Innehållsförteckning för January 2023 från Total Guitar

In this issue we celebrate The Best of the Year – the players, the riffs, the solos, the albums, the songs and, of course, the gear. A personal highlight for me was witnessing John Frusciante’s performance with the Red Hot Chili Peppers this summer at the London Stadium. John’s playing remains as powerful and soulful as it ever was. He is our Guitarist of the Year, and in a major new interview beginning on page 28, he reveals how he focuses on making an emotional connection through his playing, and how he created his own tribute to one of his greatest heroes, Eddie Van Halen. Elsewhere, we speak to two other famous guitar heroes still at the top of their game – Matt Bellamy and Steve Vai. And in our…

22 The Year in Guitar Mega-gigs! Guitar synths! Steve Vai’s triple-necked Hydra! The return of Pink Floyd! It’s all here in our whirlwind tour of the past 12 months. 28 Guitarist of the Year New interview: John Frusciante speaks in depth about his role in two monolithic Red Hot Chili Peppers albums, his tribute to Eddie Van Halen, and the “vulnerability” at the heart of his unique playing style. 36 The Top 20 Albums The big hitters: Jack White, Alter Bridge, Muse. The rising stars: Yard Act, Black Midi, Nova Twins. The game-changers: Polyphia. 46 The Top 5 Songs In the battle of the one-chord wonder and the 18-minute triple-guitar freakout, there can be only one winner! 50 The Top 5 Solos New interview: Steve Vai tells the story of…

20 Chat Pile GOD’S COUNTRY(Flenser) 2022 has been quite the year for Oklahoma’s Chat Pile, who were virtually unknown until the release of debut LP God’s Country in July. But thanks to said album’s nine slices of brilliant sludge rock, they have become one of the most hyped underground bands in the world. It’s easy to hear why. Tracks like Slaughterhouse and Why are so relentlessly pummelling yet groovy that Chat Pile pull off the near-impossible – abrasive dissonance that nevertheless gets stuck in your head. 19 Yard Act THE OVERLOAD(Island) Arriving fully-formed with this debut album, Yard Act sounded less like a band discovering their sound than one who have already perfected their hyper-specific brand of spiky, danceable post-punk. Though the heavily politicised (and often hilarious) lyrics…

01 Muse KILL OR BE KILLED When Matt Bellamy spoke to TG in the summer, he said of Muse’s ninth album Will Of The People: “I definitely think a bit more metal has crept in this time.” He cited Slipknot and Iron Maiden as key influences, and that heaviness is most powerfully illustrated in the anthem Kill Or Be Killed. Now, Matt reveals how he created the riff of the year... How did Kill Or Be Killed come together? I asked Manson to build me a multi-scale/fan fret guitar, based on Nolly’s Onyx, just to experiment with, and as soon as it arrived the riffs for Kill Or Be Killed and Won’t Stand Down came pretty quickly while jamming. Originally the Kill Or Be Killed riff was more straightforward –…

CLASSIC TRACK This month’s track is an epic slice of classic rock recorded by Rainbow in 1979 for their fourth studio album Down To Earth. The song starts out with the classic powerchord riff in the key of G. This riff is used for the chorus and makes up the main body of the song. The verse features a tricky arpeggio part that may be worth spending some time playing through slowly. Then there’s an interlude featuring tasteful lead guitar melodies, before leading into the key change, which lifts the song at the end and leads nicely into the guitar solo – a masterclass in tasteful phrasing. The emphasis here is on the melody and the placement of the phrases as opposed to getting carried away with too many notes.…

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…

The V1 series is a new collaboration from Victory Amps and Thorpy FX. The goal was to create a series of gain stages with the character of their core amp line-up. Here we have the Kraken, Sheriff, Jack, and Copper. In the compact pedal game, what constitutes an overdrive pedal, a preamp, or an amp-in-a-box is a moving target. While the first likely has only a single amplification stage, that’s not a given. It’s usually more a question of marketing than anything else. Even with amp-in- a-box pedals that are ‘based on’ real amps, that’s often not the case on closer examination of the circuit. Even if a pedal is a faithful reproduction of an amp, there’s no guarantee that this will be better than a normal overdrive. That’s the…

£150 “The original and best” should apply to the DS-1. Nevertheless, for all its sales, pro users, and the records it’s appeared on, a refined, boutique tone it is not. A history lesson is in order. First manufactured in 1978, the DS-1 was the first distortion released by Boss, only 2 years after the release of its first pedal, the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble. Like the ProCo RAT that arrived the same year, it used two hard-clipping diodes for an aggressive edge. A CHANCE TO BUY A BOSS-APPROVED MODDED DS-1 This became known as ‘distortion’, rather than the smoother ‘overdrive’ of soft-clipping stompboxes. The DS-1 was not op-amp based. Instead, it used the Toshiba TA7136AP pre-amplifier, for a gritty and warm overdrive tone. In 1994 this changed. The Toshiba pre-amp became…

