Table of contents for July 2017 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 Spandau’s 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. JON BISHOP Jon is one of those great all-rounders who can turn his hand to almost any style. No ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’, he nails every one with ease! LES DAVIDSON Les has worked with Mick Taylor, Rumer, Jon Anderson, Pete Townshend, Tina Turner & more. He also runs a recording studio and teaches at BIMM London. CHARLIE GRIFFITHS Guitar Institute tutor Charlie first came to fame in…

READING MUSIC In response to Jacob Rice’s communication in GT269 regarding notation and if it is a waste of time, quite frankly this astounds me. I’m not suggesting that everybody should read the dots but why is he not interested in learning it for the rhythmic values at least? I started off as a tab reader and now, as I’m a session guitarist I have to rely on reading the notation. I’m not the best reader but I work daily on sight reading exercises as well as exercises for new techniques and new songs. Mr Rice says he listens to the playback when playing new material. He’s missing out completely on the beauty of playing something purely from reading it. Everybody has their own way of playing guitar and learning…

NAME: Daniel Thorpe TOWN: Cradley Heath, West Midlands STYLES TAUGHT: Fingerstyle, folk, pop, rock, blues, classical SPECIALITY: Fingerstyle, pop and rock LEVELS TAUGHT: All levels taught and in a fun way - focusing on songs, proper technique and long term enjoyment from the guitar. I specialise in teaching beginners from the ground up how to play the songs they dream of playing, and I can teach students the RGT grades too SIGHT-READING: Beginner to intermediate CHARGES: £25 per 1hr, £15 per 30 minutes SPECIAL: Fully-equipped music studio with all necessary gear, guitars and a recording setup as well as supplementary online courses available for free to students TEL: 07546 392 468 EMAIL: hq@rockstarguitartuition.com…

REUTERS / ALAMY  ONTHECD TRACKCD-ROM ABILITY RATING “WE'VE ALL COME ACROSS THAT AWKWARD STRETCHY CHORD VOICING THAT MADE US WISH WE HAD EXTRA DIGITS” Info Key Various Tempo Various CD CD-ROM Will improve your… Tapping skills Legato playing Left and right hand independence For many, the phrase ‘two-handed tapping’ evokes images of shredders using both hands to take their solos to hyper-speed. But that’s not the whole picture and if that’s your view of the technique then you’re missing out on a huge tonal palette and arguably a more tasteful application for the technique. There is a long-held debate over who first stumbled upon the two-handed tapping technique; certainly its use and popularisation in rock guitar can be traced back to Eddie Van Halen and Steve Hackett’s innovations, but it’s…

RODOLFO SASSANO / ALAMY  ONTHECD TRACKS25-42 “THE HUGE RESPECT WITHIN HIS FIELD AND THE LACK OF POPULAR SUCCESS IS JUST ONE OF MANY CONTRADICTIONS IN THE MAN” ABILITY RATING Info Key Various Tempo Various CD TRACKS 25-42 Will improve your… Fretboard knowledge Legato and chord technique Appreciation for a phenomenal artist The guitar and jazz world was saddened to hear of the passing of Allan Holdsworth on the April 15, 2017, aged 70. While arguments about who is ‘the best’ in music are generally unhelpful and meaningless, Holdsworth must rank as one of the most universally respected guitarists by fellow guitarists. He received superlative praise from masters of the guitar of every style from Frank Zappa (who claimed that Holdsworth “single-handedly reinvented the electric guitar”) to Carlos Santana to Joe…

ON THE CD TRACKS45-50 EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 THE RAMONES CD TRACK 45 Play heavy downstrokes with plenty of attitude on this root-5th power chord idea. Keep the same chord shape with your fretting hand and slide up after the first pick. This one’s all about attitude! EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 DREAM THEATER CD TRACK 46 This take on one of the band’s classic intros requires steady picking and controlled vibrato with the bar. A medium chorus and tempo-timed delay is also useful for for a bit of added authenticity. INTERMEDIATE LICKS EXAMPLE 3 PETE TOWNSHEND CD TRACK 47 The ‘dead’ strokes are almost as important as the chords in this example. Try keeping a steady up and down rhythm style, lifting the pressure off the fretting hand to create…

