Inhaltsverzeichnis für October 2020 in 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…

GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that appeals? GK: I go through phases between writing vocal tunes and instrumentals. I certainly feel more adventurous writing and performing instrumental selections. I can unleash the unmitigated beast, if you will. I just love the sound of a guitar being abused as the focus a tune. GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can’t? GK: Vocals certainly frame the meaning of the piece in a way that an instrumental doesn’t. You can interpret the intent of the song more broadly without a lyric. I think a vocalist can be polarising in a way too, but then again I know people who can’t stand listening to music without vocals. So, I guess to each their own. I remember…

SCHECTER EXPANDS ITS DIAMOND  serieswith two new guitars, the Ultra B-17 Bombshell and the PT F4 Phantom, continuing the Aviation Collection designs by covering the guitars with WWII bomber and fighter decals and rivets. While this presentation may limit their appeal they are fantastic sounding and versatile instruments. The Tele-like Phantom is loaded with two Schecter Custom Alnico humbuckers and the reverse-bodied Bombshell features Seymour Duncan Active Blackout humbuckers and both are ready for action. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY MOURNS THE LOSS OF Peter Banks, Alvin Lee, JJ Cale, Lou Reed, Richie Havens, Reg Presley, George Jones, Jeff Hanneman (Slayer), Ray Manzarek (The Doors), Jim Hall, Rick Huxley (Dave Clark Five), Clive Burr (Samson, Iron Maiden), Tony Sheridan, Kevin Ayers, Kenny Ball, Terry Lightfoot, Trevor Bolder (Bowie, Uriah Heep), Patti Page,…

Be honest, you don’t practise rhythm guitar enough, do you? We’re all the same. Too busy with our graceful legato, gravity-defying bends and rippling neo-soul filigrees! However, it’s rhythm and timing that hold music together, and there’s nothing quite like the crushing disappointment of listening to your amazing recording, only to find that it’s all a bit sloppy and sluggish. A good rhythmic sense benefits every aspect of your playing, not just the ‘rhythm’ parts. When you listen to a master rhythm player like Cory Wong, you hear an immediacy and precision but also a flexibility in dynamics and phrasing. There’s only one way to achieve this, and that’s through practice. In this lesson, Cory shows us how he divides rhythm tasks between his hands. His picking hand always maintains…

Today we revisit the work of that extraordinary composer, organist and violinist Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Bach’s talents were recognised by a modest number of musicians and some patrons during his long and hugely productive life, but in 260 years since has firmly established himself (along with Mozart and Beethoven) as one of the three greatest composers of Western Art Music. While Mozart is representative of the heights of the Classical era, and Beethoven the transition from the Classical to Romantic era, Bach was a master of the Baroque musical era. Baroque music is associated with a significant development in harmony and counterpoint (the sustaining of multiple simultaneous but distinct melodies), and these fundamental concepts of harmonic dissonance and consonance resonate to this day. Bach’s mastery of harmony and counterpoint…

EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 JOHN FRUSCIANTE CD TRACK 44 We start with an example that is almost a bass line on guitar. Use a fat pick with heavy down strokes and practice with a metronome or drum beat. A clean single coil sound would be ideal, perhaps with some light compression. EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 GREEN DAY CD TRACK 45 This classic Major sounding Billie Joe Armstrong type idea is a mixture of power, or 5 chords, and muting. Bar 4 includes a series of descending octaves, that you should approach by voicing the notes with fingertips, and damping the other strings by laying your fingers lightly across the fretboard. INTERMEDIATE LICKS EXAMPLE 3 DAVEY JOHNSTONE CD TRACK 46 Although he started out as a folk musician, Davey is musical…

GEORGE ROSE / GETTY IMAGES The Half-Whole Diminished scale is a fairly recent addition to Western music. Though it appeared in earlier works, it didn’t become a common device until the late 18th century. It is an eight-note scale with a symmetrical, almost ‘mathematical’ construction that in many ways sets it apart from tonal music and functional harmony. Luckily, we don’t care too much about that in jazz – we are just concerned with whether it sounds good or not. In many different musical contexts the Diminished scale is an effective means of adding colour and tension. The Half-Whole Diminished scale started to appear in jazz in the bebop era, but didn’t become common until the hardbop phase. Quartal harmony also became popular around this time – based on stacked…

