Table of contents for January 2024 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. DECLAN ZAPALA Declan is one of the UK’s top classical guitarists and teachers. He is a Master graduateofRCM andhissolo arrangements are sublimely creative. 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 COOPER A tutor at BIMM Brighton, Martin’s Rock columns show an incredible breadth of technique and style. His 2006 album State Of The Union is out on iTunes. CHARLIE GRIFFITHS Charlie is a well studied guitarist who specialisesinhighendrockplaying and plays with top UK metal-fusion band Haken. His debut album is…

B Major as chord I. But this can also be viewed as chord IV of F# Major allowing the introduction of the C# chord, bringing a nice Mixolydian flavour to the melody. Plus, it was also treated as chord V of E Major, allowing modulations to E for the last verse. You can also notice other similarities between the keys with other chords being used for further harmonic colour. If you look at all three keys mentioned and list the seven diatonic chords, you can see how certain chords appear in different keys, but at a different scale position, which in turn implies different harmony: It’s that time of year again! To give you some fun during the holidays I have taken one of the best-loved Christmas hymns and reimagined…

The popularity of the Christmas carol Silent Night is nothing short of phenomenal. It has been translated intomore 300 languages, with over 700 recorded versions in the last 45 years alone. Bing Crosby’s version sold more than 30 million copies and it continues to be a cornerstone of yuletide celebrations all over the world. While many of the carols performed around Christmas can be traced back over a 1000 years, Silent Night dates back just a little over 200, composed initially as a poem in 1816 by Rev Joseph Mohr, and set to music two years later, on Christmas TECHNIQUE FOCUS Mixing rhythms, articulation and dynamics. When performing a melody it’s helpful to consider how you might keep things interesting and engaging for the listener by varying your delivery. It…

ABILITY RATING Easy/Moderate ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Info https://bit.ly/3sxJu18 Will improve your… Moving inner voices Key E Tempo 129bpm Playing in 3/4 time Balancing bass notes against melody The festive season is looming, a potential time of dread for any guitarist as the family gathers round and delivers the line every picker dreads: “Play something for us!” Luckily, GT is here to help and this year I’ve created an arrangement of the old staple The Holly And The Ivy. Usually I like to explore altered tunings for their unique colour and timbre. However, when the domestic requests for music start it’s generally better to avoid protracted re-tuning and jump straight into the playing. Standard tuning is full of possibilities for arranging, but many fingerpickers dive into altered tunings…

AUDIO https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk EXAMPLE 1 KEVIN PARKER (TAME IMPALA) This riff uses call and response-style phrasing by playing the root note of each be mindful not to catch the fifth string with your pick, as you skip between chord on the sixth string, followed by a more melodic, sliding figure on the strings. Use your bridge pickup, and a moderate level of gain. If you have a pitch fourth string.GUITAR Use down TECHNIQUES strokes to add MAGAZINE weight and 3 5 5energy to the sequence Jamie Hunt's and LICK shifter, BAGset it to include your original tone while adding the octave below. EXAMPLEB2 JOHN SQUIRE (STONE ROSES) This sequence D uses double-stops along the second and 7 third 9 string, to imply a A chord progression E in D Major. When…

Tap the links Finding your way around the magazine is easy. Tapping the feature titles on the cover or the contents page, takes you straight two the relevant articles. Any web and email links in the text are tappable too Animated tab & audio All the mag’s main lessons have the audio built in with a moving cursor that shows you exactly where you are in the music. Simply tap the‘play’button and you’re off -you can fast-forward or scroll back at will. Play the videos Certain articles have accompanying videos full of useful insight and additional information. Once again, tap the play buttons to enjoy video masterclasses on your iPad (recommended) or smartphone.…

My daughter is seven years old, and while I’m really hoping she’ll get serious about guitar, I also want to give her the chance to try out lots of different things and see what she really connects with. So I bought her an electric drum set for her birthday. She enjoyed hitting it and making a huge amount of noise but lost interest when I explained there were patterns to it and that she needed to actually ‘practise’. So after a few weeks of it gathering dust in her room, it found its way into my studio, where I’ve been eyeing it for a few months hoping to find time to try it myself. If you follow any of my socials or newsletters, you probably know that my life is…

