Indice dei contenuti per March 2018 in Guitar Techniques

RICHARD BARRETT One of the best players around, Richard is adept at most styles but truly excels in the bluesier side of rock. He currently plays with ex-Spandau Tony Hadley. 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. CHARLIE GRIFFITHS Guitar Institute tutor Charlie first came to fame in Total Guitar’s Challenge Charlie series. He’s also one of the UK’s top rock, metal and fusion guitarists. PHIL HILBORNE The UK’s original magazine guitar tutor, Phil’s something of a legend. A great player, he’s currently touring Europe with the Champions Of Rock show. PAT HEATH BIMM Brighton lecturer, ESP product demonstrator and all-round busy musician, Pat brings you six cool licks…

NICK DELANEY How is it that the great blues masters can say so much with so few notes? How can BB King tear out my heart with just four or five? I can play those same notes, maybe even get creative with them and use them in the right place and the right way - but have nowhere near the same impact. Most people will likely agree that it’s the feel, but what is that that makes a great and effective ‘feel’? I think it’s great food for thought. NOTES I’m pretty confident that most intermediate players can ‘play the notes’ in the BB King Blues box or Minor Pentatonic scale. It’s not hard. Most people realise (some sooner than others!) that the scales are just alphabets and they need…

RODOLFO SASSANO / ALAMY ➊ Bossa Nova Blues (Bm) Let’s start with an easy-to-approach feel-good bossa nova style blues jam in B minor. Use B Minor Pentatonic (B-D-E-F#-A), B Blues scale (B-D-E-F-F#-A) and B Minor scale (B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A) as starting points and feel your way through it! ➋ G Harmonic Minor Jam (Gm) This bluesy 12/8 jam was made for you to really dig into your G Harmonic Minor scale (G-A-B b -C-D-E b -F#). It moves between the chords Gm (Im) and D (V). You can also mix in some tasty G Minor Pentatonic (G-B b -C-D-F), but beware of clashing with that crucial F# note on every D chord. ➌7/8 Shuffle Groove (Am) Here’s a fun odd-meter groove jam made for improvising on A Dorian mode (A-B-C-D-E-F#-G). The chord…

HERE’S A FOUR-BAR question and answer swing-blues phrase, built mainly from an A7 arpeggio: A-C#-E-G. There are also a couple of extra notes: the b 3rd (C) and 9th (B). Picking-wise the first two bars have all the‘up’beats played with up-strokes and all the‘down’ beats played as down-strokes. This makes it‘feel’better to play as the pick strokes correspond to the groove. The second two bars use sweep picking on a descending A7 arpeggio with the first note of each four-note group falling on a down-stroke. This sequence is great for re-use in rock, metal, country, jazz and fusion. The final bar’s F# and C are the‘targeted’3rd and b 7 of the next chord in the progression, the IV chord of D9.…

“DJANGO STRETCHED THE GUITAR IMAGINATION TO ITS LIMIT. HE WAS THE FASTEST, THE MOST CREATIVE, HE HAD GREAT RHYTHM, AND HE WAS A GOOD COMPOSER TOO George Benson” ABILITY RATING Moderate/Advanced Info Key Various Tempo Various CD TRACKS 14-21 Will improve your… Picking technique Gypsy jazz vocabulary Projectionanddynamics Django Reinhardt is the complete guitarist’s guitarist. George Benson, Brian May, Jeff Beck, Hank Marvin, Peter Frampton, Les Paul, Yngwie Malmsteen, Allan Holdsworth, Chet Atkins and millions of guitarists worldwide, famous and not so famous, have been captivated by the self-taught gypsy genius who knew nothing of music theory and could barely read and write. What’s more, he only had two functioning fingers on his fretting hand! I was around 14 years of age and was being told off by my dad…

BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES “JOSH WHITE’S 1947 RENDITION PREDATES THE ANIMALS BY 17 YEARS; IT ALSO STICKS TO THE ORIGINAL NARRATIVE THAT TALKS ABOUT A NEW ORLEANS BROTHEL!” ABILITY RATING Info Key: Am Tempo: 100bpm CD: TRACK 31 Will improve your… Travis picking Chord stretching Style arrangements Think of House Of The Rising Sun and it’s impossible not to imagine The Animals’ version of the tune. With Hilton Valentine’s arpeggiated Gretsch intro chords (that everybody had to learn as their six-string rite of passage in the 60s), Eric Burdon’s fantastic vocal delivery, Chas Chandler’s thumping Epiphone Rivoli bass and of course that unforgettable organ solo from Alan Price. However it is actually a traditional American folk song (some even believe it to be a traditional English folk song that was…

Brought to you by… EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 SOUNDGARDEN CD TRACK 34 Approach this part with slow and controlled downstrokes with plenty of mood to capture the piece’s melancholic nature. Perhaps add a little vibrato with the fingers on the tail of each chord and make sure you don’t rush between the notes. EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 OASIS CD TRACK 35 For this Gallagher-esque anthemic strummer, a fat, overdriven humbucking tone and lots of attitude are the order of the day. INTERMEDIATE LICKS EXAMPLE 3 DEF LEPPARD CD TRACK 36 This part has been doubled with clean and overdriven sounds to capture Mutt Lange’s production techniques from the 30-year-old Hysteria album. Mute all notes, letting the open fourth string ring as a drone. On the clean (transcribed) part, let all…

HERITAGE IMAGES / GETTY IMAGES ABILITY RATING Moderate/Advanced Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 47-60 Will improve your… Chord voicings in drop-D tuning Motific development Phrasing and line construction As has happened all too often recently, we find ourselves mourning another guitar legend. However, Mundell Lowe had at least led a long and fruitful career, both as a solo artist and alongside some of music’s most iconic artists. He was also gigging right up until his death at the ripe old age of 95. Born in Laurel, Mississippi in 1922, Lowe’s introduction to playing guitar was via country music. But, inspired by the revolutionary guitar sounds of Charlie Christian and the virtuoso playing of pianist Art Tatum, the young Mundell decided to take a change of direction towards jazz.…

“ROLLING STONE PUT DUANE ALLMAN AT #2 ON THEIR LIST OF THE TOP 100 GUITARISTS EVER, SECOND ONLY TO JIMI HENDRIX” ABILITY RATING Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 70-77 Will improve your Blues slide technique Playing with fingers Touch and taste Despite his tragically early death at the age of 24 in a motorbike accident in 1971, Duane Allman was a hugely-influential guitarist. In fact he virtually revolutionised slide guitar playing. Along with brother Gregg, the Nashville-born guitarist formed The Allman Brothers Band in 1969, having already had a successful career as a studio musician. He recorded with artists such as Aretha Franklin and featured heavily on Eric Clapton’s Derek And The Dominoes album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs (1970), after Clapton heard his famous solo at…

 GT: Do you have a type of pick that you can’t live without? “ I’VE HAD TO LEARN TO WRITE PARTSFOR THE SONG, AND NOT JUST CRAM THINGS IN FOR THE SAKE OF IT” TL: I use the Jim Dunlop Jazz IIIs, the red Max Grip ones. I kept dropping picks all the time because of sweating on stage but these are great. They’re also really easy to tuck away when I need to use my fingers to play. I find heavier picks better for control and dynamics. GT: If you had to give up all your effects pedals but three, what would they be? TL: I’ve actually scaled down my pedals massively recently. I was going out with a huge pedalboard and I kind of took a step back…

FOR THE FIRST issue on sale in the new year we bring you a GT Acoustic Special. The very best of the best from the GT vaults it covers a host of styles at a variety of levels. There’s sure to be something for every acoustic guitar fan. We begin with two superb British electric blues and rock guitarists, who also love to go unplugged. But while Eric Clapton likes to doff his cap to his Mississippi blues heroes, Jimmy Page is more about open-tuned folk and world music styles. This intermediate level feature from Richard Barrett is chock full of fantastic licks and tricks from the two ex-Yardbirds. From the sublimely intermediate to the ridiculously advanced, next we meet gypsy jazz’s founding father, the unbelievable Django Reinhardt. Django did…

