Innehållsförteckning för September 2024 från Total Guitar

SCENE YOUR NEWS IN GUITARS Two years after their sparkling debut album, Los Bitchos are back with more luscious guitar textures and feel-good vibes with its follow-up, Talkie Talkie. For guitarist Serra Petale, that meant pushing their funk disco pomp to quirky new dimensions and never turning her chorus pedal off. What were your go-to guitars for the new album? Most of it was on my Italia Maranello Speedster. It’s my number one, but I also used a Lag which has the most fabulous rounded but tinny sound – I just want to eat it! I also used our prouder Oli Barton Wood’s ‘Smokers Tele’. Loads of cigarette smoke has stuck to it from people chain-smoking around it, but it has the most wonderful tone. Then we split their signals…

The Alice In Chains guitarist returns with his fifth solo album, and this track featuring Metallica’s Rob Trujillo on bass. The riff to Vilified is played with a clever combination of palm-muted pick strokes and pull-offs to repeat a phrase which is in 6/8 time with a ‘1 2, 1 2, 1 2’ count. Start with two open sixth string palm-mutes, then use your first, second and third fingers to pull off from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd frets on the low E, A and D strings in that order. After repeating the riff seven times, ascend the sixth string with the E blues scale notes E, G, A and B b using the same rhythm. The second half of the riff moves up to the 5th and 6th frets…

The term ‘progressive metal’ often suggests the kind of indulgent, neoclassical futurism typified by Dream Theater and Symphony X, but Norwegian quintet Leprous – arguably one of the most exciting names operating in the genre today – have chosen moods and atmospheres over sprawling overtures. The group, formed by singer/keyboardist Einar Solberg and guitarist Tor Oddmund Suhrke in 2001, cut their teeth early on as the live band for Ihsahn, the man who famously pioneered the symphonic black metal sound through his work in Emperor. Such an opportunity during the band’s embryonic years benefitted them greatly in terms of musical development and helped sharpen their collective tools of the trade. “We don’t sound like those technical progressive bands with all the fast leads,” Tor says. “Our music is more about…

CARMEN VANDENBERG The fuzz pedal was the first guitar effect ever invented, so it’s kind of mind-bending that Bones UK’s second album Soft uses fuzz pedals to generate tones unlike anything we’ve ever heard. These tones are the result of painstaking collaboration between guitarist Carmen Vandenberg and producer Filippo Cimatti, and they make Soft an incredibly fresh listen. “We spend a lot of time trying to find sounds that I haven’t heard before,” reveals Carmen. “Sometimes it’ll take me five hours just to get the tone, and then it might be done in one take or two takes. I love spending time on that. It’s a world to discover. I want people to think, ‘Is that or is that not a guitar?’” Rock royalty have been touting Vandenberg as the…

1 DIGITECH WHAMMY This is a perennial favourite of creative guitarists, from Steve Vai and Tom Morello to Sean Long of While She Sleeps. In Bones UK, Carmen uses it for their 2021 track Boys Will Be Girls, where she uses the two-octaves-up setting for some radical bends. 2 JOE BONAMASSA CRY BABY WAH The copper treadle and subtle signature in the rubber foot grip give this away as a Bonamassa wah. It’s just an authentic vintage wah sound with a switchable true bypass, the most common modification for stock Cry Babys. 3 J ROCKETT ARCHER IKON This gold Archer is special because it lived in Jeff Beck’s ’board before he gave it to Vandenberg. The Archer was one of the first and most respected pedals to closely replicate the…

IN THE PICTUREPEOPLE ✪ NEWS ✪ NOISE In 1974, Frank Zappa released Apostrophe (’), his most successful album up to that point. It became his first gold-selling record in the United States and even yielded a hit single in Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow. A new 50th Anniversary Edition box set includes a remaster of the album, plus over 50 unreleased and rare studio and live tracks. It’s no wonder Frank’s son Dweezil makes Apostrophe (’) his first recommendation to anyone new to his father’s music. The range of styles alone is dizzying, from rock to jazz, soul to funk, and even a rare instance of a Zappa piano ballad in Uncle Remus. Ever since its release, musicians have marvelled at the high level of playing throughout, with Zappa writing…

MIKE CAMPBELL Mike Campbell first tasted fame in the late ’70s as the lead guitarist in Tom Petty’s backing band The Heartbreakers. He has worked with Stevie Nicks, Johnny Cash and the Eagles’ Don Henley, co-writing the latter’s ’80s classic The Boys Of Summer. And after touring with Fleetwood Mac in 2018-19, he has made three albums with his cheekily-named band The Dirty Knobs. You’ve played a lot of guitars over the years. What was your first? I remember it well. It was an acoustic guitar, though I don’t have it now. It was a Harmony acoustic with an F-hole that my mom got me for 15 bucks. It was unplayable, but I didn’t know that. I learned to play on that thing, even though you couldn’t tune it! You…

GUITAR TRICKS In this lesson, we’ll get right into the blues and teach you three straightforward licks so you can start playing in the style straight away. These licks will be built from the A blues scale. This is the same as the minor pentatonic scale, but with an added b5 passing note. While this interval sounds very dissonant, as a passing tone it adds tension to the blues scale. The kicker is that we’ll be playing the pattern up an octave on the higher strings. For more advanced players, there’s a clever way to get up to this position by working your way through the regular scale pattern, then through the ‘Albert King’ box. You’ll be able to begin the A blues scale again on the top strings. All…