 ON THE CD TRACKS69-82 “HE CAME UP WITH A WAY TO ADDRESS THE INSTRUMENT TECHNICALLY THAT NOBODY HAD DONE BEFORE AND NOBODY HAS EVER DONE SINCE Pat Metheny” ABILITY RATING Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 69-82 Will improve your… Independent parts playing General jazz vocabulary Artificial harmonics Breau’s solo career began with great promise, with appearances on radio and TV and he was in great demand as a live performer. In the late 1960s a recording of his playing fell into the hands of his old hero, Chet Atkins who was amazed by what he heard. Not only had this young virtuoso assimilated his style, he possessed an improvisational flair equal to the best jazz musicians in the world. This included combining single-note lines with fragmented chords taken…

 ON THE CD TRACKS89-92 “IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO PRACTISE THE EXAMPLES WITHOUT VIBRATO, TO ENSURE GOOD INTONATION, THEN CAN ADD IT LATER” ABILITY RATING Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 89-92 Will improve your Blues phrasing Slide control Intonation and fingerstyle Following on from last month’s instalment that looked at electric slide playing, this month we focus on the acoustic side of things. A heavier slide can be beneficial here as acoustic guitar strings tend to be thicker; heavier slides provide more sustain and improved tone. Make a decision early on about how smooth or raw a sound you want as this will give you something to aim for in terms of how much muting and vibrato to use, how hard to attack the guitar and how much…

JUNE GT270 SESSION SECRETS Learn what’s required on a studio or show session, then let nine studio legends tell you their inside stories. From the vault: Play like the great ‘fingers only’ electric bluesmen! The Wedding March tabbed. Learn two David Gilmour-style solos; new slide series & more! MAY GT269 BLUES TURNAROUNDS Learn how to make the end of each blues verse really count. We look at how 10 blues legends do it! From the vault: Learn classical fingerstyle ‘best practice’ - great for other styles too. Plus: Albeniz Mallorca, Nick Johnston rock video masterclass & more! SPRING GT268 THREE-STRING CHORDS Three-string chords and arpeggios are great to revitalise your rhythm and lead; check out the chords and soloing style of Steely Dan’s guitarists; play Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus; and…

FEATURE #2 JAZZ CHORD SOLOING Learn this beautiful technique Some of jazz’s greatest guitarists have made an art of chord soloing. Milton Mermikides shows you how. CLASSICAL TAB SCHUMANN Of Foreign Lands And Peoples Schumann called this, “Gentler and more melodic” than previous works. Bridget works it perfectly for guitar. VIDEO TRIBUTE ALLAN HOLDSWORTH From Brett Garsed Brett offers a gloriously heartfelt musical tribute with soloing ideas and chords. All tabbed out for you. TECHNIQUE & THEORY THINGS TO LEARN & PLAY Acoustic blues; bends and taps Tapping onto a bend is a marvellous, exciting sound! Try it, along with some tasty acoustic bottleneck blues! Get ready for one of our biggest features ever! 50 LES PAUL LICKS! Les responsible (along some good guitarists) of creating some of the greatest…

IT WAS WITH heavy heart I heard the news that Allan Holdsworth had died. Even though his work should have been way too complex for my meagre mind, its genuine depth and beauty found an instant connection. I got to know Allan a little, too, when I worked for SynthAxe in the ’80s and he was our primary ambassador. Two great Holdsworth stories spring to mind. One was our first trip to NAMM in Anaheim. It was January ’86 and guitar synths were the talk of the show. Our first demo was 10.30am and we (inventor Bill Aitken playing huge synth pads on an Oberheim Matrix 12 and I doing licks using Yamaha DX-7 and Oberheim Xpander) began to set up. Dread quickly flooded my every pore as the audience…