“AT THIS POINT I ENTERED THE OUTSKIRTS OF UNEASE, A SMALL SUBURB NEAR QUEASY FEELING” It has occurred to me that in recent articles I may have given the misleading impression that the self-employed professional guitarist’s life is composed mainly of a series of highly remunerated cameos in which little work but much indolent loafing is done. Before initiating the main thread of this month’s bulletin, I must dispel this (possibly self-perpetuating) illusion with the Trump-esque retort “Fake News!” Having just returned from a 10-day arena tour featuring the cinematic image of a deceased vocalist who intones the catch phrase “Uh-Huh” with considerably more insight than his current president’s Twitter feed, I can vouch for the brutal nature of that itinerary. A kaleidoscopic daily sequence of dawn departures, trains, planes,…

PAUL REED SMITH RELEASES THE PRS Starla, a singlecut mahogany body with mahogany neck and rosewood board with dot inlays. Unique in the history of PRS it’s fitted with a Bigsby vibrato, Grover tune-o-matic bridge, vintage styled tulip tuners and a pair of chromed custom-voiced pickups. With volume, tone, built-in coil-tapping and a three-way selector switch it’s great for both single-coil and overdriven sounds with a retro look and feel. SPACE EXPLORATION IS IN TOP GEAR AS THE Automated Transfer Vehicle is launched from Guiana Space Centre taking cargo to the International Space Station; NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft lands on the northern polar region of Mars; the Messenger space probe makes its closest flyby of Mercury; the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is launched; Iran sends a rocket into space from its…

“ERIC WAS ALWAYS A BLUES PURIST, WHILE JIMMY WAS DRAWN TO THE FOLKY STYLES OF JOHN RENBOURN AND BERT JANSCH” ABILITY RATING Moderate Info Key Various Tempo Various CD TRACKS 4-13 Will improve your… General fingerpicking Knowledge of open tunings Timing and chord changes ALTHOUGH BOTH PRIMARILY known for their groundbreaking electric work – Clapton in the Blues Breakers, Cream, Derek And The Dominos and as a solo artist, and Page primarily in Led Zeppelin and various collaborative forays – these two British icons have also done much for the furtherance of the acoustic guitar as a serious instrument of rock and blues. While their styles are very different, with Page more influenced by the folk scene and world music, and Clapton maintaining his blues roots, both guitarists display great…

“INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED ARTISTS SUCH AS BILL BROONZY WOULD INSPIRE AND PAVE THE WAY FOR NEW GENERATIONS OF ACOUSTIC BLUES GUITARISTS” ABILITY RATING Info Key Various Tempo Various CD TRACKS 22-29 Will improve your… Slide playing in open tunings Fingerstyle co-ordination Blues licks repertoire Few playing styles provide us with the same level of satisfaction as acoustic blues. In spite of the sorrowful tales the lyrics often tell, there is something deeply appealing about the image of sitting on the front porch with nothing but three chords and a beat-up Gibson, Harmony or Kay. With that in mind, for this feature, we’ll be looking in depth at the tricks and idiosyncrasies of the acoustic blues greats from the likes of Robert Johnson and Blind Blake, right up to date with modern…

ABILITY RATING Info Key Am Tempo 70bpm CD TRACKS 32-33 Moderate/Advanced Will improve your… Classical technique Romantic repertoire Arpeggio playing This classical piece is one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s most well-known piano solos. In fact it’s one of the most familiar of all classical pieces, and is recognised by almost everyone whether they know what it’s called or not: the moody and evocative Moonlight Sonata. The piece was originally called Quasi Una Fantasia, meaning ‘almost a fantasy’ and the title Moonlight Sonata only came after Beethoven’s death, when music critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab compared the effect of tune to that of moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. The usual format for a Sonata is three movements, the tempos of which are normally fast, slow, fast. But this piece breaks that…