Merle Travis was born in Rosewood Kentucky in 1917, and found fame in the 40s and 50s hosting his country music TV show, Merle Travis And Company, and with an appearance in the 1953 movie From Here To Eternity, alongside Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra. Although being an all-round and highly influential blues, jazz and western swing musician, he is best remembered for his trademark fingerpicking style, known today as Travis picking. This can be thought of as boogie-woogie for the guitar. The thumb plays an ostinato bassline, which can be thought of as the pianist’s left hand, against which an independent melody (the pianist’s right hand) is played with the fingers. This style inspired the likes of Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and James Taylor, who extensively incorporated Travis picking…

I WAS SADDENED to hear about the passing of one of my guitar heroes, the great Peter Green. But the outpouring of grief from so many players on social media took even me by surprise. It seems he was very special to many guitarists of a certain age. Gary Moore always said Peter was, in his view, the most authentic of the 60s players. I remember asking Carlos Santana if he ever saw the three Kings play live. He told me yes, and in his ever brilliant way of putting things, said something like, “When those guys played they drew from a well that I could never visit.” But Green came close, as BB’s often quoted statement attests - “He was the one that really made me sweat!” This weekend…

Have you ever picked up a ukulele? I know this is a guitar magazine but ukes are super cool and dead easy to play if you have some experience with guitar. I’ve spent much of the last month exploring ukulele for a new book of children’s songs that I just published and thought I’d share some of the basics and get you going. There are four common sizes of ukulele and the intervallic jumps between the string notes on all of them is the same as the thinnest four strings on a guitar – so the chord shapes are the same but with notes on the thickest two strings removed. The string closest to your face is one octave higher so scales need adjusting but chords work great and there…

I HAVE OFTEN shown licks that feature one technique or musical concept. But it’s also a great idea to combine ideas into longer phrases – or musical ‘sentences’. This month we see an example of this. Notice how each bar has a different idea going on. Bar 1 is a simple‘set-up’F#m Pentatonic idea – the quarter-tone bend and vibrato added to give it a bit of life. This deliberately starts off in a low fretboard position to free up the rest of the neck to build the remaining phrases on. Bar 2 contains an ascending Minor Pentatonic lick with fretting-hand slides - be accurate with these as it’s easy to land on the wrong note. In bar 3 the focus shifts to Pentatonic intervals, a couple of slides and an…

Communicating with others, whether writing, making a presentation at work or even having a good conversation with a mate, is all about getting across what you want to say.When playing solos there are many parallels with the way that we communicate using language. We start with words (notes), bunch them together to make sentences or paragraphs (licks, phrases or whole verses), and this hopefully points towards a wider overall meaning and a point (or solo) well made. In trying to make any kind of point - be it conversational or musical - we usually like to see a strong beginning, the introduction of themes and elements that develop our point. Ideally this all leads towards a satisfactory conclusion that wins the listener over. Dynamics play a huge part too. ‘How’…

If there was ever a technique that’s both feared and revered, its sweep picking. Sweep picking gets some bad press, and to some it’s written off as nothing more than ‘show boating’, or for playing the soundtrack to Super Mario. But sweep picking has a lot to offer, with many benefits and applications. Guitarists from a wide variety of genres have made sweep picking part of their technical arsenal. These include Yngwie Malmsteen, Les Paul, Tal Farlow, Larry Carlton, Jan Akkerman, Barney Kessel, Richie Kotzen, John Petrucci, Chet Atkins, Jason Becker, Steve Vai and Frank Gambale to name but a few. So you can see that with such a diverse selection of guitarists from jazz, country, rock and metal using sweep picking, the technique is well worth exploring and mastering.…

Mindful practice How effective is your practice? Do you become frustrated and find that you can’t achieve the results you want? If so, perhaps you are forcing or expecting results too soon. Aim to cultivate a calm but alert level of awareness. Think very clearly about the notes you are playing, their fretboard positions and the fingerings. Be very clear and don’t leave this to chance. Don’t aim on‘performing’during practicing either, but instead stay clearly focused in the moment and work on one task at a time. Break down your piece into small sections and practise with full attention to detail and precise accuracy.…

Hailed as the ‘guitar world’s best kept secret’, Eric Gales has been praised as one of the best guitar players in the world by superstars Joe Bonamassa and Mick Jagger. With an approach all his own, Eric turns heads with his authoritative tone, rich command of harmony and fast Pentatonic scale runs. If you see him live, your jaw will be on the floor when you realise he’s doing all that while holding a standard right-handed guitar the ‘wrong’ way around. Eric tells the fascinating story of learning from his older brothers, one of whom was left-handed and played the guitar that way, and it seemed natural to Eric to also play left-handed, without changing the strings around. This all lends to his unique style. Gales taught himself, figuring out…

