Innehållsförteckning för February 2023 från Total Guitar

And a happy new year to you all. In my time as Editor of Total Guitar it has been my pleasure to interview Brian May on several occasions. Once, when our readers voted him the greatest guitarist of all time. Again, when readers voted his solo in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody as the greatest of all time. And again, with the passing of Eddie Van Halen, when Brian wished to pay tribute to his friend and reminisce about their collaboration in the 80s with the Star Fleet Project. Now, with this month’s cover story, I believe we have delivered exactly what we promised on the cover: the ultimate Brian May interview. He is celebrating another major milestone in the history of Queen – the 50th anniversary of the band’s debut album.…

Devin Townsend has come a long way since he emptied his bowels inside Steve Vai’s guitar case. Back then, in the early 90s, Devin was barely out of his teens and had just scored his big break singing on Vai’s album Sex And Religion. But as a guitar player himself, he felt overawed in the presence of the virtuoso - and expressed his feelings in the worst way imaginable. What’s amazing is that he and Vai have remained good friends in all the years since then. And as Devin says now, that ghastly prank was really a backhanded compliment. “I was fortunate enough to work with Steve early on and realised he was so much better than me,” he admits. “And if one can’t articulate your discontent in an elegant…

“PEOPLE WANT LIVE MUSIC. AND WE’RE HAPPY TO GO ON SUPPLYING IT AS LONG AS WE CAN” And so, 50 years on from the first Queen album, the story continues. You’ve said before that you feel that Freddie would have loved the way Adam sings those old songs... I’ve heard a billion voices in my life, and I’ve never heard a voice like Adam’s. Time and time again, I can picture Freddie saying, ‘You bastard!’ Because Adam’s range is ridiculous, isn’t it? And so often, I’ve found myself wishing that Freddie and Adam could have gotten together, because they would have had the greatest time. They’re so similar in some ways, personally and musically. Could there ever be a new Queen album with Adam? Well, we have been in the…

Written by American songwriter Billy Roberts, ‘Hey Joe’ has been covered by many artists, but perhaps most famously by the Jimi Hendrix Experience under the watchful production of Hendrix’s manager, Chas Chandler. Jimi’s famous guitar intro has been stripped back for this Debut Rockschool arrangement, giving an opportunity to explore the powerful E minor open position riff. The pairs of strings need to ring clearly, and you will then need to adjust your fretting-hand position for the full six-string E major chords in bars 2 and 3. From section A (bar 4), the main chord progression is shown with partial chord shapes (using four, five and six strings). It is important that only the tabbed open strings are played here – for instance, you will need to ensure the open…

Welcome to the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome*) Station! Every issue, TG scours the market for the hottest new gear and brings you transparent reviews that you can trust. From the smallest of accessories that make your life easier, to big investments, such as brand new guitars, amps and effects pedals – if it’s worth your attention, you’ll find it here! 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…

Welcome to our all-encompassing look at Queen’s incredible guitarist Brian May and his various approaches to electric and acoustic playing. The aim of this lesson is to learn and apply some of the tried and tested concepts used by May during his stellar career. The Brian May guitar sound is one of the finest and most recognisable in rock history. His many tones are the product of a unique combination of ingenious ingredients, all cooked up by Brian and his father - plus a little help from a wall of Vox AC30s, a Dallas Rangemaster treble booster and a funny little transistor amp put together by bassist John Deacon. Although upgraded and modernised here and there, most of these ingredients have remained pretty much unchanged for the best part of…

Originally released on their 1989 debut album Bleach, About A Girl is more widely known as the opening track of Nirvana’s eight-times multi-platinum acoustic album MTV Unplugged In New York, which is the version we are looking at today. The song itself is simple enough, largely following the Em and G open chords for the verses before moving to slightly more complex shapes for the chorus. Like many strummers, Kurt ‘cheats’ his chord changes by throwing in strums of mostly open strings. The last strum of each bar can be entirely unfretted if you wish – E minor and G have a lot of open strings anyway, so your ear won’t catch it. Kurt would often play a partial G chord for the first strum and add his other fingers…

1 WARM AUDIO CENTAVO AND WARMDRIVE There’s no prizes for guessing where these two draw their influence from; these are Warm Audio’s take on the Klon Centaur and Hermida Audio Zendrive – two of the most coveted overdrive pedals in the world. With Klons now fetching thousands on the vintage market, the demand for pedals that can get close is understandably significant. The Centavo adds a new twist in the tribute tale with an additional MOD switch that boosts the bass response. £199 and £159, www.warmaudio.com 2 JIMI: OFFICIAL 80TH BIRTHDAY EDITION As another Jimi milestone of what could have been passes, this collaborative book by John McDermott and Janie Hendrix celebrates the four years the musician created a timeless legacy. This latest edition of the comprehensive visual celebration features…