“I'M TRYING TO BE INVENTIVE WITH THE SOLOING, BUT NOT STUFF EVERYTHING YOU KBOW IN OR LET IT GO YOU KNOW IN OR LET IT GO ON FOREVER” GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that appeals to you? EJ: The freedom that you have in instrumental music; you have so much freedom to kind of go wherever you want and wherever your intuition can take you and I think that if you try to stick with melody, it can be as interesting as vocals and sometimes that’s nice. GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal can’t? EJ: It just gives it gives a lot of room for interpretation for the listener. It creates and stirs emotion in the listener that maybe they’re not getting from…

BURNS LONDON RELEASES THE Marvin 1964, a signature model guitar set at an affordable price. With an alder body, bolt-on maple neck with rosewood fingerboard and pearl dot inlays this guitar has all the design features of Hank’s original signature model from the 60s. With three Rez-O-Matic single-coil pickups and the Rez-O-Tube vibrato unit it also sounds right too. With the three-sectioned scratchplate, scrolled headstock and vintage Van Gent styled tuners, this is a very attractive purchase. TONY BLAIR ANNOUNCES THAT HE IS to step down as Prime Minister. Gordon Brown becomes leader of the party and Harriet Harman is Deputy Leader. Nick Clegg wins the Liberal Democrats leadership election . A Magnox nuclear power station in Gloucestershire is forced to close following a fire, however the reactor is not…

ALAMY “WHEN SITTING IN WITH THE INTERVAL BAND AT LONDON'S MARQUEE CLUB, JIMMY WAS OFFERED THE CHANCE TO PLAY ON A RECORDING SESSION” ONTHECD TRACKS 13-24 ABILITY RATING Info Key Various Tempo Various CD TRACKS 13-24 Will improve your… Playing and timing of riffs Composition and part arrangement Ensemble playing and production It’s hard to imagine a time before those iconic images of Jimmy Page playing his 1959 Les Paul Standard with a violin bow, or hoisting his cherry red doubleneck high at the climax of Stairway To Heaven were so universal. When a young James Page appeared on TV with his skiffle group in 1957, he declared his own future career path as “biological research”. In truth he was dedicating himself to research of a very different kind –…

 ON THE CD TRACKS43-44 “THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO IS CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE MOST SEMINAL AND INFLUENTIAL OPERAS IN THE ENTIRE GENRE” ABILITY RATING Info Key C Tempo 43 bpm CD TRACKS 43-44 Will improve your… Ability to balance melody and accompaniment Melodic interpretation Operatic repertoire In this latest instalment of our classical series we tackle a work by the musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). It’s hard to communicate in a short piece of text the extent of Mozart’s brilliance and phenomenal output, but to give you an idea, one might consider that by the time he composed the opera Marriage Of Figaro (from which this arrangement is taken), he was barely 30 and had already composed 38 symphonies, 37 instrumental concerti, 16 other operas as well as…

 ON THE CD TRACKS51-54 “ROBILLARD FOUNDED THE GROUP, ROOM FULL OF BLUES, ALONGSIDE AL COPLEY, A PARTNERSHIP THAT WAS A CATALYST TO LONG-TERM SUCCESS” ABILITY RATING Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 51-54 Will improve your Blue- jazz soloing Swinging blues feel Attack and attitude Duke Robilliard (born Michael Robillard, 1948) has said that when he was a boy, music took over his life and he became obsessed with recreating the sound of his early influences: Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Elvis and Chuck Berry and the singles that his older, guitar-playing brother would bring home. His first serious guitar was a Gibson Melody Maker but as a young boy for a science project, Duke and his father made a guitar that looked like a Telecaster. It…

