Indice dei contenuti per November 2021 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. 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 Guitar Institute tutor Charlie first came to fame in Total Guitar’s Challenge Charlie series. He’s also guitarist with top UK metal-fusion band Haken. JAMIE HUNT Jamie is Principal Lecturer at BIMM Bristol. He also leads performance workshops, plays in metal band One Machine…

GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that particularly appeals to you? BG: I love hearing catchy melodies during guitar instrumentals. If a guitar can bring out the sound of emotion with volume and tone changes, the guitar can speak through the player’s hands. No two players are alike. GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can't? BG: This gives the listener a chance to drift with a player’s notes and feel. Whereas vocal lyrics tell their own story, guitar melodies are open to interpretation. A bluesy slow tasty solo has more impact than fast riffage and tells its own story, and usually you walk away humming that melody. GT: Any tendencies with instrumentals that you aim to embrace or avoid? BG: Overplaying and adding…

GT: Do you have a type of pick that you cannot live without - make, gauge, etc? JST: Dunlop Jazz III plectrums. GT: If you had to give up all your effects pedals but three, what would they be? JST: Tubescreamer TS9. I inherited this pedal from my older brother when I was 14. I have tried multiple different overdrive pedals, but I keep coming back to this one. It gives a nice clean overdriven boost but is not too distorted and gives me the right amount of high end. Aqua Puss delay. I tend to leave this pedal running through most of the show for a little slap-back echo (a trick I learned off a few country players) and then I have an additional delay that gives me a…

1) What aspects of guitar technique did you find the most interesting, easy or difficult when you were starting out? I just enjoyed learning in general. Songs were very important early on for me. I was thrilled to be playing the magical music I was in love with. Learning the modes was something that made a big impact on me when I was 12-13 years old. I was also lucky to have TJ Helmerich as my second teacher and learn eight-finger tapping from him when I was only 13-14 years old. That’s something that really paid off for me years down the road in that it helped me to get the Night Ranger gig. 2) You went to GIT in LA; what did you most enjoy about your time there?…

ON VIDEO In this issue we return to a work by the ‘Beethoven of the guitar’, the Spanish composer and (perhaps the first) virtuoso of the instrument, Fernando Sor (1778-1839). More than a supreme guitarist, Sor was a successful performer, respected teacher and prodigious composer with an output that included two operas, nine ballets, and three symphonies. Sor’s dedication to performing, composition and teaching, forged an enduring influence. His guitar pieces and studies have inspired generations of classical guitarists from student to master, and are as used today as in his lifetime. His studies fuse clear guitar instruction, a keen awareness of the benefits of the instrument, as well as an elegant and sophisticated compositional style. Sor’s musical skills were also accompanied by charm and occasionally a caustic wit –…

Brought to you by… EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 STEVE JONES CD TRACK 31 This Sex Pistols inspired riff is built around moving powerchords and includes hammer-ons and slides for movement and interest. Use downstrokes throughout and dig in with the pick. Steve gets a brash overdriven tone by using a humbucker in the bridge position and dialling in a moderate amount of gain from the amp. EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 DAVE KEUNING CD TRACK 32 In this exercise we outline the progression by playing chord tones along the second and third strings. Take note of the picking sequence as this will help you to establish the repeated rhythmic figure. To get a beefy tone, Dave uses a humbucker in the bridge position, sets a bluesy level of gain from the amp and adds reverb.…

Missed one of our recent fabulous issues? Get one now while stocks last. NEVER MISS ANOTHER ISSUE Turn to page 40 to subscribe! OCTOBER GT326 ALBERT KING Through the playing of stars who idolised him, learn how Albert King influenced the greatest blues and rock guitarists. Reb Beach rock video lesson. Kirk Fletcher’s jazzy rhythm chords. Plus: Napoleon Coste etude, Nirvana, Robben Ford. SEPTEMBER GT325 RIP IT UP! Take your solos to the edge using fast repetitive licks, just as Clapton, Gary Moore, Angus, Knopfler and others have done. Watch Marty Friedman play and explain a brilliant rock solo on the stunning Majestic. And so much more! AUGUST GT324 UNPLUGGED LEGENDS Learn 10 solos in the style of MTV’s greatest performances. Play five licks like instrumental guitar god Steve Vai;…