Over the last few years, bandleader, guitarist and rock ’n’ roll resurrector Tuk Smith has experienced his share of disappointments. His previous band, Biters, were forced into dissolution by ongoing squabbles with their label, and in 2020, just when the newly formed Tuk Smith & The Restless Hearts were preparing to tour with Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe, the world came to a standstill. Now, things are looking brighter for Tuk with the release of Ballad Of A Misspent Youth, an eight-song retro-chic explosion he describes as “my ode to myself, my friends and future generations of beautiful f*ck-ups.” Having spent his formative years as a disciple of The Clash, Buzzcocks and the New York Dolls, his interests evolved into a love of British glam rock, which echoes throughout the…

If 2 021’s silver lining was the barrage of new albums from artists with nothing to do except record, 2022 was the year all those acts hit the stage. We all knew it would be a gig bonanza, but ticket demand exceeded expectations. It’s also been a year of unexpected successes. Snarky Puppy, a 25-piece funk/jazz/rock combo, headlined Wembley Arena. The industry didn’t know what to do with Nova Twins, but they’ve been breaking out on the independent Marshall Records anyway. Tash Sultana’s ‘unplugged’ MTV gig, featuring Strats, shouldn’t have worked but somehow became a streaming phenomenon. And two octogenarians, Paul McCartney and Buddy Guy, turned in standout performances when some assumed they were past it. We also saw the results of our massive Greatest Guitar Album poll, with readers…

01 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard THE DRIPPING TAP The Dripping Tap – the opening track and lead single from Omnium Gatherum, King Gizzard’s 20th studio album – is packed with interlocking riffs, hooks and harmonies, multiple dynamic peaks, troughs and crescendos, and more fiery fretwork than many artists can muster across an entire album. How can a band possibly cover so much ground in one song? Well, The Dripping Tap runs to a truly epic 18 minutes and 17 seconds. For those who like to listen to their music on large flat plastic discs, that’s the whole of side one of Omnium Gatherum. As King Gizzard’s frontman Stu Mackenzie said: “We decided, this is like our classic sprawling ‘double album – our White Album – where anything goes.”…

JOHN FRUSCIANTE BIT.LY/TG355AUDIO Play the Em triad with fingers 1, 2 and 3 and use 4th finger to add the variations on the 1st string. Keep your strumming hand moving down and up, so the chords and muted notes have consistent timing. In bar 3, play the full chord shapes and use your pick to arpeggiate while the notes ring together. MATT BELLAMY BIT.LY/TG355AUDIO Use alternate picking to play these notes on the 6th string and focus on keeping even 16th notes, while the riff is based on a 3-note arpeggio phrases to create rhythmic interest. Play the octave shapes in bar 4 with fingers 1 and 4, while muting the 2nd string with your fingers too. STEVE VAI BIT.LY/TG355AUDIO This lick is based in A Lydian mode [1-2-3-#4-5-6-7] and…

Words Jono Harrison Released as the fifth single from Metallica’s eponymous fifth album (also known as The Black Album), ‘Sad But True’ carries the hallmarks of a classic metal track. For the ominous-sounding opening chords (A5–B b5), aim for clear contrast between the non-muted power chords and palm-muted ‘chugs’ (bars 1–2), then ensuring that no unwanted strings are ringing over the single-note lines in bars 3 and 4. In bars 7–14, try to keep the rhythms as even as possible, focusing on the accuracy of your fretting hand for the pull-offs (e.g., bar 7, beat 3, beat 4). There are only two repeated bars of the verse riff in this Rockschool arrangement, and these riffs again require clarity between unmuted partial chords and palm-muted open E strings. Watch out for…

What’s most impressive about the V1s is that there’s a consistency of tone between the line, even though every pedal has a very different voicing. We’ve never been sold that players believe solid-state pedals can replace an amp. Certainly, these are no replacement for a tube amp pre, but they are excellent standalone drives that allow the player to access radically different tones. When DI’d into a studio pre rather than an amp, the pedals struggled slightly, but this is not uncommon. Even with a channel strip taking up the slack of a power section, there’s a reason we guitarists still lug around all those tubes and speakers. Using a Two Notes power amp emulation, they were substantially better, and of course many excellent tube amp VSTs are also available…

To the uninitiated, the M-EQ could appear to be another twist on the classic overdrive template. But Origin isn’t content with the standard gain/volume/tone layout of so many stompers, and here it’s opted to ape the EQ circuit of a much-loved Pultec studio EQ unit. Now, this isn’t an exact replica of the Pultec circuit, and the long and short of it is that we get a lot of flexibility in the mid range, with three mid-frequency ranges to choose from, and the adaptive circuit (which rolls off the high end as the gain increases), it looks to offer a lot of sonic options. The Origin M-EQ is made in the UK, and is available to order now priced at £259.…