1 Passionate Blues We start with a fun blues jam in A Minor, where the A Minor Pentatonic (A-C-D-E-G) and A Minor Blues scale(A-C-D-Eb-E-G) will be great places to begin. 2 F# AeolianVamp Here's an F# Aeolian(F#-G#-A-B-C#-D-E) groove. Remember, F# Aeolian is also F# Natural Minor scale, with the same seven notes as the relative Major scale-A Major. Find more jams like this on my album Groovin’ Through The Modes, Vol. 5. 3 Jazzy Groove Jam This jam works great with A Dorian mode (A-B-C-D-E-F#-G) and A Minor Pentatonic(A-C-D-E-G). There are two main sections, one based on an A Minor chord and one based on a D9 chord. Arpeggios are: Am (A-C-E ) and D9 (D-F#-A-C-E). 4 Sweet G Minor Jam We finish with a simple G Minor vamp.…

ABILITY RATING Moderate ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Info https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Will improve your… Knowledge of traditional Welsh music Key D major Tempo 108 bpm Pick harmonics Two and three-part harmony playing This month’s classical piece comes in the form of the Christmas carol Deck The Halls, also known by its alternative title ‘Tis The Season. The melody of the carol is from the traditional Welsh winter song Nos Galan (New Year’s Eve) which dates back to the Renaissance and was first published in 1794. It later became synonymous with Christmas when English lyrics were written to the melody by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant in 1862. The first of the three verses, which makes reference to Christmas, goes as thus: Deck the hall with boughs of holly, Fa, la,…

ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Easy/Moderate Info Will improve your Key: C Major Melodic phrasing Tempo: 115bpm Arrangement techniques https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Melodic articulation There’s a festive departure this month for the Rock column as we temporarily move away from looking at the style and sound of classic artists of the past 50 years. We’re going back to the 13th or 14th century in England for when the lyrics were written, and potentially earlier than that for the music as we look at The First Noël. The song is sung from the perspective of the night of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem and would probably have been inspired by the ‘Miracle Plays’ of the era. As with any song of this type, The First Noël is designed to be…

This month David Gerrish gets down to the nitty-gritty of the lyrical and highly influential style of Mississippi’s own, King Of The Blues. ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Easy/Moderate Info Key: Various Tempo: Various https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Will improve your Blues phrasing Major/Minor mixing String bends and vibrato There are not many guitarists who can rival the influence of BB King, the man often described as the King Of The Blues. His pioneering guitar style was the catalyst for a huge number of Chicago blues and eventually rock guitarists, and we dare say that anybody who has picked up the electric guitar owes something to him. His lyrical style, with its immaculate phrasing, shimmering vibrato, and deeply inherent musicality, is perhaps the pinnacle of expression for which many…

Josh Smith gives a crash course in his approach to hybrid picking technique and demonstrates its uses in jump blues soloing. ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Moderate/Advanced Info Key: E Tempo: 90bpm https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Will improve your Country phrasing Hybrid picking Rhythmic variety Jump blues is a style that dates back to the 1940s and was the precursor to R&B and rock and roll. It originated in the big bands of artists like Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton, and is always played up-tempo. When musicians took the style outside of the big band context to pioneer its use in smaller combos, it helped lay the foundations of R&B, and was the bridge between the old and the new. Jump blues was an important part of the swing…

READY TO SUBSCRIBE? www.magazines direct.com PAY NO HEED to the month stated on the cover. Due to what’s in this issue, and when you actually get to buy it, we’re absolutely on point when we say ‘a very Merry Christmas to you!’ We’ve had a busy year at GT, creating tutorials on playing like your favourite guitarists, tips to improve your technique and ways to use theory in vibrant, realworld scenarios. But that takes somewhat of a backseat this issue as, for the first time ever in GT’s long history (well, 1994 is a while ago) we’ve gone all-out to give you a full-on Christmas belter of an issue! We’ve taken six Christmas classics and put a unique spin on them, so you get to play the famous melodies, tackle…