 ON THE CD TRACKS83-84 “THERE ARE ELECTRIC SONGS AND ACOUSTIC SONGS. THE TEST OF AN ELECTRIC SONG IS TO PLAY IT ON AN ACOUSTIC Stephen Stills” ABILITY RATING Info Key: D Tempo: 153 bpm CD: TRACKS 83-84 Will improve your… Strumming rhythms Use of triads in rhythm guitar Application of sus chords It’s rare in the history of rock that four such unique and individual songwriters, guitarists and vocalists join together to create music that somehow manages to transcend the sum of even its grand parts. CSNY are a treat for any guitar-playing fan of the rock sound of the 1960s and ’70s as they cover so many bases from ethereal acoustic fingerpicking to all-out electric rock and roll. David Crosby perhaps described the more commonly seen Crosby, Stills and…

LIVEPIX ONTHECD TRACKS85-88 Rising to fame with Chic in the late 1970s, Nile Rodgers and bass player Bernard Edwards enjoyed a long string of hits through the disco era including Le Freak, Good Times and Everybody Dance. Rodgers also produced and played on hits for many other artists including Sister Sledge, Madonna, David Bowie, Diana Ross, Duran Duran, and Daft Punk. Although in hindsight Ross and Bowie were somewhat critical of his production on their records, Nile delivered both artists’ best-selling albums of all time. Rodgers has the amazing ability to dream up incredibly catchy guitar parts; parts that often become the main ‘hook’ of the song. His style of rhythm guitar features ‘popping’ single-note funk lines and a rhythm style he calls “chucking”; this uses 16th-note rhythmic chord fragments…

WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN Album of the Month MR BIG DEFYING GRAVITY Frontiers Records Mr Big’s new album was as fast to record (a week) as the playing on it! Featuring 11 tracks, the quartet of Paul Gilbert, Billy Sheehan, Eric Martin and Pat Torpey still have it (Matt Starr drummed on songs that Pat couldn’t due to Parkinson’s disease). Joined by their early producer Kevin Elson, this is a colourful, vibrant and at times shred-tastic collage of great songs. Paul’s guitar is rich and warm but burns as few others can; Mean To Me may well be the band’s Addicted/Daddy/Colorado chops song with a precise double-time riff. Come solo time, Billy and Paul trade frying frettery until Paul takes off with blues phrases, searing bends and lickety-quick descending lines.…

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…

NICK DELANEY / TINA K THE FRETTING-HAND SLIDE is a powerful and expressive tool. This month’s lick will give you a fun workout, utilising this technique in a slightly different way. At first glance it’s a simple A Minor Pentatonic phrase. However, it’s not quite as easy as it looks because the notes nearly always change direction after every pair sounded. If you’re not used to doing this sort of thing you might find it pretty challenging, so try my fingering and use it or amend it to suit. It should sound‘fluid’and modern. After working through it, try similar phrases using other Pentatonic shapes and also to work at combining this type of idea with other techniques and scales incorporating a variety of rhythmic and intervallic approaches. For instance, I…

➊ Slow Blues in E Here we have a slow blues in E at just 55bpm, which you can approach in a variety of ways. The good old E Minor Pentatonic scale (E-G-A-B-D) will work – and so will E Major Pentatonic (E-F#-G#- B-C#), although the latter works best on the I chord (E9) and V chord (B9). But also try mixing in a bit of E Mixolydian mode (E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D) – this works perfectly for the I chord (E9). ➋ Rockout in G Here’s a fun uptempo rock track in G. You can use G Minor Pentatonic (G-B b -C-D-F) and G Minor Blues scale (G-B b -C-C#-D-F) as a starting point, but the track works well with quite a few more colourful scales. The chord progression is: G-B b…

