Innehållsförteckning för July 2024 från Total Guitar

With Aerosmith currently on their Peace Out farewell tour, this month we speak to guitarist Joe Perry who looks back over his 50 years with the band, and discusses how some of their greatest songs were created. Dream On, Love In An Elevator and more are featured, and, of course, Walk This Way, which Joe tells us “happened in a soundcheck.” Crikey! My first experience of Aerosmith was around the band’s collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on this very song. I think I was about 10 at the time; I know I was unaware of the original album track on Toys In The Attic. A few years later, after I’d been learning guitar for a while, this was an album I sought out – and the lighter, funkier Walk This Way was…

My first album, and I remember this very well, I bought in 1975 when I was nine years old. There was a thing called the Columbia Records and Tapes program where you could order eight albums for a penny! I convinced my mother to let me do that. I got the 8-track cassette of Toys In The Attic, Aerosmith’s latest record, and wore it out until it was so thin that you could hear through to the other side playing backwards. That was my introduction, and that record really changed everything for me. After that I got Draw The Line, I got Live! Bootleg, I got Rocks… I didn’t start playing guitar until a few years later. I think I was 12 or 13. I was playing drums at that…

COCAINE Words and Music by J.J. Cale Copyright © 1975 Audigram Music Copyright Renewed All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC All Rights Reserved Used by Permission Reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Ltd. ERIC CLAPTON COCAINE Intro (guitars 1 & 2) bit.ly/tg385audio When playing the consecutive open strings in bars 4 and 8, you’ll achieve a cleaner sound if you mute the open fourth string immediately before you play the fifth by lightly touching it with your fretting-hand fingers. Note that one of Eric’s layered guitar parts repeats the chords from bar 1 in bars 3, 5 and 7. ERIC CLAPTON COCAINE Intro (guitar 3) bit.ly/tg385audio Fret the slides in bar 3 with your first finger. Slide quickly and keep your finger firmly pressed onto the…

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…

Any discussions around forward-thinking brands fixated on evolving the design of the electric guitar will almost always include a mention of Strandberg – and with good reason. Though founded in 1982, the Swedish company have risen to prominence over the last decade with an impressive list of endorsees, from Australian instrumental mastermind Plini and Scar Symmetry’s Per Nilsson to American YouTuber Sarah Longfield and Haken’s Charlie Griffiths. Up to this point, however, their instruments had been aimed at the higher end of the market, typically catering to more advanced players with the budget to accommodate for more of a custom shop feel. And though they partnered with PT Cort in Indonesia back in 2017 – a factory who have also been entrusted to oversee the PRS SE line with unprecedented…

IN THE SPOTLIGHT In his last band The Defiled, Lee Downer spliced elements of nu-metal and industrial into a fiery package that turned them into one of the most exciting acts in Britain. Following that band’s dissolution in 2016, Lee moved to California, working as a buyer for the vintage department of Hollywood’s Guitar Center, and started new group Lowlives. The alt-rock quartet’s debut album Freaking Out was released in May through Universal imprint Spinefarm and they have been booked for Download in the UK as well as US festivals Aftershock and Louder Than Life. You could say it’s all off to a good start… “There was one Foo Fighters gig I was obsessed with as a kid,” Lee tells TG. “I think it was on their first UK tour…

FEATURE PLAY LIKE JOE PERRY Joe Perry has been gracing the world’s biggest stages for over 50 years now, initially, of course, with Aerosmith, then later on with the Joe Perry Project and the Hollywood Vampires. Of course, each project very much has its own identity, but there are some constants running through Joe’s playing style. First of all, Joe has always made use of a number of tunings. Sure, you’ll hear him rocking out in E standard most of the time, but some of Aerosmith’s biggest tracks feature altered tunings you may not know about –there’s plenty more detail below. He’s also quite experimental with the guitars he uses. Though he’s the embodiment of a guitar connoisseur, he likes to feel inspired from gig to gig, so, while he…

Sam Fender’s lyrics are a million miles away from many of his contemporaries – he’s never afraid to tackle human issues head on. Spit Of You is no exception – a poignant observation of how father and son relationships are frequently complex. The song is built around a repeated four-bar riff underpinned by a solid bass and drum groove. Additional guitar parts (and even mandolin) dip in and out to create a rich tapestry of tone that builds to an exciting crescendo featuring a tasteful sax solo in the outro. This song was recorded with a capo on the 2nd fret, so you’ll need to get capo’d up to play along to our backing track. The main riff is tricky but it’s well worth investing your time on. Live, the…

