Total Guitarの January 2024 の目次

I’d promised myself we wouldn’t mention the pandemic anymore in Total Guitar – but here’s a thing: I feel like 2023 has been the first great year for guitar music since before the lockdowns. Sure, albums continued to be made during those dark days, and last year saw plenty of tours – but Covid outbreaks could still halt gigs in their tracks (just ask the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and many artists held out on touring altogether. 2023 has been different. This summer’s festivals were epic, with barnstorming sets from Metallica at Download and Guns N’ Roses at Glastonbury. Nuno Bettencourt’s solo in Extreme’s Rise set the guitar world alight. The Stones released their first album of original songs since 2005. We’ve heard amazing music from rising stars like Matteo…

GUITARIST OF 2023 2023 was an exceptional year for guitar music, with no shortage of talent old and new dazzling us with world‑conquering riffs, miraculous fretwork and life‑affirming compositions. But no one ruled the roost quite like Nuno Bettencourt, whose work on Extreme’s album Six – notable for being their first in 15 years – left everyone speechless in its sense of bold ambition, indicative of a band who knew how to play to their strengths while also reinventing themselves in other ways for the modern age. Particularly, it was his solo on lead single Rise that got the guitar community talking in every corner of the globe, ultimately proving why Bettencourt remains one of the finest gunslingers of his era. In this new interview, Nuno offers what he describes as…

Having heard from some of this year’s stars of guitar over the preceding pages, no doubt, like us, you’re itching to get playing – so here we take a look at the techniques of some of those musicians who have inspired us in 2023. From the shred stylings of our guitarist of 2023, Nuno Bettencourt, to the searing jazz fusion of Matteo Mancuso, modern funk courtesy of Cory Wong, and drop-tuned prog metal from Periphery and Tesseract, there’s something here for everyone to learn. Make sure to check out our audio tracks and jam along with our guitar-less backing mixes. 01 NUNO BETTENCOURT bit.ly/tg379audio 2023 has very much been Nuno’s year. Be it playing the half time show at the Superbowl with Rihanna or lighting up the internet with his…

Traditionally, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers releases a Christmas cover every year. Her 2022 self-released download was a version of the The Handsome Family’s So Much Wine (also available on a six track EP of the same name). Poignant and moving, this is definitely a contender for one of the saddest Christmas songs ever written. The beauty of the song is that you can make it as easy or as challenging as you like: strum the whole song using just five chords, or go for the full fingerpicking approach with every subtle detail included. Go the fingerstyle route and you’ll learn a simple but highly effective technique called ‘Travis picking’, named after the country picker Merle Travis who pioneered it. This involves using picking a constant alternating bass pattern with your thumb,…

REVIEW £1,499 Back in issue 373 we took a look at the rather fine Gibson USA Kirk Hammett ‘Greeny’. Easily one of the most debated and discussed guitars of 2023, it’s quite a piece, except it costs just shy of three grand. But just as we were writing that review, Kirk Hammett let slip that there was going to be an Epiphone version and here it is! It might not be a cheap date but at half the price of that Gibson USA guitar, is it only half as good? No. It’s much better than that. Classed as an ‘Inspired by Gibson Custom Shop’ model – like the current ’58 V and Explorer, the ’59 Les Paul Standard and ’61 SG Standard – the new Epi Greeny lacks the battle…

REVIEW £1,119 With a heritage stretching back all the way to the mid-’80s, the Jackson Dinky was originally designed for guitar players wanting big tones out of a smaller package. Technically speaking, the body shape is 7/8 that of a typical Superstrat like the Jackson Soloist – which means its ever-so-slightly less bulky and cumbersome figure lends well to ambitious acrobatics, whether that takes place on stage or the fretboard itself. This year, these models have been reborn in Jackson’s newly launched Chinese-manufactured Pro Plus series, bringing a lot of the features and sounds from their more costly American-made instruments to a more affordable price point. Perhaps one of the biggest areas of discussion here is the choice of body wood – the new models utilising okoume, one of several…

One of the biggest stories of 2023 was the return of The Rolling Stones with Hackney Diamonds, the band’s first album of original material in almost two decades. The album includes tracks recorded with drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021, and bassist Bill Wyman, who left the Stones 30 years ago. It also features guest appearances from Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga and, most surprising of all, Paul McCartney. Keith Richards, the Stones’ guitarist and founding member, explains how he and singer Mick Jagger put this album together; how he and fellow guitarist Ronnie Wood enjoy a near-telepathic understanding; and why, for him, five strings are still better than six… Hackney Diamonds sounds so fresh, but I understand it had a lengthy evolution. Yeah, it took a while…

What was your favourite moment of 2023? Definitely my London show, which we recorded for the Live In London album. It was an awesome night – tickets were sold out and the crowd was great. I’d played London a lot in 2022, including a couple of shows with The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park. I feel like the crowds are more appreciative of blues music in England. People in America sometimes look at it more like a yesteryear kinda genre. In the UK, it feels like blues is still at the forefront. Were there any other milestones documenting your growth as an artist? Mainly it was about getting my band on the road and giving it our all every night. Sometimes the road can be tough. Sometimes this whole industry…

2023 MY YEAR What did you do differently in the making of The Lucky One compared with your previous albums? We made my last couple of records on set for my variety show, and this one really was made purely in the studio. I wanted to have more of a controlled sound and make it a real studio album. The other big difference is, this time, I just felt like a lot of the songs required something different of me. As I’m evolving as a player and a writer, I wanted to explore a new space, so I was diving a lot more into lead guitar. There’s more guitar solos than on any of the other records. Which solo was the most challenging to play? They each had their own…