Brought to you by… TOM COPI / GETTY IMAGES Oscar was a classically trained pianist before he discovered jazz and one idea he held onto throughout his playing career was ostinato technique. Ostinato is a compositional device that originated in the Baroque period of classical music. It describes a phrase or motif in a piece of music that persistently repeats (the literal English translation of the Italian word is ‘obstinate’). An ostinato can be based around a repeating rhythm, repeating notes, or even repeating an entire melodic phrase. In its strictest sense, an ostinato phrase is identical each time, but it has come to encompass variations and the development of motifs. This idea has found its way into modern jazz and also pop music (the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony is…

FEATURE #2 VIDEO JON HERRINGTON AND ALLEN HINDS Street Allure Friend of GT Allen hooks up with Steely Dan’s live guitarist for a workout on this brand new tune. CLASSICAL TAB VIDEO JS BACH Allemande Declan Zapala takes over from Bridget Mermikides with this fine piece of lute music from ‘the master’. FEATURE #3 T-BONE MEETS CHARLIE The blues and jazz originals John Wheatcroft demonstrates the links between these two founding fathers of electric jazz and blues. NEW SERIES ULF WAKENIUS Oscar Peterson piano chords The Swedish jazz guitarist continues his series showing how Oscar style piano stylings can work on guitar. Learn the best blues chops of the great… JOHN MAYER! There’s no doubt that John Mayer is one of the finest blues guitarists aroud today. Mixing influences from…

EXCUSE ME IF I’ve bored you with this story before, but it so suits our cover feature that it’s worth a re-tell. It happened back in 1974 and involves a multi-instrumentalist friend from a relatively well-known prog band. His main job was rhythm guitar, and one day he invited me for a jam. As one of the half-decent local guitarists I jumped at the opportunity to show him what I could do. In truth, I knew almost nothing, but could play half a dozen twiddly Pentatonic licks. I wasn’t prepared for the come-uppance that was about to befall me. We set up in the garage (as you did), me with my cherry Gibson ES-335 and him with his blonde Fender Telecaster. The common ground was bluesy stuff, so he let…

I’ve dabbled in martial arts for much of my life. I really enjoy it for the physical and mental challenges it presents, and the confidence it bestows on you. There are many similarities between learning music and martial arts. I started both early on and I think they helped each other quite a lot. The reason I’m going to explore this as a topic today is that there are aspects in martial arts that are easy to explain and immediately adapt to a musical context. I often tell these stories in workshops and I see things click for people, so maybe it’ll help you too. Let’s imagine we were hanging out for beer one afternoon and I explain a great way to block a punch. I go into all the…

1 Super Slow Blues (B) We start with a very slow blues jam in the key of B. You’ll get off to a great start with the B Minor Pentatonic scale (B-D-E-F#-A) here, but you can also use B Major Pentatonic (B-C#-D#-F#-G#) to great era-grabbing effect on the I and V chords! 2 Jazz-Rock Jam (Em) This jam is in good old E Minor, but the time signature is a little more challenging. One way to 'find your feet' on this one is to count ‘1 and 2 and 3 and’, with each and in sync with the hi-hat hits! E Minor Pentatonic (E-G-A-B-D) is your reliable friend here. 3 Dusty Funk (E) Here we have a funky jam in E. I suggest you practise your rhythm guitar on this,…

Welcome to this exclusive lesson looking at the pop, funk, soul, and disco rhythm styles that have powered the charts for over half a century. The aim of this lesson is to provide you with some core techniques and concepts to help you build a good vocabulary in many rhythm guitar styles. Whether you’re ‘into’ funk and soul or not, all these ideas are easily transferrable to other genres. The rhythm guitar is often one of the key instruments in pop music and can be heard popping and chinking away in the background of some of the biggest-selling records of all time. We have used 21 groove masters as inspiration for our studies, and created an eight-bar mini piece for each. We have also split these 21 guitarists in four…

