Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2020 från Guitar Techniques

JOSEPH ALEXANDER After stints at Guitar Institute and Leeds College, Joseph launched Fundamental Changes. He’s since published over 40 tuition books and sold 350,000 plus. 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. 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. He’s also rock legend Shakin Stevens’ touring and recording guitarist. MARTIN GOULDING One of the world’s foremost rock and metal guitarists, Martin teaches for dime-online.org and has written for many of…

Go to www.pocketmags.com, search for Guitar Techniques to purchase a single issue for just £3.99; or subscribe and enjoy GT with audio and animated tab on any device! * PLEASE NOTE: Only the Apple and Pocketmags version contains interactive tab and audio. Zinio and others do not. DISC AUDIO (PRINT VERSION ONLY) Sometimes the GT CD features some of the backing tracks as mp3 files due to space. These will be found in a folder on the CD-ROM section of the disc, accessible only via a computer, and will not work in a regular CD player.…

JEN ROSENSTEIN GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that appeals to you? ZW: Well, for me it’s definitely the writing. When I listen to Al DiMeola, Eric Johnson or Mahavishnu Orchestra and stuff like that, it’s always the writing that makes it work. Another example is Joe Satriani. He has amazing technique and skill, but what separates him from most people is his writing. And writing instrumentals is not easy, you have to keep the audience’s attention while you’re playing: when you’re playing songs with singing it’s a lot easier. With instrumentals you have to compose the melodies to make it a song without the help of words, so you have to be extra creative and try to not repeat yourself. Take a song like Crazy Train: when Randy…

Five days dedicated to this exciting genre and featuring national and international musicians including GT’s very own John Wheatcroft. On 25th-29th March 2020, South London’s only French jazz club, Toulouse Lautrec is launching London’s Gypsy Jazz Festival featuring top British performers, international masters and gypsy jazz royalty. Its goal is to create an annual festival that celebrates this exciting music, originally created in the 1930s by Django Reinhardt and his Quintet du Hot Club de France. Headliners include Dutch gypsy swing guitar master, composer, bandleader and arranger Lollo Meier, and Mozes Rosenberg from the Rosenberg family, known globally as the ‘first family’ in gypsy jazz and described as “One of the most phenomenal musicians on the international acoustic scene today.” Opening the festival is Café Manouche, a quintet formed by…

David Gilmour is of course best known for his work with progressive rockers Pink Floyd. But he also has a successful solo career and plays a variety of instruments. Gilmour is a famous user of Fender Stratocasters and his iconic 70s ‘Black Strat’ forms the basis of his own signature model. He also owns a first year of issue 1954 Stratocaster with the serial number 0001. In this article we aim to identify many of David’s key techniques and soloing concepts, since there are few of us that wouldn’t benefit from his melodic sense and knack of placing the right part in exactly the right place. Gilmour’s lead playing is blues influenced and features all the techniques appropriate to the style, such as string bending, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc. Slides, finger…

When we spoke to Molly and settled down to record the video, we asked her to improvise a couple of examples just to set the mood for the lesson. As it turns out, they were so good we decided to transcribe them both and you’ll find them in Examples 1 and 3. Example 2 is a traditional fiddle tune that Molly chose to play as a demonstration of her almost unbelievably clean, precise and speedy picking-hand technique. Take note of what she says about picking-hand position in the video and take things slowly to begin with. Best of luck! EXAMPLE 1 IMPROVISED SECTION 1 CD TRACK 11 As we’ve said, this first example was fired off Molly’s fretboard from a standing start. It’s typical of her style, with bluegrass elements…

ABILITY RATING This month we look at another work by the irrefutably genius composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). It’s impossible to overstate the skill and beauty of his seemingly inexhaustible body of works, which have formed an enduring legacy, influence and inspiration to stylistically diverse musicians through the centuries. Many have suggested that Bach’s music represents one of the pinnacles of human achievement; my favourite such anecdote being the one that, when it was suggested some of his music be included in the Voyager space probe as proof of human intelligence to extra terrestrial beings who might find it, a NASA staff member objected as, “It would just be showing off”. Why his work has garnered such admiration from the greatest musicians, philosophers, artists and mathematicians through the ages, is…

EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 ERIC IDLE CD TRACK 21 Sadly we lost the Monty Python actor Terry Jones recently so we’re celebrating his Python collaborator, Eric Idle who wrote many songs for their films. Work on the back-and-forth thumb and fingerpicking on one chord then change between C, F and G7, gradually working in the arpeggio on each. EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 STEVE CROPPER CD TRACK 22 Steve Cropper is known for his simple but effective parts from many of the Stax label recordings, as both a session guitarist and member of Booker T & The MG’s. This lick uses a bass note with chord response, played with a pick and bringing in some 6th intervals with controlled slides. INTERMEDIATE LICKS EXAMPLE 3 RAY TORO CD TRACK 23 My Chemical…

TOM COPI / GETTY IMAGES ABILITY RATING The tritone interval has attained notoriety for providing both dissonance and menace in music, at one point in history earning the title of ‘Diabolus in Musica’ (the devil in music). Constructed from the symmetrical distance of three tone spaces (literally tri-tones), this edgy musical formula is used in heavy rock music, milking the evil symbolism of recurring sixes (666) for all its worth. While this might be the obvious application for such a sound, what we’re exploring here today is the value of this intriguing interval in jazz music, along with its close relation, the blues. All of the examples today will be presented against a C root note, so the distance of three tone steps takes us to F#. Or does it?…

ABILITY RATING In this current series, we have been using medium-paced solo studies as vehicles to apply various useful Pentatonic scales that reside within Mixolydian. So far, we’ve studied Pentatonic scales stemming from the root, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th notes of the Mixolydian, so now it’s time to turn our attention to five-note scales that stem from the flattened 7th note ( b 7). PAUL BERGEN / GETTY IMAGES Remember, the purpose of trying to extract various triads, arpeggios and Pentatonic scales from within a scale is to provide us with fresh musical perspectives. Each new perspective not only sounds different, but will also make us play in a different way. When extracting Pentatonic scales (which always have five notes) from a seven-note scale like Mixolydian, one could…

WALTER IOOSS JR / GETTY IMAGES ABILITY RATING Superlocrian, otherwise known as Diminished Whole-Tone scale, or Altered scale is the 7th mode of Melodic Minor. Superlocrian mode is used a lot in jazz and fusion music by players like Mike Stern, Scott Henderson and Robben Ford. It has a very unusual construction as all of the intervals are flat: 1- b 2- b 3- b 4- b 5- b 6- b 7. So you could find the positions on the fretboard by playing a Major scale shape and moving the root notes up one fret. To gain an understanding of how the scale relates to harmony, our first example shows the notes harmonised using 3rds to create four-note chords, with root notes along the sixth string. This is the same…

I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER hearing Pink Floyd for the first time. It was the single See Emily Play (actually the band’s second, since Arnold Layne had preceded it), and I adored the song. From then on, someone in the family went out and bought each album as it appeared, and I recall the terror with which we all awaited the horrific scream in Careful With That Axe, Eugene from Ummagumma. I also loved Atom Heart Mother (which David Gilmour has since called “a load of rubbish”, and especially the track Fat Old Sun, which inspired me to go out an buy a lovely Epiphone acoustic. However, by the time their huge success came about, with albums like The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, my musical tastes…

Seems like everywhere I look now, there are incredible guitarists playing incredible things that I will never be able to play. They must have always been there but with the internet making everything so much closer, it’s getting more personal. At NAMM this year I met up with loads of fellow YouTube instructors and also many top-shelf players that I really admire. It seems feelings of inadequacy are common; it’s a driving force for some, and a pressure for others. “I’ll never have such incredible note choice, or extended vocabulary, be fast enough, or have such a powerful tone, or be able to blast through changes with ease, or pick that perfect note every time… so what’s the point?” I was musing on this topic and wondering how it got…

THIS IDEA INCLUDES a lot of chromatic passing notes, so sounds sophisticated and jazzy. Bars 0-2 targets chord tones from the progression. In bar 0 there’s an E-F walk-up to the 3rd (F#) on-beat on bar 1. This note is again targeted at the end of the lick (beat 3, bar 1). Bar 2 opens with the same pick-up idea as in bars 0-1. The targeted note at the end of this is the b 7 (B b ). You can change the target note(s) to any of the chord tones, so experiment with this - try the b 7 (C) in bar 1 and the root (also C) in bar 2. The closing two bars begin with a 3rd (B) that’s again approached chromatically from below using the notes…

