, Cerberus (pitch effects) Dark Matter (compressor), Nebula (synth/modulation/reverb) and Space Piercer (soundscape delay). It costs £89 and includes Bias 2 LE.…

In the intro to Roll Over Beethoven, Chuck Berry played a lick so iconic that guitarists have been ripping it off ever since. Eddie Van Halen and Angus Young used variations of it as one of their top solo entrances, and any rock guitarist who says they’ve never used it is either lying or rubbish! As an introduction to string bending, then, it’s about as important a lick as you’ll ever learn. String bending might be the electric guitarist’s coolest form of expression. It’s pretty much unique to the guitar, and it’s an unrivalled way to add emotion to any note. JENNA SCARAMANGA Jenna has taught guitar for 15 years at music colleges, schools, and IGF summer camps. She studied with Guthrie Govan at BIMM, and was classic rock columnist…

Post-hardcore “superband” L.S. Dunes represents a meeting of minds between guitarist Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance, guitarist Travis Stever of Coheed and Cambria, vocalist Anthony Green of Circa Survive and bassist Tim Payne and drummer Tucker Rule of Thursday. As the title of their debut album Past Lives suggests, this is not a complete departure from their main bands, but, as Travis says: “What’s cool about L.S. Dunes is that you can hear everybody’s style peek out. Not once is it dictated by a sound that’s My Chem or Thursday or Coheed, but you hear the styles.” L.S. Dunes made their live debut at Riot Fest 2022 on the same day that Iero headlined the festival with My Chemical Romance, and he’s since embarked on a lengthy reunion tour…

Our aim with this feature is to illustrate some cool playing ideas and fresh approaches for electric guitarists of all styles and abilities. Be it grooving with simple funk lines like Cory Wong, working with Hendrix-style chord embellishments, shredding up the fretboard with tapping pyrotechnics, or trying the show-stopping spectacle of slap bass style playing a la Guthrie Govan, there is hopefully something here for everyone. We’ve created 10 tab examples, each with its own backing track for you to play over. As is often the way, it doesn’t matter if you can’t manage to play every example in full. Just try to pick up the main themes and techniques. Hopefully you’ll pick up a few new bite-sized phrases for your arsenal of licks. Right, let’s get rocking! FULL TRACK…

THE HOTTEST CUTTING EDGE GUITARISTS ON THE PLANET ova Twins are the most exciting young band in the UK. Combining rap, punk, R&B and metal, they also have the filthiest synth sounds a stringed instrument has ever produced. They’re the first band since Muse to have tones on their album that we genuinely don’t know how to make. They’re influenced by music many guitar bands don’t even consider. And most importantly, their current album Supernova is stuffed with great songs. The Twins, guitarist/vocalist Amy Love and bassist Georgia South, have been a band since 2014 and are finally catching a buzz thanks to the support of Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. Georgia says Rage’s support has been invaluable. “With them being a diverse band, they can kind of…

Boss’ DS-1 is one of – possibly even the – most popular distortion pedals ever made, having featured on the ’boards of players ranging from Kurt Cobain to Steve Vai since its introduction in 1978. But in these times of boutique-at-our-feet, it’s a prime candidate for undergoing the brand’s Waza Craft treatment. Here, the DS-1W keeps its original form factor, and distinctive orange paint job, but the circuit has been tweaked to deliver maximum tonal range from this classic stomper. Controlwise, there’s the regular Tone, Level and Dist controls, but Boss has fitted it with a toggle switch to take us between Standard and Custom modes. Standard is the classic DS-1 distortion sound, while Custom promises “rich, fat and dynamic” tones, with a more focussed midrange and a boosted output.…

The last few months have seen a bevy of big releases from great guitar bands including Blink-182, Architects and Smashing Pumpkins, plus long-awaited comebacks from Paramore and Arctic Monkeys. This can only be good news for us guitarists – an injection of inspiring new riffs to try is always welcome here at TG Towers! So on that theme, here we’re looking at five great riffs – and we’ve produced in-depth video lessons for each one so that you can rock out with ’em! None of them are too technical, so guitarists of almost any level should be able to have a go. Beware though, A New Low Moral Ground is in drop B tuning. If your guitar isn’t set up for this tuning we recommend practising in drop D (DADGBE,…

They’d made 20 albums in 10 years. Then they released three new albums – yes, three – in the last month. But there is method in this madness, as King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s affable vocalist, co-guitarist and head honcho Stu Mackenzie explains. “There’s always a plan when we make an album,” he says. “Sometimes it’s still being formulated throughout the process, and sometimes it’s more of a mission statement, a manifesto. Usually we’ll have a couple of songs that have one vibe and some that have another, so we join the ones that have similar themes then write more songs like that. It’s like we’re creating brothers and sisters for them.” Since their 2012 debut 12 Bar Bruise, this Melbourne-based collective have populated their ‘Gizzverse’ with their own…

While the shell pink finish is unusual to see on an effects pedal, the two influences here are not. The influence of the Ibanez Tube Screamer and Fulltone OCD is apparent across the price spectrum, and it wouldn’t be difficult to pick up two budget mini pedals in this ballpark for around £70. But where Harley Benton’s dual pedal series offers a tempting proposition is they save space and power outlets on your pedalboard, and players will know that’s a constant juggling act. There’s the added incentive of being able to change the gain stacking order the pedals are in at the flick of a switch (or leaving them independent). Practicality box ticked. So how does it sound? The ‘Tube Drive’ TS-inspired side has the added versatility of the Hot/Warm…

Moving to the Big Smoke is often a tricky manoeuvre for young bands, and for Norfolknative garage-psych group Longheads, their accommodation set-up was too good to last. As lead guitarist Alex Bishop tells TG: “It was just over the road from the Oval cricket ground, and it was a guardianship scheme that the rest of the band all lived in where we built our studio and practised. But it got bought by the Oval and they knocked it down!” Collateral damage aside, it’s an exciting time for the newly London-based five-piece, who released their latest EP Mars Doesn’t Feel Like Home Any More this month. Though its five songs touch upon the sound of the late 2010s psychedelic garage rock revival – the likes of King Gizzard And The Lizard…