Indice dei contenuti per October 2022 in Guitar Techniques

Try GT’s digital edition on PC, Mac, Laptop, Desktop or Tablet! 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.…

Cyberspace is the new final frontier for those who choose to boldly go. But not for the faint hearted. After decades of accumulation, there is now so much carelessly discarded debris littering the Music Cosmos that a professional plucker must beware. Nor can it be simply ignored, due to the well meaning folk who will send you the latest embarrassing clip that they’ve discovered, presumably when desperately short of alternative avenues of entertainment. It could be the appearance on a TV special featuring Bruce Forsyth in which “the band has failed to turn up”. Brucie dives into the audience and selects three alleged audience members who, needless to say, are our wee trio planted specifically for the purpose. We’re given the 'wrong' instruments to play with predictably hopeless results. We…

ABILITY RATING Moderate ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Info https://bit.ly/3nFudpm Key Various Tempo Various Will improve your… ✓ Altered tunings ✓ Fingerstyle & Travis picking ✓ Percussive stylings When you’ve mastered your first singalong chords and learned a few classics it’s easy to put the acoustic to one side and focus instead on its seemingly more interesting electric brother. However, delve into the world of acoustic guitar and you’ll discover a mind-boggling array of techniques and approaches that can make it just as interesting (or more so!) than the world of electrics. It’s tempting to think acoustic guitar breaks down to simple strumming, fingerpicking and the occasional lead break but as you’ll discover from these eight legends it can do so much more – from the self-accompanied groove of masters…

ON VIDEO ABILITY RATING Moderate/Advanced ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Info https://bit.ly/3nFudpm Key D minor Tempo 65bpm Will improve your… ✓ Two-part harmony ✓ Broken chord plucking ✓ Sostenuto If Paganini had played the lute and lived during the Baroque era then he may well have been hailed as the greatest lutenist of his time. But he wasn’t alive then, and he certainly didn’t play lute. No, that crown belongs to the Poland-born composer and virtuoso Silvius Leopold Weiss. Thought to have written over 1000 pieces for lute during his life, Weiss led an exceptionally accomplished musical career which saw him receive appointments as court musician for a multitude of Polish and German princes and counts. His longest appointment was in Dresden as chamber musician for Prince Elector of Saxony…

ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Moderate Info Key: E major Tempo: 94bpm https://bit.ly/3nFudpm Will improve your ✓ Rhythm & lead playing ✓ Theory knowledge ✓ Timing Led Zeppelin is one of the best-known rock bands of all time. The band formed in 1968 and featured guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bass player John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. The band released its debut album in 1969 and it became a top 10 hit in the UK and US. Although today they would be described as a classic rock group, at the time their early albums were hailed as the beginnings of heavy metal. They went on to influence artists such as Eddie Van Halen, Deep Purple, Dream Theater and Aerosmith, and more recently Greta Van Fleet.…

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…

Inthis instalment, we’re going to look at the latest science of learning, particularly ways to learn fast for the over 25s. This information comes from two amazing podcasts by Huberman Lab called ‘How to learn faster by using failures, movement & balance’, and ‘How to learn skills faster’. Andrew D Huberman is an American neuroscientist and associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In this lesson, I'll summarise the key points that relate to practising music with as little as possible use of the technical terms. Perhaps you've heard the term ‘neuroplasticity’. It’s the ability of neurons in the brain to grow, adapt and re-organise to function in a different way than they had previously, usually as a response to a direct experience.…

ON VIDEO ABILITY RATING Advanced ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Info https://bit.ly/3nFudpm Key Various Tempo 98 bpm (swing feel) Will improve your… ✓ Rhythmic phrasing ✓ Navigation for unique chord changes ✓ Picking, legato and harmonic techniques This month we are delighted to welcome back Andy Timmons for another video lesson and discussion, after his highly popular 2018 performance on Jason’s track Jubilant, back in GT278. Big Man Walking is a vibrantly arranged rock piece in a ‘swung 16th’ feel, with an unusual chord change (E-Bb) and modulations through several keys (see the chart on page 27). All of this adds up to a sophisticated piece that Andy’s musicianship was more than up for. After his stunning performance, he goes into detail about his playing approach and choices, which provides…

EXAMPLE 1 AL GORGONI Al played lead guitar on Van Morrison’s hit, Brown Eyed Girl, among hundreds of other New York sessions. This phrase is in F Major and uses Minor and Major 3rds, along the first and second string, to create a melodic theme. Use a combination of palm muting and fretting-hand muting (relaxing the fingers), to create the rests in bars 1-3. Set your amp to clean, select the neck pickup, roll your tone control back a little to smooth out the treble frequencies, and add some reverb. EXAMPLE 4 ROBIN TROWER This B Minor Pentatonic idea begins with classic blues figures. Take note of how the pull-off to the open string (bar 2) allows the fretting-hand position to reset for the closing phrase. Here, slides, bends, and…

Although globally famous for classic electric riffs such as Money For Nothing, and stunning solos like Sultans Of Swing, acoustic guitar and fingerpicking have always been the bedrock of Mark Knopfler’s guitar style. Like Jeff Beck, Knopfler favours fingerstyle on electric guitar and it’s actually an acoustic picking approach that forms the bedrock of his electric playing. Secondly, in Knopfler’s solo material the acoustic guitar often forms the foundation of a track. A masterful fingerpicker, Knopfler’s style is partly characterised by the interplay between picking hand thumb and first finger and his picking-hand groove will form the subject of this lesson. You don’t record an album with Chet Atkins (Neck And Neck) if your chops aren’t up to scratch! When you dig into Knopfler’s technique you discover a strong country…