BRITAIN’S FIRST TV DETECTOR VAN hits the streets checking for unlicenced television sets. TV favours puppets, as Sooty and the Flower Pot Men are transmitted for the first time. The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader is CS Lewis’s latest novel and continues the Narnia Series, while the New Musical Express publishes the UK Singles Chart for the very first time. THE POPULARITY OF FENDER’S TELECASTER ignites the solidbody guitar revolution. Gibson responds with the Les Paul and with its gold archtop body, cream P90 pickups and trapeze tailpiece/bridge it’s a vastly different instrument to the Fender slab and other manufacturer’s attempts, so appeals to an entirely different type of player. Both models continue to flourish while other makes have faded away. DURING A TOUR OF KENYA PRINCESS ELIZABETH hears of…

Two of the cornerstones of Gilmour’s lead style are his finger vibrato and string bending. His technique and approach is fairly blues orientated and the sounds used range from sparkling clean to full on overdrive. The key to a good finger vibrato is consistency of width and rate. Gilmour uses a soulful touch that is most characteristically of a medium width and rate. He adds this finger vibrato to normally fretted notes as well as notes played with string bending. He also often adds vibrato to string bends by wobbling the whammy bar and this provides a soulful, vocal quality to the sound. Gilmour is a masterful string bender and often includes large bends in his solos. One of his signature bending techniques is the compound bend in which a…

ABILITY RATING D NARDACCI The difficulty level tops out up this month with a harmonically advanced track to navigate as we come to the end of our six-part video masterclass series with Italian guitar wizard Rocco Zifarelli. In part six we are going to look at Rocco’s soloing over Jason Sidwell’s fusion track entitled The Return Of Johnny F. As Rocco explains, the track has a 12/8 time signature which means each of the four beats contains three notes. You can view 12/8 time as the same as 4/4 but with eighth-note triplets throughout. The triplet time feel makes playing three-notes-per-string scales logical to work with, as each time you move from string to string you land on the beat. In his chat Rocco talks about various ways to use…

Warm up tip It’s always very good to warm up gradually when practising. Just 10-15 minutes of preparation can set you up for a really beneficial practice session, and protect you against injury. One (of many) possible approaches to warming up is to take a very small section of a piece you are working on, and play it extremely slowly, focusing on relaxed precision, clarity of tone and efficiency of motion. In this way you can improve your technique, warm up optimally and imprint a secure muscle memory in your repertoire.…

ABILITY RATING BRIAN KILLIAN ? GETTY IMAGES Hailing from Bridgeport in Connecticut, John Mayer attended the legendary Berklee College of music that has seen great guitarists such as Steve Vai, Mike Stern, John Scofield and John Petrucci pass through its doors. His first band was called the Low-Fi Masters but they didn’t last long and split up in 2001. Mayer continued to play locally, and after an appearance at the South By Southwest festival, signed a record deal with Aware Records, shortly after that moving over to Columbia. Now a living household legend for guitar players and music lovers alike, Mayer rose to stardom combining stunning guitar playing with infectious, melodic songwriting and buttery vocals to boot. His 2001 debut album, Room For Squares showcased this with hits like Why…

ABILITY RATING Welcome back to our exploration of authentic Delta blues fingerstyle guitar. In last month’s lesson we spent time developing the independence between your thumb and fingers, and took a very quick look at adding an alternating bassline. It is essential that you keep your foot tapping on the beat and concentrate on making sure your thumb stays in time whether you are playing just a single-note bass line or using the alternating bass technique that’s crucial to this style. One piece of advice that I took from Joe Pass a long time ago was that the bassline is always your most important concern. The bass provides a rhythmic foundation for the listener and ‘frames’ every melody note that you play. If the bass starts to get shaky then…

JESSE GRANT / GETTY IMAGES ABILITY RATING Welcome to this month’s column on developing fretboard fluency, with the seventh part in our series on the modes of Harmonic Minor. This scale consists of the formula: R-2- b 3-4-5- b 6-7, and can also, if you prefer, be visualised as a Natural Minor scale with a major 7th degree. Natural Minor scale: R-2- b 3-4-5- b 6- b 7 Harmonic Minor scale: R-2- b 3-4-5- b 6-7 Over the course of the series, we’ve looked at the five Harmonic Minor shapes based around the CAGED system, as well as the harmonised scale which consists of a family of seven diatonic chords, arpeggios and modes. More recently, we’ve been focusing on the fifth and most commonly used mode, know as the Phrygian…