For several of us on GT, it was only a few weeks ago that we were in Bath teaching at IGF’s guitar summer school. One of the many great aspects of attending this year was the mixing in with each other and I had the pleasure of guesting in both Blues and Jazz classes while teaching my Top 40/Funk course. While there were variations in my approach and vocabulary - Blues was about blending Dominant 7th arpeggios and Blues scale for 12-bar soloing, and Jazz was about navigating soul-jazz songs - I played the same clean electric guitar tone for everything. It’s times like these (cue Foo Fighters…) that we realise musical divisions often stem more from genre styles than actual music making. A clean electric tone can be anything…

Brought to you by… EBET ROBERTS / GETTY IMAGES Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of the most important and influential guitar players in history. With his life and career tragically ending at just the age of 35, there are few blues players who have had his impact, which has left a lasting legacy until today. The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame called him, “the second coming of the blues”. David Bowie, impressed on hearing Stevie, invited him to play on his upcoming album Let’s Dance. The most significant turning point in Stevie’s career, this huge opportunity led to Stevie and his band Double Trouble signing to Epic records and releasing their debut, Texas Flood, in 1983. Stevie has often been compared to Jimi Hendrix, accused of being a copy…

Brought to you by… EPSILON / GETTY IMAGES Paul Gilbert’s reputation in the shred guitar pantheon is undeniable, with his legendary alternate picking chops and emotive rock and roll style and deep musicality. His Intense Rock instructional videos released in the 90s inspired a generation of pickers the world over, and he continues to be one of the planet’s most popular of all guitar educators. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at some of the techniques that make up Paul’s style, starting with a metal tinged Racer X type palm-muted riff using alternate picking throughout. This is a great way of synchronising the picking and fretting hands in order to achieve that razor sharp accuracy for which Paul is known. In Example 2, we move up to the treble…

ON VIDEO Tony McManus and Clive Carroll may be new names to you but they are titans of the Celtic guitar world who have pushed the technical boundaries of fingerstyle way beyond what many thought was possible. Arranging traditional Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes for solo fingerstyle guitar is not a new idea, but McManus and Carroll have such huge technical reserves that they are able to take even the most demanding uptempo tunes and perform them effortlessly on solo guitar. This month I’ve taken inspiration from these two and created an arrangement of a traditional Irish piece called The Ash Plant. While it is common to use altered tunings when playing Celtic guitar you can do a lot in standard tuning too. And if you are still getting used…

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.…

Picture this. Our venue is a listed church in London’s highly desirable Hampstead, converted to provide a stunning recording facility comprising a magnificent hall with space to fit a symphony orchestra, a second Studio 1 with room for small chamber orchestra or big band, and numerous rooms arranged over three floors, suitable for post production, video editing, dubbing and pizza consumption. Among the many original features are the old pews that comprise the seating in the refectory, essential for praying that you possess funds to purchase NW3’s most expensive breakfast. Parking for 20 cars. Freehold. POA. Your plucker enters this imposing arena; a brass plaque on the wall of the reception area commemorates the first recording sessions at the venue - The Son Of The Pink Panther, scored and conducted…

For most of this series, we’ve been adding notes or completely replacing chords. It’s all about 'tonal colours’ – even outside of the mysterious world of synaesthesia, it’s common to use visual analogies to describe musical sounds. But often you already have all the harmonic information you need, and there’s still plenty of tonal colour available in the standard chords. VISUAL ANALOGIES are very powerful in music. It’s best to start with some broad concepts… ‘light’, ‘dark’, ‘soft’ or ‘spiky’, rather than ‘polka dots'! For this instalment of Substitute, we’re going to take a simple chord progression and give it a dark sound without changing the basic chord types. Everyone’s interpretation is different, but our first impulse was to use these stark, low-pitched voicings. Once you’ve established the word ‘dark’,…

ON VIDEO This month GT is proud to present Joel Hoekstra who solos over Jason’s track, Slither. Joel’s playing is both melodic and stunning with numerous techniques used. You may know Joel from his work with Whitesnake and Night Ranger, and also from live duties with Cher, touring with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and guitar ‘chair one’ on Broadway’s run of Rock Of Ages. Slither has a fast paced 12/8 time feel. This means there are 12, eighth notes in each bar, divided into four groups of three. This can be counted 1 + a, 2 + a, 3 + a, 4 + a. Due to the fast tempo of 160 beats per minute the main rhythmic subdivision that Joel uses to create his lines is the eighth note. The track…