THERE’S NOTHING QUITE LIKE THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR. The curved body, the lightweight feel and the soundhole that allows you to peer into its hollow innards. Then there’s the first strums, hearing a dark Em chord, a brightly ringing D chord and a vibrant G chord. Fingerpicking reveals alternative sonic colours as you wander chord shapes up the fretboard, picking open and fretted strings. They chime and encourage a breadth of dynamics that range from delicate softness to boisterous stomping. The core sound throughout all these pathways is the same and yet the sonic variety is more involving than we typically assume. Here at GT, we love the acoustic guitar be it a small 000 steel string , achunky dreadnought or a nylon-strung classical. We know you do too so this…

Forgive the arty title, but the sounds we’re making today are suited to softfocus impressionist scenes. We’re playing arpeggios, but extending their range by switching between open and fretted notes on the same strings. It’s a bit like the cascading licks used by country players, letting all notes ring as long as possible. Strum through our chord progression for starters… TO KEEP THINGS SIMPLE, we’ll use the same picking pattern for all arpeggios. Most of them start from the fifth string and we’re picking the strings in this order: 5‐3‐4‐2-3-1-2. Get used to that on the standard open C shape for starters. The exception is the C(maj7) chord, which starts on the sixth string, but you just have to shift the whole pattern down one string: 6-4-5-3-4-2-3. Now for the…

GT Wt hat appeals to you? hat is it about guitar instrumentals JL: Namely, that the guitar is my instrument by trade. While I do play a few other instruments, the guitar is the instrument that I find I’m most fluent on. That said, I love the spirit of evolution around the guitar. Other than maybe synthesisers, I don’t think any instrument is constantly trying to re-invent itself. With guitar amplifiers and effects the sky's the limit! GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can’t? JL: I feel that it’s easier to invent your own narrative to an instrumental piece. GT: Any tendencies with instrumentals that you aim to embrace or avoid (rhythms, harmony, playing approach, tones)? JL: As a singer-songwriter, I actually don’t write…

ABILITY RATING Advanced ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Info https://bit.ly/3nFudpm Key A Minor Tempo 60bpm Will improve your… ✓ Picking speed ✓ Rhythmic accuracy ✓ Articulation Friday Night In San Francisco is a legendary instrumental guitar album featuring the trio of guitar comprising American picking tornado Al Di Meola, fingerstyle flamenco titan Paco De Lucia and jazz-fusion superstar John McLaughlin. Recorded at The Warfield Theatre on 5th December 1980, the premise was remarkably simple, with just three acoustic guitars performing a mixture of pieces composed by all three members, and with improvisation and musical interplay to the fore. The accompanying tour was a araging success and the album has since gone on to become considered one of the most influential guitar recordings of all time. All three players had previously…

Brought to you by… ABILITY RATING ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Moderate Info Key: Various Tempo: Various https://bit.ly/3nFudpm Will improve your ✓ Blues phrasing ✓ Hybrid picking ✓ Shuffle feel Few players are able to more greatly embody a genre than Billy Gibbons and Texas blues. As lead vocalist and guitarist with ZZ Top, whose sound mixes muscular riffs, deep shuffle grooves and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, Billy and the band perfectly capture the ethos of Texas life. Born in Houston in 1949, Billy grew up in a family of musicians keen to nurture his passion for music. He was introduced to a melting pot of genres and it wasn’t long before Billy fell in love with the music of bluesmen such as Jimmy Reed, BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker,…

The word barre is derived from the French word barré, meaning to bar. In guitar terms, to barre means to lay your first finger across multiple strings, often all six, while using your remaining fingers to hold down a chord shape. One way of looking at this technique is seeing the first finger as a moveable capo. The benefit of this technique is that it allows the player to move chords up and down the neck with relative ease, once the technique has been mastered. For many it can be quite hard achieving clarity across the entire neck. However, with practice, the barre chord is a useful tool. One of the key advantages of barre chords is that it allows players to transpose chord progressions with little regard to theory.…

Following last month’s workout on Altered 9ths, we’re expanding our palette of extensions. These extensions are most commonly used on Dominant 7th chords and that’s what we’ll focus on here. While these note choices might be thought of as signifying a jazz approach, these more adventurous tones can be seen in rock, blues, rockabilly and many other styles. The tension created by using these extensions makes the drive to resolve to the next chord stronger. Tension and release is a huge part of improvisation. We start by using the two Altered 5ths separately. The real fun starts when we combine them. The most logical way to integrate these notes into a solo is to resolve to a chord tone from the next chord - typically a perfect 5th down -G7…

Each scale has a unique intervallic formula that determines its character. The most common intervals between scalar notes are usually: semitone (S), tone (T), and tone-and-a-half (T½). For example, the Major scale is T-T-S-T-T-T-S, and the Minor Pentatonic is T½-T-T-T½-T. These formulae can be inverted by reversing them about their tonic note. So the inverted Major and Minor Pentatonic scales are S-T-T-T-S-T-T (Phrygian mode) and T-T½-T-T-T½ (Ritsusen Pentatonic scale) respectively. This process is known as strict mirroring, or chromatic inversion. See Figure 1 for an illustration of the Minor Pentatonic mirror. So why would we want to do this? Well, if you swap the original notes of a tune for their equivalents on the other side of the mirror, you create a different tune that’s often very musical and useable.…