Tabla de contenidos para September 2020 en Guitar Techniques

SIMON BARNARD Simon is a graduate of ACM and The Guitar Institute, holding a Masters degree in music. He teaches, examines and plays everything from rock to jazz. SHAUN BAXTER One of the UK’s most respected music educators, Shaun has taught many who are now top tutors themselves. His Jazz Metal album is considered a milestone. JON BISHOP Jon is one of those great all-rounders who can turn his hand to almost any style. He’s also rock legend Shakin’ Stevens’ touring and recording guitarist. MARTIN GOULDING One of the world’s foremost rock and metal guitarists, Martin teaches for dime-online.org and has written for many of the world’s top guitar mags. CHARLIE GRIFFITHS Guitar Institute tutor Charlie first came to fame in Total Guitar’s Challenge Charlie series. He’s also guitarist with…

I have been a huge advocate of transcribing since I first started teaching, but I fear I missed a very important piece of the puzzle. During a series of ‘Lockdown Lessons’ I filmed for my website I had the pleasure of talking about learning with a number of incredible players and teachers, and it helped me link some earlier memories with other greats that I’ve spoken with. The penny dropped when I was chatting with one of the finest modern blues guitarists, Josh Smith. He could play pretty much any Stevie Ray Vaughan song, from memory, and was able to play perfect renditions of solos from almost any blues master. I was quite astounded and impressed but also wondered how on earth he’d done it. I asked him about it…

We guitarists love to jam, and blues royalty is no different, so we’ve conjured up an All-Star jam session featuring five superstars of the blues and beyond. This feature brings you an in-depth look at the soloing style of five of the greatest bluesy guitarist of all time: BB King, Eric Clapton, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy and Jeff Beck, all legends in their own right and hopefully needing no introduction. While it’s clear that each of these players has his own unique and highly individual musical personality (Clapton and Beck both in and out of the pure blues idiom), it’s good to observe the huge amount of crossover in terms of note selection, shared expressive devices, common rhythmic devices and phrasing considerations. They’re definitely all communicating in the same stylistic…

John Bunyan was a 17th Century English preacher and prolific writer who was persecuted and imprisoned for his religious practice and teachings. In his extraordinary life, Bunyan authored over 50 sermons and the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most published English language works of all time. “THE MAIN CHALLENGES ARE TO ALLOW THE MELODY TO ‘SING’ CLEAR AND FLUID LINES WHILE ADDING HARMONIC SUPPORT AND MAINTAINING A FLOW” Within part II of this work written in 1684, Bunyan wrote one hymn, the timeless To Be A Pilgrim (also known by the first line of the 1906 version, He Who Would Valiant Be). The hymn has been sung to various melodies throughout its history, but most famous is its pairing with the traditional English anti-war melody Our Captain Cried…

EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 JAMES BURTON CD TRACK 22 James Burton can be heard on many records from the heyday of rock and roll. This interpretation of what he might have played live with Elvis Presley, moves around the A Minor scale using a clean bridge pickup tone with strategically placed double picking. Great if you want to make music for Quentin Tarantino. EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 PETE TOWNSHEND CD TRACK 23 These guitar chords work well as an intro that might mirror a Who-style Hammond organ part. Master the slash A chord shapes first, then elaborate using directional picking to arpeggiate the chords. A windmill strumming arm is optional - but probably not best advised. INTERMEDIATE LICKS EXAMPLE 3 ROBBEN FORD CD TRACK 24 Voice an Am triad at…

The Altered scale is the seventh mode of the Melodic Minor scale and one of the most commonly used when soloing over Dominant chords. Typically used over an Altered Dominant, it creates an ‘outside’ sound which is then resolved when the progression moves to the I chord. If you are new to improvising with the Altered scale, it can be challenging to make melodic sense of it. We don’t tend to think in terms of Altered extensions and often have no real idea what they sound like. In this chapter we will look at some arpeggios extracted from the Altered scale that work well over Altered Dominant chords. The examples will not only help you get used to the sound, but provide you with clear examples of how to compose…

The V7-IV7-I7 progression is the last part of of a 12-bar blues, otherwise known as the ‘turnaround’. In this lesson we’ll look at soloing over those chords using Dominant 7 arpeggios, in order to break away from the Pentatonic scale. Our examples are over E7-D7-A7 chords but of course you can transpose these ideas to any other key and also use these licks to fuel your own improvisation. The key of A theoretically only has one Dominant chord; the E7, with the D and A usually being Major or Major 7th. In a blues, those chords are typically transformed into ‘secondary Dominants’, so in essence we have three chords from three different keys. Usually we don’t have to think very hard about navigating these key changes as the magic of…