ELECTRIC GUITARS 01 Epiphone Adam Jones Les Paul Custom £1,149 Given his background in visual arts, with credits for makeup and special effects in several Hollywood blockbusters long before guitar stardom beckoned in Tool, the recent batch of Adam Jones signatures were never going to be run-of-the-mill. This model details Frank Frazetta painting The Berserker in all its glory, but it’s the pickups that are the biggest talking point: a reverse-mounted humbucker in the neck, just like the guitarist’s 1979 original, and a passive ceramic powered Seymour Duncan Distortion in the bridge which packs a whopping 16.6k DC resistance. There’s brightness and definition in abundance from the pairing of maple neck with ebony fingerboard. Amped up, these vibrations are articulated very well, with the neck pickup’s warmth providing well-matched contrast…

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PEOPLE ✪ NEWS ✪ NOISE NEW RELEASE “I’M STILL A GREEDY LEAD PLAYER AT HEART!” SO WHY HAS PLINI GIVEN A SOLO TO TOSIN ABASI ON A NEW EP? Australian maestro Plini is exploring darker tonalities on his new EP, armed with a newly updated Neural DSP plugin. And for an ‘evil’ solo, he called in a famous friend… Your new EP, Mirage, explores the darker side of your playing, intermingled with your bright signature sound. How did you navigate blending the two together? There’s still a lot of Lydian in there, but in trying to expand my vocabulary I’ve been using a lot of chromatic and uglier tonalities. I don’t approach it too theoretically; I’ll treat what I’m playing as a minor pentatonic but with this extra evil note…

So many things happen in a year in guitar, it can be hard to keep track. But when 2023 is done and dusted, how will it be remembered? Will it be remembered? Perhaps not by Kevin Buell, Bruce Springsteen’s guitar tech, who, in February, during a show at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, got cleaned out by the world’s first mass-produced electric guitar when The Boss threw his Telecaster to him in customary fashion and it connected with his head. Thankfully there was no lasting damage from an incident that proved there was still danger in rock ’n’ roll. The guitar and those who play it are fated to live out a strange existence; this instrument takes us to some strange places, doing some strange things. What went through DragonForce’s Herman…

In what ways did you push yourself while making your second album under the Mammoth WVH name? Literally my only rule was: No sophomore slump. Mammoth II needed to be as good or better than Mammoth WVH. It was difficult to write and figure out ways to expand upon the sound. With everything I had dealt with in the past five years and with Mammoth’s successes, everything was so wonderful and terrible in every way at all times. I guess it all poured into it, and that’s what made the album a bit heavier and more aggressive. What’s your favourite solo on the album? I’m quite proud of Take A Bow. That was an evolution in my solo writing, performing and playing. So it felt like a cool moment to…

2023 MY YEAR When Greta Van Fleet’s third album Starcatcher was released this year, how did you feel about the reception you got from your fans and from critics? I think one major thing has culturally shifted in the journalistic approach to what we’re doing. One major factor of this being that we’ve stood our ground. We were going to do what we were going to do regardless. It’s not like we’re going to deviate from our approach, based on a few mere words that are brittle and fickle. I think people have realised that we’re sticking around and this is who we are, so they now need to take a second crack at exploring the depth of what us guys are actually doing for our generation and for rock…

BEST OF THE YEAR Which track from Covet’s 2023 album Catharsis are you most proud of and why? There’s different reasons why I’d be proud of certain things. With Firebird, I just think it’s catchy so that one’s cool. I’m pretty proud of Coronal because I feel like that’s a different style, but it’s more representative of the kinds of tones that I really want to do now. What’s been the one guitar you couldn’t have lived without this year? My Talman – it’s the only one I play! The pickup response is very dynamic and the way I play is very dependent on finger tones. If you want to push them, they get broken up and dirty, and if you lay back, they’re sparkly and clean. The neck’s really…

CLASSIC TRACK Zeppelin’s mix of Celtic, Arabic and Indian styles was underpinned by blues, and on this track from their self-titled debut you can hear the band in their rawest, bluesiest form. Jimmy Page is on blistering form, showing no mercy to his Fender Telecaster and a tiny Supro amp turned up to 10. Though his phrasing is mostly based on the minor pentatonic scale, the rhythm is incredibly complex, as a quick glance at our transcription will confirm. A lot of phrases are repeated, though, so take it one lick at a time. In particular, the very first lick in the first verse is repeated throughout. In typical bluesy style, Page varies the lick every time. You can make up your own variations, so make sure you know the…

REVIEW £699 It’s rare that heritage companies like Guild come up with new guitar designs. Why should they when there are a huge number of models to reproduce from their own past? The Surfliner originally appeared in early 2022 and although you can see some design cues from their past, it was actually the first new design they’d created for, well, longer than we can remember. Named after a train line that runs down the West coast of California, the original HSS model, quickly followed by a dual humbucker version, was a rare Guild bolt-on, but unusually features a tune-o-matic with through-body string anchorage along with, unusually, 23 frets. It also features some unusual on/off pickup switches, the sort of thing you’d find on a small table lamp from IKEA.…

Taking the sound of classic soul to audiences across the world, London-based quintet Mamas Gun take inspiration from Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield into a sound that is very much their own. And for guitarist Terry Lewis – who works as a teacher for guitar schools BIMM and WaterBear, and has played for Lisa Stansfield, Beverley Knight and Sandi Thom – it’s a fun way of experimenting with rich chord progressions, laid-back grooves and what he lovingly refers to as “many layers” of tape saturation and spring reverb. “As a jobbing player I’ve always wanted to be versatile, and have owned all kinds of instruments, though I tend to stick with 335-style guitars,” he says. “You can play any kind of music on them, though when it comes to soul/funk/jazz…