Here we have a decent quartet of pedals that have plenty going for them, not least that ‘two pedals in one’ functionality and the extra flexibility it delivers. We were particularly impressed with the two sonic options provided by the tremolo and the phaser. While the pedals are built on the sound basis of classic amplitude tremolo and 4-stage phasing to provide vintage sounds that are still universally applicable today, it’s the addition of the more complex Harmonic tremolo and 6-stage phaser that really sweetens the deal while adjustable phaser feedback and tremolo waveform shape offer an extra layer of subtlety in shaping the sound to taste. A one-knob compressor can sometimes do the job, but the approach of having a choice of two distinct sounds and several knobs to…

IK Multimedia’s ToneX software launched earlier this year, putting AI-modelled “hyper-real” guitar tones at our fingertips. What’s more, it gives us the ability to model our own (or someone else’s!) hardware gear for use within the ToneX software. Now, IK has released an iOS version of the ToneX app, which runs in sync with the PC/Mac version, so you’ll have access to all of your tones (as well as purchasing more) on both platforms. ToneX for iOS is free, and works either in standalone mode or as a plugin within mobile DAWS, and you’ll get 10 free Premium Tone models on downloading it, plus IK iRig 2 owners will get a further 20 free Tone Models upon registering. Get it from the Apple App Store now.…

The humble two-note power chord is so effective that you can listen to entire albums of rock, metal, and punk without hearing another kind of chord. Even bands that wouldn’t tour together in a million years – Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses, Napalm Death and McBusted – are united by the awesome kerrang of the power chord. Traditional chords are major and minor triads (meaning they have three notes). The middle note is called the ‘third’ (because it comes from the third note of the relevant scale) and gives the chord its major or minor character. Power chords leave the third out, which means they almost always sound right whatever other harmony is going on. Triads can sound pretty dodgy with distortion, as all the extra harmonic overtones generated start…

It’s a case of new year, new album for Gabrielle Aplin, who returns this month with Phosphorescent, her fourth LP. Written on her beloved 1940s Martin 0-17 at her Somerset home, the songs took their cue from the natural world that surrounded her. Homespun acoustic guitars then developed across an unfolding landscape of 11 texturally rich songs with the help of producer Mike Spencer (who also steered her Gold-certified debut English Rain) at his The Lark’s Tongue eco-studio. As Gabrielle says of the album’s concept: “I wanted the first track to feel like waking up on a hazy Sunday morning and the last track to feel like the night of the best day ever.” In conversation with TG, she discusses playing, song development, and favourite guitars - including one affectionately…

CLASSIC TRACK This month we are taking a look at the epic ‘The Show Must Go On’. The song is constructed with a main chord progression in the key of B minor. To provide some variety, this chord progression is transposed into the key of C# minor for verses three and four. There is also a middle section that features chords form the harmonised C major scale. On addition to the huge power chord rhythm guitars in the chorus there are plenty of cool lead fills and solos to learn. Our TG version of the track features a performance of all the rhythm guitar parts, fills and lead work from the original. We have muted the main guitar performance on the backing track and this part is tabbed out for…

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…

The Jackson brand is not known for its reserve but even for the now-classic hotrodded S-style Dinky this Neon Pink model is pushing it. Perhaps the hi-viz aesthetic is a note of caution, health and safety gone mad because, golly, that reverse headstock, six-in-line like a dagger, could have your eye out. This is one electric guitar you could see from space, as though the Jackson development team consulted with rave culture archivists to find the most lurid Day-Glo colour and apply it to one of the most fast-playing guitars you can find at this money. Now, we’ll get to the performance – and spoilers for what’s to come, but it’s like the Dinky plays you sometimes – but first the spec. What does 500 bucks buy you in today’s…

REVIEW It’s extraordinary to think that the first Roland Cube dates as far as back as 1978 and since then there’s been over 50 versions, each promising high quality tones with unparalleled portability for the guitarist on the move. In 2021, with the introduction of the Cube Street II, the series was switched over to the Boss line – a sensible consideration given the brand’s guitar-centric legacy. The newest addition to the family is the Dual Cube LX, which offers more controls and features than any of its predecessors. One of the most popular additions to the more expensive Cube Street II was its 45-second looper system, so busking/one-person-band types will be pleased to see that included here, though it requires an additional footswitch such as the Boss FS-6 (there…