CHRISTIE GOODWIN Brought to you by… ABILITY RATING Moderate to advanced Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 40-43 Will improve your String bending Melodic soloing Pentatonic vocabulary Blues-rock guitarist extraordinaire Joe Bonamassa was born in New York in 1977, and he began by picking the strings of a short-scale guitar at the age of four. His father, a guitar player and dealer, showed him a thing or two but more importantly shared his great record collection with the youngster. One record in particular grabbed Joe’s ear: John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers Featuring Eric Clapton. This is still evident in his playing and choice of ‘main’ guitar today: the 1959 Gibson Les Paul. Danny Gatton played a big role in Joe’s musical upbringing as a tutor, mentor and friend. BB King was…

DAVID LYTTELTON How can adding a minor 3rd to the Mixolydian scale expand our Pentatonic possibilities? Once again Shaun Baxter gets us right on track. “EACH SCALE PROVIDES A DIFFERENT MENTAL AND AURAL PERSPECTIVE, LEADING YOU TO PLAY DIFFERENT IDEAS” ABILITY RATING Moderate to advanced Info Key: A (A7) Tempo: 60bpm CD: TRACKS 61-63 Will improve your… Alternative Pentatonics knowledge Visualisation of unusual Pentatonics Unorthodox Pentatonic repertoire Recently, we have been exploring various different ways of using Mixolydian (1-2-3-4-5-6- b 7) over a Dominant chord (1-3-5- b 7). So far, we have extracted different ‘devices’ and flavours from the scale (triads, arpeggios, Pentatonic scales etc). Each provides a different mental and aural perspective, leading you to play different ideas each time. In terms of Pentatonics (five-note scales), we have thus…

ABILITY RATING Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 78-87 Will improve your… Fretting hand timing Finger placement accuracy Effective string muting Fretting-hand hammer-ons are an essential facet of legato technique. It means dropping your finger on to the string to cause it to vibrate and therefore create a note. This is quite straightforward when staying on one string, but crossing strings is where the real skill of the technique lies. Traditional hammer-on and pull-off style legato typically means that we pick the first note of each string transition. This enables you to eschew the use of the pick and use only your fretting fingers to initiate the string change, sometimes called ’hammering-on from nowhere’, or ‘fretting-hand tapping’. Players like Eddie Van Halen, Pat Metheny, Richie Kotzen, Greg Howe and…

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 to 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. PLUS! Get a FREE iPad/iPhone sample of GT. For full details and how to…

LARRY DIMARZIO “LISTENING TO YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIANS CAN LEAD TO THE ‘I’LL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH’ DEPRESSION” GT: What is it about instrumentals that appeals to you? MD: I’ve never been hugely into lyrics. And given that I am a lousy vocalist myself, I always gravitated towards playing instrumentals. But I don’t value instrumentals more highly than vocals; it’s still just lead over harmony. GT: What can an instrumental provide that a vocal song can’t? MD: The most obvious thing would be subjectivity. Instrumentals expand the capacity for self discovery on an emotional level. Essentially vocals tell you what to feel, melodies amplify your feelings. GT: Anything you embrace or avoid? MD: I try to avoid losing the melody in a flurry of technique or simply misplacing it in the…

GT CHANGED MY LIFE (SORT OF) Just wanted to say thanks for (kind of) changing my life. Back in ’95 I was heavily into SRV but stuck in the Minor Pentatonic. However I found a new magazine in the small Swedish town I was living at that time. In it was an article about Steve Vai’s style by Dave Kilminster. It floored me. I had never heard about the Lydian scale and it was a real eye-opener. I studied every article in that issue and started to practise several hours a day. I soon attended a one-year guitar course in Sweden and started to get a little more knowledge. After that I moved to London and enrolled at Musicians Institute in Wapping. What a great year. Wonderful tutors, great musicians…

