Innehållsförteckning för March 2023 från Total Guitar

I feel slightly overwhelmed this month as it befalls to me to try and sum up the career of someone many would say is the best player ever to pick up our instrument: Jeff Beck, who sadly died in January. It’s been said countless times by countless music journos and guitarists alike that Beck is ‘the guitar hero’s guitar hero’. This isn’t hyperbole. When you can count Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Joe Perry and Brian May amongst your fans you must be doing something right. Spend a little time analysing how Jeff plays and you start to understand. It seems to me that – particularly from the 1980s onwards – Jeff developed a playing style quite unlike anyone else’s. A style that explodes in a fountain of technical wizardry, beautiful,…

Pure inspiration First things first – I’d say Jeff Beck is probably my favourite guitar player, and the reason for that is that there is just no one else like him. I should be talking in past tense, which I’m still not used to. I really was shocked by his death, as I think everyone was. He was in better shape than me when he was 78! I met Jeff through Carmen Vandenberg – who I say is like my little sister – and who obviously played with Jeff for a couple of years and was very, very close to him personally. I also opened for him a couple of times. He had quite an impact on me. It was all around 2010 because it was on the Emotion &…

The guitar hero Jeff Beck has always been one of my idols because he’s unique. No one sounds like him, no one plays like him and you’ve got to respect that more than anything else. Everyone else you ever play with, there’s always a tip of the hat to the archetype they learned from. Beck is an archetype, like Jimi Hendrix is an archetype. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. No one was able to get anywhere close to that. All your idols, you think they’re gonna last forever. When Bowie went, when Prince went, I’m like, ‘What do you mean they’re not here?’ This was like that. When my dad died he was 81 and he had a good 15 years left in him. He was…

A in’t No Sunshine was the breakthrough single release from Bill Withers’ debut Just As I Am, produced by Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. and the M.G.’s). Many artists have cited Withers as a musical inspiration, with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson dubbing him “a songwriter’s songwriter”. The mellow sound of Ain’t No Sunshine comes from its A minor tonality, using chords built on the A natural minor scale: Am, G and Em. Note that the Em and G chords move relatively quickly (one chord per beat), repeatedly drawing us back to the tonal centre. This Debut-level Rockschool arrangement begins with a single-note line played on the fifth (A) and sixth (E) strings. Using your fretting hand, make sure that the remaining strings are muted so as not to…

The Stratocaster design is one of the most iconic six-string templates in history. Indeed, throughout the decades, it’s been the instrument of choice for countless guitarists, and to this day is the benchmark for many brands – PRS and Ibanez included – seeking to capture some of that Strat magic. Owing to this heritage, it’s little surprise the Stratocaster has been the recipient of very few radical design overhauls. Even Fender’s latest big release, the American Vintage II line, was all about harnessing history. Yes, certain specs have changed over the years, but overall the Stratocaster has remained a relatively static six-string. That’s what makes the new made in Japan Aerodyne Special Stratocaster so – for want of a better word – special. It’s a Strat, but it’s a Strat…

Whenever guitar players talk about ‘feel’, everyone will ultimately have their own interpretation of what exactly the word means. It’s an abstract and subjective term. However, most would agree that no player embodied ‘feel’ greater than Jeff Beck, the English virtuoso known as ‘the guitarist’s guitarist’. Whether you loved the fierce sound of his Telecaster in The Yardbirds, those early 70s conquests with a Les Paul in his hands, or the Strat magic he was most commonly associated with, Beck’s contributions to music of all kinds were simply incomparable. His death on January 10, 2023, at the age of 78, is a profound loss to all who knew and loved him, and to all who were inspired by his playing and fearless creativity. And among the many tributes that followed…

Feel and emotion A lot of instrumental guitar music felt very esoteric to a lot of people, and Jeff Beck was one of the first people to be an ambassador for instrumental guitar music in a way that didn’t feel so esoteric, but had so much feel, so much emotion and so much depth to it. He did stuff that was very smart, but it came across in a way that was more from the heart than the head. Now, I feel like I’m somebody who’s an ambassador for the instrument itself and an ambassador for instrumental guitar music, and Jeff paved the way with so many of his albums. Obviously, and most famously, there’s Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers, which is such a beautiful delivery of melody on the…