Grant Green arrived in New York in the late 1950s and for the next two decades, until his premature death in 1979, was one of the most prolific and influential jazz guitar players on the scene. Green’s playing style brought life, energy, soul and sophistication to countless gigs and recording sessions, both as a leader and side-man. He spent many years as the Blue Note Records house guitarist, with a style that was at all times authentic, original, innovative, creative, funky, soulful and constantly evolving. Both Wes Montgomery and George Benson were huge fans, with Benson stating for the record that Grant was his personal favourite guitar player. Contributing to over one hundred albums and at least 30 as a leader, Grant’s playing had both swing and groove. There was…

ON VIDEO To accompany Joel Hoekstra’s Slither video performance (page 28) here is the main riff I wrote for the piece. With a dark progression that shifts between F#m and its tritone C Major (made Lydian courtesy of the chord’s F# note), I used a fretting-hand hammer-on for the F# octaves during the F#m chord sections. While you could use the arguably stronger third finger for the higher F# (4th fret, fourth string), I used my fourth finger. Once you’ve got the pick-hammer-hammer ordering sorted for the first E-F#-F# notes, you’ll play it as a triplet the first time, then double the speed the second time; two rhythmic variations from the same percussive approach. To get the notes souding tight, explore light palm muting on the sixth string as this…

Brought to you by… GUS STEWART / GETTY IMAGES Black Sabbath is regarded as being the first of the 70s heavy metal bands, leading to the huge metal scene of the 80s and 90s. Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne is one of the few heavy metal singers to be a household name around the globe, and his later solo career launched the careers of guitar greats such as Randy Rhoads, Jake E Lee and Zakk Wylde. But it’s the writing and playing style of Tony Iommi that we’re looking at today. Osbourne and Iommi were joined in the early Sabbath years by bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward. Iommi has been the only ever-present member, with other notable names having joined the ranks over the years including singers Ronnie James Dio,…

Born in 1955, the late Chalmers ‘Spanky’ Alford was an accomplished guitarist, playing on many records and working as a touring hired gun for a number of stars. Throughout the 1960s through to the end of the 80s, Spanky was an in-demand gospel guitarist with a background in jazz. When the neo-soul genre gained popularity in the 1990s and noughties onwards, Spanky lent these jazz infused guitar skills to a number of artists, including D’Angelo, playing on a number of his sessions as well as being part of his live band The Soultronics, for the Voodoo tour in 2000. While you might not be familiar with his name you’ll know some of his work, since Spanky played for a host of other artists over the years, including The Bee Gees,…

Brought to you by… This month in Them Changes we are going to look at options for improvising over the ‘James Bond chord’ - E Minor with a Major 7 and a 9th added. Looking at the notes in the chord, E Minor Pentatonic is clearly not going to work as it has a D Natural where this chord has a Major 7th (D#) which does not appear in the scale. The obvious choices for a seven-note scale would be E Melodic Minor or E Harmonic Minor - the difference between the two being the 6th, which is a b6 in Harmonic Minor. However, as we’ve been dealing with Pentatonic scales so far, let’s see if we can exploit some five-note note options. The Minor 6 Pentatonic (R-b3-4-5-6) substitutes the…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH GEORGE HARRISON ALL THINGS MUST PASS 50TH ANNIVERSARY Capitol 9/10 When The Beatles called it a day at the dawn of the 1970s fans were still in a state of shock when George released a triple album boxed set of all the songs that were previously turned down for the Fabs’ LPs. It was like the cork shooting from a bottle of vintage Champagne – where had all these amazing songs been hiding? The extra discs in the special edition of Abbey Road and audio from the Let It Be sessions have revealed that some of the songs here were in fact rehearsed by The Beatles years beforehand, but they didn’t see the light of day until All Things Must Pass debuted in November 1970. The re-release…