Innehållsförteckning för December 2021 från Guitar Techniques

LAST WEEK I lost a bandmate, close friend and work colleague of over 35 years. Roger Newell joined Marty Wilde’s Wildcats when I’d been with them a few years. I knew a bit of his history from Eddie Allen, with whom he played in their rock band, and who I’d already conscripted into Marty’s outfit. Roger had joined Rick Wakeman after the legendary Yes keysman jammed with his band in a local pub. Rog’s first gig with the ‘English Rock Ensemble’ was at the Royal Festival Hall. Curtain up revealed an audience peppered with luminaries who’d come to see Rick in his new ‘solo’ guise - these included at least one Beatle! Rog played on all of Rick’s huge albums during his ‘70s tenure, while gigs included New York’s Madison…

GT: What do you think it is about guitar instrumentals that appeals to you? JB: The creativity in nuance that needs to happen to bring the melody alive. GT: What can an instrumental track provide a listener that a vocal song can’t? JB:The forced focus on melody without the distraction of lyrics. GT: What are the tendencies with instrumentals that you aim to embrace or avoid? JB: I embrace the fact that straying from or expanding from an exact melody is best, once it’s stated, to keep it interesting. If you’re doing an instrumental cover of a vocal song, it really brings into focus how strong the original melody is - or isn't. Loads of great vocal songs don’t cut it for instrumentals as you find it’s really just the…

This month we present our first video guitar duet. Jon Herington and Allen Hinds demonstrate their unique styles over the same colourful chords in Jason Sidwell’s track, Street Allure. LA session guru and GIT tutor Allen Hinds is no stranger to GT, having recorded two series for us (GT251-256, GT290-295). This time he’s joined by Steely Dan’s guitarist for 22 years, Jon Herington, making his GT debut. They do monthly online masterclasses together but this is the first time they have recorded as a duo, so we’re proud to present them here. Street Allure has obvious harmonic and stylistic references to R&B and soul music ranging from Steely Dan through to Stevie Wonder, where rich chord changes provide the backdrop to our guests’ soloing. The tempo is 115 bpm with…

(from Lute Suite No.1 BWV996) ach’s 1st Lute Suite is perhaps best known for its infamous Bourrée, as played around the world by classical and electric guitarists alike. The suite itself is a six-movement work and features this evocative Allemande as its second movement; an Allemande being a type of instrumental dance common during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The suite was in fact written for harpsichord as well as the lesser-spotted lute-harpsichord, though today it is commonly known simply as a Lute suite. The original handwritten manuscript for the suite exists in two editions both written during Bach’s lifetime, however neither of them were by Bach’s hand. The earliest was written by his colleague and relative JG Walther, with a later version penned by a student of Bach’s -…

EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 1 SCOTTY MOORE CD TRACK 37 This lick explores Scotty’s use of two-string double-stops (diads), to create an ascending melodic phrase. In this case, we target inversions of an E or E7 chord. Fret each note on the second string with your second finger. This helps to maintain continuity while sliding to each new fretboard position. For a great authentic rock and roll tone, select your bridge pickup, add a light amount of gain from your amp and use a quick, slapback delay. EASY LICKS EXAMPLE 2 MATTHEW FOLLOWILL CD TRACK 38 This Kings Of Leon style phrase features a melody played along the second string while the open third string thickens the line and adds texture. During the last two bars add the first string to bring further…

Heart was one of the earliest bands to put women at the forefront as songwriters, singers and instrumentalists. Formed in Seattle in 1967 by guitarist Roger Fisher and bass player Steve Fossen, and initially named The Army, the band changed its name to Heart and was soon joined by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson on lead vocals, and guitar and vocals respectively. Howard Leese joined on guitar, and drummer Michael Derosier also. It was this line-up that had initial success in the 1970s and was also the Heart version inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2013. Initially the band blended rock and heavy metal influences with folk, while lead singer Ann also played flute. Heart had reasonable success with songs such as Barracuda during this time,…