WITH EVERYTHING THAT’S going on in the world today it wouldn’t be right not to mention - especially given this month’s two lead features - that much of the music we love, listen to and learn from, can be traced back to the African-Americans of the late 19th and early 20th century. Blues originated in America’s Deep South from slave plantations and sharecropping farms, but was born from what’s been called the ‘cradle of the blues’ in Africa. A mix of field hollers and spirituals was passed on in the aural tradition, and only later written down and made more formal by WC Handy and others. Some have also suggested a crossover between the Scottish folk tunes heard from the slaves’ ‘masters’, Islamic songs from the African Muslims that were…

The strap line of the Musicians’ Union logo proudly proclaims ‘Keep Music Live’? However, I might suggest that you have not experienced the oxymoronically rich phrase, ‘Light Entertainment’. On a good day, it’s a painless way to earn a living, after you’ve filtered out the 12-hour shift, the endless rehearsal and the tension of the performance itself. But that’s why you’re paid the medium bucks. No, my friends. It’s what occurs when it’s very far from alright on the night that evokes less than favourable comparison with the horror of war, or the fear of never again obtaining a Waitrose online shopping slot. The account that follows is but a mere bagatelle drawn from Mitch’s World Of Live, if you will. The first example is etched forever in my memory,…

Microtones and‘blue’notes A characteristic of blues inflections and decoration is the use of microtones, the minute subtle gradients of pitch found in between each semitone. It’s quite the done thing to flatten the 5th ever so slightly, blur the distinction between Minor and Major 3rd and slightly raise the flattened 7th, but only ever so slightly. It’s crucial that you do a good bit of listening to develop this facet of your playing. You’re aiming to achieve the same degree of melodic freedom as the human voice; while we’ll never achieve this completely, it is good fun to try. Pay attention to how similar the inflections in BB King’s guitar playing are to the decorative embellishments present in his vocal delivery. It’s fascinating.…

Tommy Emmanuel once said, “If you like my playing, you should hear Richard Smith…” As far as accolades go, that one’s not easily beaten. Here at Guitarist, we first became aware of Richard’s extraordinary talent face-to-face back in the 1990s when he paid us a visit at our offices and brightened up the afternoon with a jaw-dropping private performance – and in those days, he was still in his 20s. British born but now resident in Nashville, Richard is acknowledged as one of the very finest acoustic guitar players around, touring constantly and only stopping off occasionally to deliver one of his insightful clinics. Going back to his roots, then, Richard started to play at a very young age. “I was five,” he nods. “My dad had the Play In…

Posture When playing classical guitar, posture is extremely important in order for both hands to work efficiently. The traditional method is to sit up straight on the front edge of an upright chair and raise the left knee (right-handed players) by using a footstool. The guitar sits on the left thigh and the head of the guitar tilts upwards. For long hours of playing, many people prefer to have both feet on the floor keeping the pelvis level and good alternatives to the footstool are the Dynarette guitar cushion, the Gitano guitar rest and the ErgoPlay guitar support.…

Eight-time Grammy award-winning guitar legend Jeff Beck is a giant among mere mortals. Born in 1944 in Surrey, England, Beck was first inspired to pick up the electric guitar after hearing Les Paul play How High The Moon on the radio. After that, a hunger for guitar music grew and he was quickly turned onto the likes of BB King, Cliff Gallup and Steve Cropper. Fast forward to the early 60s and Beck started playing and recording in a multitude of bands and hanging out with other now legendary musicians like Jimmy Page and Ian Stewart (Rolling Stones’ pianist), recording in bands and doing studio sessions. In 1965 Beck succeeded Eric Clapton as lead guitarist for The Yardbirds under Jimmy Page’s recommendation. He was part of the line-up for a…

Taking influence from the British pop and rock groups of the 60s and their northern contemporaries from the Madchester scene, Blur burst onto our radar in 1991 with debut album, Leisure. Hailing from London, the band consists of Damon Albarn (vocals), Graham Coxon (guitar and vocals), Alex James (bass) and Dave Rowntree (drums). Blur’s sound and influences have varied from album to album, resulting in a band that has attracted a wide audience of music lovers. The group’s combination of thoughtful lyrics and social commentary, sung with Albarn’s London swagger and combined with melodic and sometimes busy bass lines, plus Coxon’s inventive guitar playing, resulted in something very different for the times. Graham Coxon took influence from a huge range of artists and styles. You can hear these in the…