HINDS Carlotta Cosials has set her display name to “best guitar player” when she joins the TG Zoom call. When bandmate Ana Perrote joins moments later, she storms in mock outrage, “And that’s how Hinds ended!” The two collapse in laughter, demonstrating an a bond that has enabled the Spanish duo to survive a rough four years. They’ve changed management, found themselves briefly without a label and split with two former bandmates. Bands have ended over less, but new album Viva Hinds confirms Cosials and Perrote are nowhere near finished. In an indie field where guitar solos can be minimal to nonexistent, Hinds’ love of guitar melodies has always stood out. “Maybe it’s because we’re Spanish, and we sing in English,” Ana muses. “Listening to so many songs, sometimes we…

At the heart of Bones UK is a paradox: the music is futuristic while also backward-looking. “We always want to do something people haven’t heard before,” explains Rosie Bones. “We never wanted to sound like another rock band. We often said that we sound like ‘future rock’ – it’s rock ’n’ roll from the future, so having that kind of electronic element is really important to us. At the same time, we wanted this record to feel old-school because Carmen’s an old-school kind of girl. She loves the old guitar players. She’s a blues head. She’s like a 60-year-old man that lives in a little blonde girl’s body! So that combination is what we like doing as a band: the future, but kind of nostalgic.” The second Bones UK album…

PLAY LIKE BONES UK So far, then, we know that Carmen’s pedalboard is quite substantial, and that, tone-wise, the band’s latest release Soft is highly experimental. Having taken a look at Carmen’s ’board already, this gives us a head start in recreating her tones – though unless your set-up mirrors Carmen’s, it’s best to aim for a ballpark sound. But what of playing techniques? We’d argue that some of the secret sauce is directly tied to the pair’s tonal set-up. For example, vibrato is vibrato, right? Well, yes – but played through a pitch shifter its signature warble takes on a new life, and you may find yourself employing subtly different finger movements. And that goes double if you’re playing bends and divebombs with a treadle-operated pedal like DigiTech’s Whammy.…

FIRST LOOKPEOPLE ✪ NEWS ✪ NOISE Back in the 1970s, Gibson moved production of its Epiphone brand to Korea – but it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the ’70s, Gibson, having acquired Epiphone in 1957, produced its Epiphone-branded, Gibson counterparts in the same Kalamazoo factory as some of rock’s Holy Grail instruments. The Epiphone USA range sees a return of the Epiphone name to US production, and the latest model to come out of the American stable is the Coronet. This rounded doublecut first appeared in 1958, and Gibson/Epiphone have gone to town with trying to get the 2024 version as visually close to the original as possible, with the benefit of modern playability. There’s the mahogany body (finished in Vintage Cherry or Ebony, both nitrocellulose), ‘Bikini’ headstock plate…

PICKUP MUSIC Often in funk, the guitarist’s role is strictly rhythmic. It’s less about shredding or melodies and more about adding a syncopated rhythm or some texture, and that means most of the work lies with the picking hand. Here, in this lesson from Pickup Music, you’ll learn funk fundamentals like chanking and shell chords. If you want to tighten up your funk rhythm chops, you’ll need to get down with the ‘chanking’ strumming technique, as used famously by James Brown guitarist Jimmy Nolen, who employed it as part of his ‘chicken scratch’ approach. Essentially, it’s a mix of sharp strumming and tight on/off muting to cut chords short and give a percussive feel. A big part of funk guitar is reducing chords down to their core, playing only the…

ZEAL & ARDOR Manuel Gagneux began writing music as Zeal & Ardor with a point to prove. A regular on 4chan forums around 2013, he was taking requests to mash genres together when one user, with a racist undercurrent, suggested he mixed black metal with black music. Born to an African mother and Swiss father, he didn’t take the comment lightly, but stumbled upon something unique in the process. The aggression of black metal proved a counterpoint, in equal parts tasteful and forceful, to African-American spirituals, blues, soul, trap and hip-hop. Suddenly, what started life as a retaliation, of taking pride in the diversity of sounds black musicians have forged throughout the history of recorded music, the project took on a life of its own. From his home in Basel,…

It began in Amsterdam on April 27, 2023. 17 months later, Metallica’s epic M72 world tour will reach its conclusion with a show in Mexico City on September 29. In this previously unpublished interview, the band’s lead guitarist Kirk Hammett looks back on the tour and the 72 Seasons album, and explains how and why he is constantly adapting his approach as a player, songwriter and performer. When you look back on the making of 72 Seasons, what gives you the most satisfaction? The crazy thing about 72 Seasons is that it just flowed. The riffs were great; lots of high-energy. It was a reprioritisation of what Metallica is, what Metallica means to us all. There was an immense amount of trust. People could take as much responsibility as they…

For much of his long career, Jeff Beck dedicated himself to instrumentals, working only with occasional guest vocalists. All that changed with 2016’s Loud Hailer, when he grabbed the fledgling Bones UK for a triumphant return to song-based rock. Asked about working with Beck, Rosie Bones doesn’t hesitate. “I can’t put into words how honoured that I am to be part of his journey and his legacy in some way. It was a small way but to be part of that in any way.” But calling it a “small way” is too modest. After meeting Carmen Vandenberg at Roger Taylor’s birthday party, Beck attended a Bones UK gig with his wife and immediately recruited the duo to make an album. The list of vocalists to have recorded with Jeff Beck…

Back in the late ’60s – before the Big Muff – Electro-Harmonix came up with a nifty way to boost guitar signal into an amplifier with its LPB-1 Linear Power Booster, a simple one-knob, battery-powered device. Now, the company has brought the LPB family right up to date with the much more sophisticated LPB-3, still with the same role of boosting the signal from guitar to amp, but this time with some powerful active EQ to complement the boost. The pedal gives you the choice of two amounts of maximum boost – a thumping 33dB or less intense 20dB, which does the trick for most instances. You set the boost by juxtaposition of two knobs – a Boost knob which sets the overall output for the pedal and a Pre-Gain…