When seeking picking inspiration we often turn towards legends from the rock, metal or jazz-fusion worlds. However, check out US bluegrass sensation Molly Tuttle and you’ll hear one of the best pickers around today. Tuttle’s main focus is a technique called ‘crosspicking’ which is one of the standard picking systems used in bluegrass and country. The technique, as the name suggests, involves picking across the strings, generally picking one or two notes per string. The idea is to replicate fiddle and banjo tunes on guitar and this often means playing in the open position and using chord shapes and open-string scales as the basis for what you are doing. Crosspicking is a tricky technique to master, for many reasons, but watch Molly Tuttle at work and you’ll be amazed at…

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…

Pretty much every week I get a message or email from someone asking how long they should stay learning a particular thing. I get asked so often that it’s obviously something that concerns many people and might perhaps resonate with you… it’s certainly good food for thought for me too - exploring these sorts of things often brings some interesting thought trains. In these days of student-led learning, it is certainly tricky to decide what to practise and how long to work on it for. It’s exactly the kind of thing you would hope to get guidance from a good teacher, so on one’s own it can be tough. The first thing I think we need to think about is the goal and if it is an achievable thing. While…

1 Slow Jazzy Blues (A) We start with a fun slow jazzy blues jam in A. Great for anyone wanting to add a little jazz to their blues playing or work on crossing over into more straight-ahead jazz territory. You’ll get off to a great start mixing A Minor Pentatonic (A-C-D-E-G) and A Major Pentatonic (A-B-C#-E-F#). 2 Easy Reggae Blues (Em) This jam is in good old E minor and you can use E Minor Pentatonic (E-G-A-B-D) and E Minor scale (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D) throughout the progression. 3 A Mixolydian Jam This two-chord vamp (A-G) was specifically designed for exploring A Mixolydian mode (A-B-C#-D-EF#-G) in a blues context. I recommend switching between A Mixolydian (A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G), A Minor Pentatonic (A-C-D-E-G) and A Minor Blues scale (A-C-D-D#-E-G) to really explore the space where Mixolydian…

John Mayer has a remarkable career as a singer, songwriter, record producer and of course, guitarist. Since the release of his first album, Room For Squares in 2001, his music and collaborations have spanned a whole gamut of styles within rock, pop and blues. In an era of big label hyperproduction his huge commercial success with an improvisational, stripped down and direct style - deeply informed by a wide range of artists – is both refreshing and impressive. There are few if any multi-Grammy award winning pop vocalists who can - in their 20s and at the height of pop superstardom - deliver a full blues concert in an exposed trio format and release it as an album (listen to 2005’s Try! with Pino Palladino on bass and Steve Jordan…

I introduced myself to Jon many years ago. I told him I was a fan so we emailed then when he would come to LA with Steely Dan or whoever we’d meet up. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 I started what was then called the ‘sanity masterclass’, just to have a guitar community hang. Around that time I had just finished my latest album and wanted to get some opinions so I sent some tracks to Jon. We talked more and got along well. I thought more about the online masterclasses and decided there is strength in numbers. So I told him I had an idea; we were to send out project backing tracks a few minutes long and have a limited class of students which send…

If, like many of us, you spend time on Youtube watching music based videos, it’s likely you’ll have come across ‘neo-oul’. It’s been of considerable interest to many guitarists the world over as it seems new, can be quite flashy and presents a chordal and soloing sophistication that intrigues. If you’ve been through bouts of country, jazz or even metal study, it’s a vibrant style many progressive guitarists are wanting an insight into. As far as guitar goes, neo soul has crowned Chalmers Edward ‘Spanky’ Alford as its leading light, a US guitarist who worked with soul artists like D’Angelo and Tony Toni Tone plus recording with Joss Stone, Mary J Blige and Raphael Saadiq. His last performance aged 50 was as a guest for a John Mayer trio gig…

Brought to you by… Rory Gallagher is one of the most important guitarists in blues and rock. He was a catalyst in influencing many great guitarists, including the legendary Brian May. Starting from his humble origins of the city of Cork in Ireland, Rory took the world by storm, moving the likes of Jimi Hendrix to consider him as one of the best guitarists the world had ever seen. After spending his formative years on the Irish showband circuit, Rory was hungry to set his horizons way beyond this, and set up his power trio, Taste. This band would see Rory hit the UK scene and begin a long term residency at the Marquee club - the go-to venue for live music and serious up and coming talent, and frequented…