CLAPTON EXAMPLE 1: ARPEGGIATED CHORDS CD TRACK 4 These melodic chords will have a familiar ring to most Clapton fans. Mixing chord shapes with melodic details and linking lines gives a very self-contained part; this is further enhanced by the piano style chording in bars 3 and 4. CLAPTON EXAMPLE 2: CLAWHAMMER PICKING CD TRACK 5 This rhythmic clawhammer style is fairly simple to execute but gives an effective and complex sounding result. Basically, the thumb plays the root notes in a crotchet/quarter note ‘pulse’ with the fingers adding top notes in a repetitive pattern that remains almost identical throughout. Start slowly and all will become clear quite quickly. It works brilliantly in open tunings such as drop D, too. CLAPTON EXAMPLE 3: D TUNING SLIDE CD TRACK 6 Using…

“YOUR FRETTING HAND WILL NEED TO BE UP TO SPEED ON ITS HAMMER-ON AND PULL-OFF TECHNIQUES TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING FLOWS” ABILITY RATING Info Key: E Tempo: 140bpm CD: TRACK 30 Will improve your… Picking-hand rhythm Accompanying skills Confidence in open tunings Troubled folk pioneer Nick Drake was a great English singer-songwriter and his hauntingly beautiful music stands out for both its lyrical and melodic quality. Drake’s guitar work is full of unique ideas with a melodic motion that pulls you in with every twist and turn. Altered tunings formed a huge part of his style; from simple tunings such as open D (D-A-D-F#-A-D) and double dropped D (D-A-D-G-B-D) through to those where he would use unisons on the bass strings (B-B-D-G-B-E and A-A-D-E-B-E). A repertoire based around such disparate…

MARC SHARRATT / REX / SHUTTERSTOCK Brought to you by… ABILITY RATING Moderate Info Key: Em Tempo: 116bpm CD: TRACKS 44-46 Will improve your… String bending and legato Use of chord inversions Dynamics and attitude Jimi Hendrix influenced everyone from Joe Satriani and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to Prince and The Beastie Boys. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called him ‘the most influential instrumentalist of all time’, while Guitar World magazine named his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock, ‘the greatest performance ever’. Initially inspired by rock and roll and blues Jimi took these forms to a whole new level, redefining guitar tone and even the way the instrument was played. Along with his bandmates and engineer Eddie Kramer, Hendrix recorded some of the most groundbreaking music…

STARTRAKS PHOTO / REX / SHUTTERSTOCK “ PLAYING THROUGH THE EXAMPLES MAY PROVE CHALLENGING, SO BREAK THEM DOWN FOUR NOTES AT A TIME” ABILITY RATING Info Key: A Dorian Tempo: 120bpm CD: TRACKS 64-69 Will improve your: Alternate picking Muting, barring and rolling Interval recognition Dorian is the second mode of the Major scale, so in the key of G Major that would be A Dorian: A-B-C-D-E-F#-G (R-2- b 3-4-5-6- b 7). A popular choice when improvising over m7 chords, Dorian mode is characterised by the major 6th degree (F#) which differentiates it from Aeolian and Phrygian, the other minor modes, both of which contain the darker minor 6th (F). Based around last month’s formula, we’ll arrange the Dorian mode as two ‘master exercises’ in positions 1 and 4, with…

Album of the Month TOMMY EMMANUEL ACCOMPLICE ONE Mascot Label It’s a contentious thing to say but Tommy Emmanuel could be the best steel-string acoustic guitarist in the world. Why? Well, his sense of timing and stunning technique beggar belief. With this new album, he duets up with a wonderful cast of musicians, spanning Mark Knopfler and Jerry Douglas to Ricky Skaggs and Bryan Sutton. With a superbly crisp production the 16 tracks are a real joy. Tommy is a rounded musician in the fullest sense - he can blaze up front, comp with inventive and solid ideas and has a wealth of taste and tricks for six-string anoraks like us. Want some shred? Check out C-Jam Blues with David Grisman (mandolin) and Bryan Sutton (acoustic). Smoking! Want tasty emotion?…