DANIEL KNIGHTON / GETTY IMAGES GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that particularly appeals to you? ZR: With instrumental music, I’m far more interested in the composition and the arrangement than I am in the guitar (or any other individual instrument or component). I tend to look first for pieces that are musically creative and interesting, before focusing on instrumentation. But with respect to music that is definitively guitar-based, I’d say I’d be looking for playing that is original and unique to the instrument. Anything that might inspire me to up my own game. GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can’t? ZR: As a writer, I simply think of instrumental music as an equally valid alternative to vocal music – I don’t favour…

FENDER’S PRINCETON 26 COMBO gets an upgrade as the 8-inch Utah field coil speaker is replaced by a fixed magnet type Jensen for improved tone and response. It’s a positive move for this most basic of amplifiers  that has two inputs but no controls at all or even an on-off switch so anything has to be an improvement. The earliest models are part of the ‘Woodie’series, so called because the cabinet is polished wood. The front features vertical chrome strips and the grille cloth varies in colour. MARTIN GUITARS PRODUCES THE LAST D-28 to feature Herringbone body binding and marquetry. Their stock of this  purfling, manufactured in pre–World War II Germany, has finally run out and there is no alternative American source. As of now all style 28 guitars are…

“STYLISTIC CROSS-POLLINATION ALLOWS THE MUSIC TO KEEP MOVING FORWARDS, EVER EVOLVING INTO FASCINATING NEW FORMS THAT CAN BE BOTH STYLISTICALLY AWARE, INFORMED, AUTHENTIC AND UNIQUELY PERSONAL” If you look at the history of popular contemporary music there was a point, a little less than a century ago, when the distinction between what constituted blues and what defined jazz was a little arbitrary to say the least, with many artists widely regarded as masters of both (Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson spring to mind). Countless blues artists were happy to expand their sound with the addition of jazzy overtones (the mighty Robert Johnson for one, and later on the equally talented T-Bone Walker), while the concept of a jazz musician without a deep understanding and assimilation of the blues was considered…

“The trap that people fall into,”Richard tells us,“is since we’re born, our fingers and our thumb are used to grab things, so they pinch together, they grab objects – they work in tandem. With fingerpicking you’re playing on and off the beat, so the thumb stays on the beat, one, two, three, four. Sometimes the fingers have to play the‘and’in-between…‘one and two and three and four and’. “Some people’s thumbs misbehave. They want to pinch on the‘and’, because their finger is moving towards the thumb and the natural tendency is for that thumb to want to pinch with the fingers. And the way to overcome that is to slow it way down and be consciously aware of what your muscles are doing, and control your muscles with your conscious brain,…

Judas Priest were hailed as one of the most important acts on the heavy metal scene in the 70s and 80s. Since forming in 1969 in West Bromwich, UK they have sold over 50 million albums and influenced countless other metal artists. They may have had their heyday some time ago, but still continue to function today, retaining their appeal to their army of fans. As well as their music informing that of many other heavy metal acts, their image of leather and spikes also influenced the 80s era glam-rock and metal bands such as Poison. The classic Priest line-up consisted of singer Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and KK Downing, Ian Hill on bass and drummer Dave Holland. Although their first album was more along the lines of heavier…

We have recently been spicing up our lines using non-scale notes. Such chromatic ideas allow us to introduce tension (dissonance) then resolve it (consonance), rather than dwelling on consonant notes all the time. We’ve looked at: 1) Chromatic Approach Notes: either from a semitone above or below the target note. 2) Chromatic Bridging: whereby one note is linked to another (however far apart) by a consecutive series of chromatic steps. 3) Enclosure: which involves approaching a target note from both above and below, either diatonically or chromatically. In this lesson, we are going to look at a method of embellishing the approaches that we have covered so far by incorporating notes from other strings (which often act as pedal notes) in order to extend or perhaps delay the chromatic journey…

MORE OF THE WORLD’S BEST LESSONS… FEATURE #2 VIDEO CORY WONG Funk rhythm masterclass Vulfpeck guitarist and solo artist Cory is a great player. Watch as he plays and describes his favourite rhythm moves. CLASSICAL TAB VIDEO JS BACH Invention In A Minor Bridget Mermikides has created a duet arrangement of this piece by the master. Watch her play both parts on video too. FEATURE #3 SWEEP PICKING Lose the fear, it’s time to go for it! Jamie Humphries is back with a great article that demystifies the scary world of sweep picking. Go on, give it a go! TECHNIQUE & THEORY GREAT STUFF TO LEARN Diminished scale & Travis Picking Try the Diminished scale on Dominant chords, and get an introduction to the wonderful world of Travis…