It’s been 25 years since Blink-182 rocketed to global success with third album, Enema Of The State. Somewhere between the poo jokes, zany bants and persistent nudity, Tom DeLonge also managed to forge a path as a hugely influential guitar hero to a generation. As is often the case, the key to his success is simplicity – hooky riffs, full of melody and harmony, and he’s consistently played them on guitars with a similar ethos. Last year, Fender reissued DeLonge’s sought-after Stratocaster: a single-pickup take on the Strat finished in retro colours. But to fully understand his latest model, we need to rewind a couple of decades to his ‘grown-up’ transition to a Gibson ES-335. Subsequently issued as an Epiphone version in 2008, before being discontinued five years ago, the…

Joe Bonamassa is living every rock guitarist’s dream by playing in Black Country Communion. Alongside him in this supergroup are musicians of the highest pedigree: bassist and lead vocalist Glenn Hughes (formerly of Deep and Purple and Black Sabbath), keyboard player Derek Sherinian (ex-Dream Theater) and drummer Jason Bonham, who performed in place of his late father John when Led Zeppelin played live for the final time in 2007. On the day that Joe speaks to Total Guitar about the new Black Country Communion album – their fifth, titled simply V – he has just completed a two-night stand with his solo band at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall, where many of us in attendance felt he sounded better than ever. “We were happy with the shows,” he says. “I’m…

For their latest album, Idles dived into tape-looping as the basis for entire songs. As they go on tour, they’ve got to figure out how to make it happen live. For guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, that means their pedalboards have grown even more massive, but their amps have actually shrunk. This album, titled Tangk, is the band’s most ambitious recording to date. Where 2021’s Crawler was led by guitar-synth sounds, this time around they used the studio as an instrument. Mark Bowen – known to all by his surname – explains that this was the plan from the get-go. “We wanted the music and the songwriting to be guided by production,” he says. “There were a lot of production techniques incorporated into the songwriting. This isn’t a standard…

1 BURNT STRAT Built by Joe Perry and Jim Servis in 2001 from left-handed Fender and Warmoth parts, the P-rails pickups are a recent addition. Darren moved the volume control below the strings and fitted a Vega trem. 2 BC RICH BICH The 10-string BC Rich Bich was immortalised on the sleeve of Aerosmith’s Live! Bootleg album. It’s the only guitar Darren restrings every day. Tuned like a 12-string, but the low E and A strings are not doubled. 3 MUSICMAN SILHOUETTE BASS Used only for Back In The Saddle, the Silhouette bass has a Floyd Rose trem. “Trying to get a .105 string under the Floyd Rose locking nut is kind of a challenge!” Darren Hurts admits. 4 BILLIE Billie was a stock B.B. King Lucille model that Joe…

CLASSIC TRACK Eric Clapton is one of the few guitarists who can craft solo after solo using nothing more than the minor pentatonic scale. Like the blues legends who influenced him (B.B. King, Buddy Guy), improvisers such as Clapton often don’t ‘write’ their solos, they just grab the moment and go for it. This method takes years of practice, but you can cheat by analysing some of your favourite players’ licks. Think about their choice of notes, their rhythm, and their phrasing. Listen to the solo in Cocaine and you’ll hear that it’s made up of two- or three-bar phrases, which work together to help the song unfold. The overdubbed guitar in the solo should get right in the way of the main guitar line, but instead the phrases work…

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…

REVIEW Given Jack White’s slightly elusive and incredibly hip reputation, when it comes time for a partnership between his Third Man Hardware brand and another pedal company, you’d be forgiven for expecting him to team up with an underground builder for something equally exclusive. Not so. Because for the Triple Threat, Mr W has thrown his hat into the ring with Donner, a Chinese brand specialising in affordable gear. The Triple Threat houses three analogue pedals in a single aluminium chassis. These circuits are based on Donner’s own effects pedals, including the Pearl Tremor phaser and Yellow Fall delay, with the form factor borrowed from its Alpha Cruncher multi-effects, and White and Third Man beefing up the components to ensure better sound and sturdier build quality. Our review model comes…

The practical advantages of self-contained amp and speaker emulation in a small pedalboard-friendly pedal are there for all to see in the likes of the Strymon Iridium and Walrus Audio ACS1, but now those have got competition from Boss in the shape of the IR-2. Boss has previous experience in this genre of pedal with their twin-footswitch IR-200, but this time, in what looks to be an inspired piece of engineering, they have crammed an impressive range of functionality into a compact pedal chassis. The IR-2 is designed to deliver the sound of 11 different amps, each of which comes with a matched Celestion Digital cabinet IR. A free IR-2 IR Loader app for macOS and Windows also lets you load IRs of your choice into the pedal. While combined…