OPEN CHORDS are a real staple of acoustic guitar and have been put to great use on the electric by players such as Alex Lifeson, Pete Townshend and Jeff Buckley, among others. In this context, the word‘contrasting’refers to the combination of high fretted notes and open strings. Though there are hundreds of possibilities, here are just some to give you food for thought. The wide intervallic skips between the open and fretted strings are often a feature of chord playing when using open/altered tunings, but as these examples demonstrate, there is potential to explore before you reach for the tuners… BY VIRTUE OF the presence of the G# and B, we have here an A Major 9. The low E could also be used in this instance, but it does…

GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that appeals to you? MT: I love a good guitar instrumental because the guitar is taking the place of the vocal. I love being able to express myself by trying to phrase like a singer and play soulful nuances like a great singer would do. GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can't? MT: A good melodic instrumental can transport the listener to a place that a vocal can’t always do. Both are great but having lyrics locks the listener in, while having just a guitar melody leaves the imagination open. GT: Any tendencies with instrumentals that you like to embrace or avoid (rhythms, harmony, playing approach, tones)? MT: Finding the right tone or sound for your ‘voice’…

How did this piece come about, with you appearing on Steve Vai’s Merry Axemas - A Guitar Christmas? I had previously approached him and many other guitarists to do a classical track each for a project, and he has always been easy to talk music with, as well as an absolutely incredible talent. What do you like about this Christmas classic? I like most of all, the fact that Steve let me do my own arrangement totally. People that know me are aware that I always write parts which don’t exist, for existing classics. It was nice to try my hand at creating a selfstanding arrangement along the lines of a ‘legit’ composition, then mix that with rock guitar influences at the end. Your arrangement is precisely crafted with various…

ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Moderate/Advanced Info Will improve your Key: F Major Legato technique Tempo: 74 Changes playing https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Melodic Development This month we’re embracing the Yuletide season with an arrangement of the great Christmas Carol ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’. The words are by the Poet Christina Russell and the original music was composed by Gustav Holst -the composer of the Planets Suite. Holst has been a massive influence on classical and film composers. I decided to reharmonise the melody for a more personal and contemporary jazz blues sound. Whilst my version has some advanced harmonic moves, I left enough room for the blues based phrasing in the improvisation. Rather than use a rhythm section, I chose to write an accompaniment which featured a rich…

ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Moderate/Advanced Info Will improve your Key: Various Knowledge of jazz chords Tempo: Freetime Use of voice leading https://bit.ly/3sxJu18 Blues turnarounds Tim Lerch is a highly experienced guitar tutor and his YouTube channel boasts over 50,000 subscribers. This month we are delighted to have Tim onboard to share with us 14 of his favourite jazz-blues turnarounds. For context and continuity, all of our turnarounds are in the key of Bb Major and will work over a blues in Bb. Let’s take a look a the basic 12-bar blues progression in our key of Bb Major. //Bb7 / Eb7 / Bb7/Bb7/ /Eb7 / Eb7 / Bb7 / Bb7/ /F7 /Eb7 /Bb7 /F7 // The phrase ‘turnaround’ is used to describe the last two…

Take your playing to a higher plane of existence, says Charlie Griffiths, with the Finnish creator of animated shredder, the amazing Mr Fastfinger. ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Advanced Info Key: Various Tempo: Various https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Will improve your Sweep picking Hybrid picking Tapping Mika Tyyskä is a guitarist born in Finland in 1976, but is perhaps better known as the man behind the animator guitar instructor and spiritual guru Mr Fastfinger. The content and animations for this cult character were all created by Mika, accompanied by the album The Way Of The Exploding Guitar. Mr Fastfinger and Mika have continued to share their wisdom ever since, releasing the latest album Tremors early 2023. Mika’s style is rooted in rock, but he has a unique creativity in…

AUDIO https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk In the latest instalment of his series Simon Barnard guides through some approaches to playing slide guitar across a range of genres. ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Easy/Moderate Info Key: G Maj/Minor Tempo: Various https://bit.ly/3LMzFZk Will improve your Slide technique Intonation Vibrato The origins of slide guitar are often traced back to Hawaii, where in the late 19th century, native Joseph Kekuku invented the Hawaiian steel guitar. Kekuku also popularised the use of a steel bar to slide across the strings, often in open tunings. This technique of using a hard metal object against a string first originated in Africa, with the single-stringed diddley bow. However, it was our man Kekuku who established slide guitar as we know it today. Fast forward to the…