On November 21, 2022, Wilko Johnson passed away at the age of 75. The Essex-born guitarist and singer was best known for his role in Dr. Feelgood, with his electrifying guitar work on celebrated tracks such as Back In The Night, Roxette and She Does It Right, and his unique on-stage persona. As Paul Weller once commented: “Wilko may not be as famous as some other guitarists, but he’s right up there. And there are a lot of people who’ll say the same. I can hear Wilko in lots of places. It’s some legacy.” Wilko was born John Peter Wilkinson on July 12, 1947 in Canvey Island, Essex, and discovered guitar almost by accident. As he told TG: “One day, I saw an electric guitar at school, and I was…

THE BEST OF 2022 GUITARIST OF THE YEAR He plays in one of the biggest and loudest rock bands in the world, but when John Frusciante talks about what he strives for most as a guitarist, the key word is ‘vulnerability’. “I think a lot of the time people want to sound confident on their instrument,” he says. “But to me, vulnerability is one of the most endearing things to hear in a piece of music. And I realized it felt like I was giving more of myself if I was vulnerable on the instrument. That ties into using clean tones, doing things that are understated, all these things. And I think that’s universal. As much as we admire confidence in people, we all know deep down that…

01 Polyphia feat. Steve Vai Ego Death THERE were plenty of interesting collaborations over the course of 2022, but arguably none quite as sonically tantalising as Polyphia partnering up with Steve Vai on the song Ego Death. As well as packing all the genre-crossing bravado and split coil spank we’ve grown to expect from guitarists Tim Henson and Scott LePage, the track was also representative of a changing of the guard – almost giving listeners front row seats at the passing of the torch between Ibanez-endorsing virtuosos from different generations. In the 80s and 90s, it was Steve Vai who was taking guitar music to new places and in the process redefining the very instrument in his hands. Decades later, similar things could be said about what Polyphia have managed…

ELECTRIC GUITARS 01 PRS SE Silver Sky £895 One of the most controversial electric guitars of the 21st century was also one of its most brilliant – John Mayer colluding with Paul Reed Smith on an iconoclastic take on an early-60s Strat, foregrounding playability and tone, and finishing it off with a reverse headstock. The arrival of the more affordable SE model was arguably the guitar story of the year, and presented players with a ridiculously classy instrument with a faultless build, superb playability, all kinds of top-tier S-style sounds, and finishes you would want to sink your teeth into. For £895, Paul Reed Smith can’t make you look like John Mayer, and he can’t make you play like him, but he can make you sound like him. 02 Cort…

Half The World Away was originally released as a B-side to the single Whatever in 1994, but became perhaps Oasis’ best-known non-album track when it was used as the theme music to the long-running BBC sitcom, The Royle Family. The recording is a stripped down affair with Noel Gallagher providing the vocals, guitar and drums, and Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs playing acoustic guitar and keyboards. As the chord progression and top-line melody are so strong, the song is ideally suited to a solo acoustic CHORDS Most of the chords are typical open shapes you may have seen before, but there are some trickier shapes such as Fmaj7, which has the thumb over the top of the neck to fret the root note; if this is uncomfortable simply leave the low F…

REVIEW Hold yer horses: a Chinese-made Epiphone for a grand? What’s going on? Before you hit your favoured guitar forum complaining about the price of guitars today, yes, this is a top-dollar Epiphone but the continuing rise in quality of the ones we’ve seen over the past couple of years, not to mention the whole Joe Bonnamassa tie-up, results in a guitar package that’s very different from the Epiphone semi-hollows of yore. A REPLICA OF JOE’S LOST-BUT-FOUND THINLINE There’s a good back story, too. Back in 1996, Joe bought a ’62 Gibson ES-335 which he went on to use on his first album, A New Day Yesterday. To help finance his move from New York to Los Angeles in 2001, he regrettably sold it. But thanks to an unexpected phone…

£719 To a generation that has grown up with touchscreen computer devices within reach, the idea of putting one in an acoustic guitar might seem pretty logical. The rest of us may wonder if the guitar is a problem that needs to be fixed in that way. But the idea of combining apps to help you learn, sounds and beats to inspire you and an acoustic travel-size guitar has certainly got us intrigued about whether this could be a bit of a game-changer for beginners and older hands alike. And now Chinese ‘smart guitar’ leaders Lava Music are making the prospect more accessibly priced with the Blue Lava. We want to know if the whole package is successful. It certainly looks distinct; a kind of clean, futuristic, somewhat toy-like vision…