DES WILLIE / GETTY IMAGES Paul Weller’s career in music has spanned over 40 years. He formed his first band, The Jam in 1972 and they released their first single, In The City in 1977. Weller was initially the bassist and lead vocalist, but switched to guitar when the band went from a quartet to a trio before the start of their recording career. While The Jam’s lifespan was short, they still managed to release six hit albums between 1977 and 1982, when Weller disbanded the group. His next venture, The Style Council’s output was much more diverse, fusing as it did many musical genres from jazz through to soul and R&B. In 1992 Paul Weller released his first solo album, which was followed by a staggering 13 more releases,…

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Ah…the deluded joy of The Boudoir Guitarist. Locked away in Boogie Bedroomland, Mexican Stratomaster strapped for maximum pose-ability, headphones set to 11 and wardrobe mirror adjusted to capture every provocative move. Within this Walter Mitty-esque world, our hero rips out supercharged renditions of Stairway To Heaven, Smoke On The Water and Brush With The Blues of such blistering intensity that Page, Blackmore and Beck return their instruments to their cases simultaneously, never to bend a string again. Why, even a good quality tennis racket will suffice. The lad’s a flipping’ genius! Coke-addled, rehab-ready superstardom is merely a rip-off record deal away. Sadly, and inconveniently early in the tricky attempt to eat regularly as a professional guitarist, reality strips and comes off the bench about 10 minutes into your first recording…

Cory was first exposed to music by his father who would constantly play records around the house. Although not a musician himself, he was what his son described as being “a total music freak… a music head”. So Cory’s formative years were played out against a soundtrack provided by players like Hendrix, Joe Pass, Pat Metheny and Ralph Towner. “My dad had all this ECM catalogue and CTI jazz catalogue, the Blue Note catalogue and then he had all this classic rock catalogue,” he tells us, having travelled over to GT HQ on a rain-soaked day following his sold-out gig in Bristol. A great deal of the music he had heard courtesy of his dad was guitar-driven and the young Cory was “interested in the sound, interested in what it…

From alternate to sweep Although a devout alternate picker, legendary guitarist Steve Morse has in recent times switched to sweep picking to perform some of his arpeggios. Steve sadly suffers from arthritis, due to more than 50 years of intense alternate picking. Steve tends to hold his pick with his thumb and two fingers and arching his wrist, but due to severe pain has adapted his playing style. One of these changes includes using sweep picking with a different picking hand posture to execute arpeggio sequences. You can hear Steve ripping through sweep arpeggios on the Flying Colours tracks Cosmic Symphony and Open Up Your Eyes.…

TIM MOSENFELDER / GETTY IMAGES Peter Frampton has had an incredibly successful career as a solo artist, band member and session player. His career began when he was at school with David Bowie and the two would play songs together at lunch breaks. Then at 14 he formed a band that was managed and produced by Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. He went on to become something of a child sensation with The Herd, with whom he had a string of hits. After immersing himself in musical culture in his native England, and seeing the likes of Jimi Hendrix playing small clubs, Frampton moved to America in the late 1960s. In 1969 he formed Humble Pie with ex-Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott. He also became a successful session player, working…

IMAGNO / HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES Twelve-tone music (also known as dodecaphony or dodecaphonics) was a compositional device founded by Austrian classical composer Arnold Schoenberg in the early part of the 20th century. The intention was to break away from the traditional hierarchy of key-orientated harmony and was a way of giving equal importance to each note. This composition technique was used extensively by Schoenberg and his students (like Alban Berg and Anton Webern) and even into the 1950s and ‘60s by such famous composers as Pierre Boulez and Igor Stravinsky. From a rock guitar point of view, the atonal effects of the 12-tone method of composing is ideal for dark styles like black- and death-metal. The technique involves arranging the 12 notes of the chromatic scale in any…

MORE OF THE WORLD’S BEST LESSONS… FEATURE #2 VIDEO PETER GREEN A musical tribute Richard Barrett plays a gorgous blues solo that highlights the late, great guitarist’s phrasing, tone and style. 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 VIDEO TORA DAHLE AAGARD Blues video lesson The tasteful Norwegian guitarist shows us elements of her approach to playing blues style guitar. TECHNIQUE & THEORY GREAT STUFF TO LEARN Rock legato & sweep picking Chris Brooks brings us a fabulous new series on rock legato and Charlie Griffiths offers a cool sweeping primer. MORE GREAT LESSONS 30-Minute Lickbag Six new licks to challenge you…