RELATING TAB TO YOUR FRETBOARD HAND LABELLING Here are the abbreviations used for each finger: Fretting hand: 1, 2, 3, 4, (T) Picking hand: p (thumb), i (first finger), m (second), a (third), c (fourth). NUT & FRETBOARD The fretbox diagram above represents the fretboard exactly, as seen in the accompanying photo. This is for ease of visualising a fretboard scale or chord shape quickly. The diagram represents the G chord in the photo. The ‘O’ symbol is an open string, and a circled number is a fretting finger. Intervals are shown below. CHORD EXAMPLE (WITH CAPO) The blue line represents a capo – for this A chord, place it at fret 2. Capos change the fret number ordering – here, the original fret 5 now becomes fret 3, fret…

CLAYTON CALL / GETTY IMAGES I’M CONVINCED THAT IF ROBERT JOHNSON HIMSELF HEARD ALLAN HOLDSWORTH SOLOING HE’D RECOGNISE IT AS THE BLUES Brett Garsed Steve Lukather He heard music from another dimension. He didn’t play like a ‘ guitar player’ or think like one. I think the guitar was just a way for him to get what was in his head out to the world. He had an astounding way of playing such beautiful music: those chord clusters... and just the right note after a jaw-dropping legato flurry that defied the human hand’s ability to play such a thing! He was also a kind and very funny man. His kindness and gentle spirit touched everyone he met yet he always thought he was not playing well, or was not…

 ON THE CD TRACKS55-57 “THERE’S A STRONG RUMOUR THAT PRINCE LEFT BEHIND SEVERAL ALBUMS’ WORTH OF UNRELEASED MATERIAL” ABILITY RATING Info Key: G Tempo: 200 bpm CD: TRACKS 55-57 Will improve your… Funky rock rhythm and lead Pop-style arranging Theory knowledge In April 2016 the music world lost the legend that was Prince. But he left a catalogue of some of the most inventive, era-defining songs, in particular his most successful ’80s period. Prince could move from Hendrix-style histrionics one minute, to perfect pop and funk the next, and he always had a killer melodic sensibility to his writing and arranging. Such is his legacy that immediately after his death he sold over four million copies of his albums and singles between April 21 and 28. Prince signed with Warner…

 ON THECD TRACKS66-68 “TO ESTABLISH THE 7TH ARPEGGIOS WITHIN A SCALE WE NEED TO PLAY EVERY OTHER NOTE, GIVING US A 1-3-5-7 FROM EACH STARTING POINT” ABILITY RATING Info Key: A (A7) Tempo: 120bpm CD: TRACKS 66-68 Will improve your… Extracting arpeggios from a scale Executing 7th arpeggios Shifting up and down the neck Recently, we’ve been focusing on various ways of creating freshness and variety by being selective with our note choice, rather than simply playing up and down each scale. In the previous two lessons, we looked at ways of finding and using 7th arpeggios within a single scale shape (resulting in vertical motion, whereby we stay within the same area of the neck); however, in this and the following lesson, we’re going to look at ways of…

 ON THE CD TRACKS58-65 “REMEMBER THAT THE PITCH OF THE RESULTING TAPPED NOTE DEPENDS ON THE AMOUNT THAT THE STRING HAS BEEN BENT” ABILITY RATING Info Key: Various Tempo: Various CD: TRACKS 58-65 Will improve your… Hand coordination Fretboard knowledge Ear training Combining taps and bends is a great way to create smooth lines, which can sound quite atypical for the guitar and are more akin to a pitch bend of a synth. To make your licks sound as great as possible, they need to sound in tune so bending accuracy is the most important element to get right here, so be aware of the size of the bend you are going for. In the following examples there are a mixture of tone bends and semitone bends. This requires a…

GT: Do you have a type of pick that you can’t live without? WJ: I have never used a pick. GT: If you had to give up all your pedals but three, what would they be? WJ: I have never used pedals. GT: Do you play another instrument well enough to be in a band? (If so what, - and have you ever done it?) WJ: I have never learnt to play anything but the electric guitar. GT: If a music chart were put in front of you, could you read it? WJ: No! I’m a rock guitarist for fuck’s sake! GT: Do guitar cables really make a difference? What make are yours? WJ: I always use a red curly lead on stage. This is to save me from tripping…