By 1972, Thin Lizzy had already been going three years and had released two albums. However, they were showing little sign of scoring that elusive first hit single. That is until they dropped their version of traditional Irish tune Whiskey In The Jar. The song, which folklorists have traced back as far as the 17th century, is a tribute to a lovelorn Irish highwayman who robs a British army captain, only to later find his victim’s been cavorting with his lady. While the ditty was a big Irish standard by the time Thin Lizzy came to cover it, no version had ever sounded anywhere near as rocky as their arrangement. Guitarist Eric Bell used a Fender Stratocaster on the recording, but his thick tone is the result of double-tracking and…

Think of an acoustic guitar, and you’ll probably be imagining a dreadnought with a spruce top, mahogany or rosewood back and sides- the quintessential all-round strummer. But, the Jim Dandy from Gretsch flies in the face of this recipe, instead offering up a retro-inspired, small-bodied parlor guitar. Thanks to this and the small-ish price tag, the Gretsch Jim Dandy has long been a favourite among those looking for an inexpensive acoustic guitar that still has some personality. But since Gretsch has issued it in the tasty-looking Nocturne Blue finish pictured (alongside a Sapele-bodied Frontier Stain version), now is a good time to revisit it. Build-wise, the limited edition model we have for review is the same as the current regular models. That is, a basswood top, back and sides, accompanied…

The Teacher For Your Love was the first Yardbirds song I remember, and then Happenings Ten Years Time Ago and those songs where he was using a Fuzztone for the first time. Those songs came out around the same time as [The Rolling Stones classic] Satisfaction, and they’re pretty close as far as using a Fuzztone goes. I would try to figure out licks from the records. I just know I was never really that good at it! Train Kept a-Rollin’ was the first song that I tried to play, but it ended up sounding like Aerosmith. I was lucky enough to have some friends who had older brothers who had records – and not the original but one of the one of the ever-evolving versions of Train Kept a-Rollin’…

The ideas man I first saw Jeff when he toured with Stevie Ray Vaughan on the Guitar Shop album. I saw their co-headline tour at a sports arena in downtown LA. It was equally inspiring and depressing to witness Jeff Beck play live. You go there thinking you’re a guitar player and you leave realising that you’re a guitar owner! He was just in a league by himself. He was in a class of one. There was no one who did what Jeff did. It was technical, but there’s nothing anyone can play that somebody else can’t figure out. You could get yourself a Strat like he played and with enough practice you could play like Jeff Beck, but what was amazing about Beck was always the inspiration. It was…

The phrase ‘tone is all in the fingers’ is particularly relevant to this month’s track. Guitar legend and Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler employs his trademark fingerstyle technique for all his rhythm and lead ideas here in the band’s classic track, Lady Writer. You could use a pick for much of the track if you wanted to, but we’d say the only way to reproduce Knopfler’s feel, particularly in the rapid-fire outro solo, is to ape the great man’s technique – and the opening two bars of that outro are a great study piece. We’ve added picking directions under the tab at this point. Take care to note how the thumb is employed: sometimes only on the beat, but sometimes on the offbeat, too, when the phrasing has an ‘alternating’…

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…

There’s plenty of reasons why Boss’s Katana digital modelling amps have become so popular; one of the most obvious being they’re astonishing value for money, packing in highly realistic amp tones alongside boutique-grade effects at prices that seem almost too good to be true. Following its debut in 2016 alongside the acclaimed Waza Craft Head, the Katana range rapidly grew to include Artist, Mini and Air (wireless) options, with a widely-acclaimed Mark II upgrade that added extra voices and effects. Now, Boss have given their best-selling Katana-50 MkII combo yet another upgrade and called it the Katana-50 MkII EX. ‘EX’ stands for Expanded and that’s essentially what’s going on here. The same Katana features we’ve come to love are still there, with five dual-voiced amp types and over 65 built-in…