JIMMY LESLIE “IS THERE A SOLO BY SOMEONE ELSE, THAT YOU WISH YOU’D PLAYED? ‘AMOS GARRETT’S SOLO ON MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS, BY MARIA MULDAUR’” GT: Do you have a type of pick that you can’t live without - make, shape, thickness? KM: Dunlop or Fender medium flatpick on acoustic. On a steel guitar, I use a .25 Brass and medium National thumb pick. GT: If you had to give up all your pedals but three, what would they be? KM: Tuner pedal, MXR six-band graphic EQ, and a clean boost. GT: Do you play another instrument well enough to do so in a band? If so what, and have you ever done it? “YOUR SINGLE BEST EVER GIG? ‘OPENING FOR BONNIE RAITT.’ AND WORST PLAYING NIGHTMARE? ‘GOING ON AFTER…

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 ’s main lessons have mag 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.…

As I write, January is upon us once more. And that can mean but one thing in the winter of our Brexit discontent: Strictly Come Dancing 2020, The Live Arena Tour, is about to roll out of town. However, before the suitcase zips, the big wheel turns and the thin bloke sings, there’s the small matter of second guessing the guitar logistics for this year’s hoofing hilarity. Dalton’s comparatively little known second law of partial financial pressures states that, “The necessity to purchase expensive new equipment is inversely proportional to the probability of it ever being needed again”. It begins at John Henry’s Rehearsal Studio And Correction Centre For Delinquent Boys, with a polite enquiry to maestro David Arch. “I noticed, upon perusal of our extensive dance programme, the words…

When Molly’s new album, When You’re Ready, landed in the office a few months ago, it brought our working day to an immediate standstill. We were amazed at the guitar playing from the first track onward and, still not quite believing what we’d just heard, jumped onto YouTube to see her in action. Her picking technique alone is enough to make players twice her age hang up their acoustics in shame – and that’s before you consider the purity of her voice and the power of her songwriting. After a brief dalliance with the piano and violin as a young child, things shifted gear for Molly dramatically when her father presented her with a Baby Taylor when she was eight years old. He showed her some chords and melodies, not…

BARRY BRECHEISEN / GETTY IMAGES ABILITY RATING Rival Sons are one of the newer bands that we’ve covered in this column. But like many of the more modern groups they draw influence from classic acts such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. They have also worked with A-list producers like Dave Cobb and Vance Powell, themsleves associated with artists including The White Stripes, Chris Stapleton and Arctic Monkeys. Guitarist Scott Holiday put Rival Sons together in his native California in 2009, having previously enjoyed a degree of solo success. He found guitarist and vocalist Jay Buchanan while searching Myspace; they were soon joined by drummer Mike Miley and, some time later, bassist Dave Beste. Right from the outset they worked hard playing locally, gaining a healthy fanbase and garnering critical…

MICK HUTSON / GETTY IMAGES ABILITY RATING Formed in the early ’80s in Manchester, The Stone Roses were innovators who helped put the ‘Madchester’ music scene on the cultural map. Even with only two albums to their name they’ve gone down in history as true musical pioneers, creating a unique sound that left a lasting impression. The Stone Roses were: Ian Brown (vocals), John Squire (guitar), Mani (bass) and Reni (drums). There have been a number of other members over the years, but this was the definitive line-up of the band. John Squire was and still is a phenomenal guitarist, whose ability to effortlessly fuse rhythm and lead lines is held in high regard. He was also the group’s principal songwriter. Squire used arpeggios, Hendrix inspired chordal playing, funky syncopated…

MORE OF THE WORLD’S BEST LESSONS… FEATURE #2 VIDEO PHILIP SAYCE Blues video masterclass Interview and lesson with this stunning modern blues guitarist who shows us some of his favourite turnaround licks! CLASSICAL TAB VIDEO DVORAK Humoresque Bridget Mermikides arranges and transcribes a superb work from the brilliant Czech composer. FEATURE #3 DADGAD ACOUSTIC Two great pieces to play Stuart Ryan brings you two fine acoustic pieces to get your teeth into. So re-tune your flat-top and let’s go! TECHNIQUE & THEORY GREAT STUFF TO LEARN Octaves and Diminished scale Learn some cool Diminished chords and licks in the Woodshed, and Wes-style octaves in this month’s Jazz. MORE GREAT LESSONS 30-Minute Lickbag Six more new licks to test you Joe Bonamassa Cop his high-octane blues style Iron Maiden…