Jennifer Batten is best known as a session and solo guitarist, and was famously Michael Jackson’s axe-woman in the late 90s period. Her unique eight-finger tapping technique is the stuff of legend and effortlessly spans the fretboard with complex and intricate octa-dactyl lines, fusing rock, and jazz sensibilities garnered from her time at GIT under the tutelage of the great Joe Diorio. Jennifer also attributes being inspired to explore the world of tapping by her GIT classmate Steve Lynch and his instructional book, The Right Touch. In 1992 Jennifer Batten’s Above Below and Beyond album was released and is chock full of jaw-dropping lines, harmonic squeals, whammy bar tricks and Vai-esqe riffs. The album opener is a rocked up version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight Of The Bumblebee, which we have adapted…

Like most jazz musicians schooled in bebop, a prominent feature of Oscar’s playing was his use of chromaticism and enclosures to build complex harmonic lines and motifs – both tried and tested devices. They can be used to create beautiful lines that weave around the underlying harmony, sometimes sounding as if they will never resolve. First, we’ll look at some licks using chromatic approach notes, then move on to enclosures. Finally, we’ll look at some licks that blend the two approaches in the technique tips that follow. A worthwhile exercise is to learn the main melodies to some of Charlie Parker’s tunes (Anthropology, Donna Lee, and Scrapple From The Apple are particularly good examples). Parker’s beautifully formed melodic lines are a masterclass in the use of chromaticism, and you can…

ERIC CLAPTON THE LADY IN THE BALCONY: LOCKDOWN SESSIONS Mercury Studios 8/10 “This one’s for Peter…” Clapton announces as he launches into an acoustic version of Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman on this 17-track lockdown album, recorded at Cowdray House, West Sussex last year after EC’s Albert Hall concerts were cancelled. Here he’s back doing what he does best in the company of Steve Gadd (drums), Chris Stainton (keys) and Nathan East (bass and vocals). In essence the album could be seen as a sort of Unplugged II as most of the tracks are acoustic, save for three where Eric switches back to electric. Many of the songs will be familiar to fans – Bell Bottom Blues, Key To The Highway, Tears In Heaven and Layla to name a few –…

FEATURE #2 VIDEO KIRK FLETCHER The Get Down This fantastic modern blues guitarist joins GT for a superlative video where he plays and explains a fabulous solo. CLASSICAL TAB NIEL GOW Lament (To His Second Wife) Declan Zapala brings you this beautiful air written for fiddle but transcribed for solo classical guitar. FEATURE #3 WES MONTGOMERY Using octaves in jazz and blues John Wheatcroft delivers another great lesson showing how jazz meets blues, from Wes to Jimi and beyond. PIANO LICKS FOR GUITAR ULF WAKENIUS Oscar Peterson piano ideas The Swedish jazz guitarist completes his series showing how Oscar style piano phrases can work on guitar. Check out the fusion side of…. GARY MOORE! From 1975-78 Gary Moore played in Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum II. Gary was on blistering form, showing…

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.…

You won’t be surprised to learn that I didn’t know much about Life, The Universe and Everything at the age of 10. Of course, the fact that Douglas Adams had yet to write the eponymous third instalment of his ‘six part trilogy’ may have been a contributory factor. My primordial preferences consisted mostly of egg and chips, kicking a ball about erratically with my mates and the noise that Hank Marvin made as Wonderful Land beamed down through the transistors of my tiny Kent radio. Egg and chips was favourite, to be fair. But some time after I had nagged my parents to fund lessons, I began to realise that there might be two distinct worlds operating in the guitar galaxy. Gorgeous radiophonic tones assailed my ears, played with an…

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In the early 1930s, guitar teacher Ralph Hamilton took on a pair of students, the two teenaged friends taking lessons in basic theory and reading skills. Ralph could not have imagined just how monumentally important this pair, Aaron Thibeaux ‘T-Bone’ Walker and Charles Henry Christian, would become in the worlds of electric blues and electric jazz guitar respectively. T-Bone was one of the first significant blues guitarists to take to the amplified electric guitar, with a style that combined technical mastery, melodic ingenuity and jazz inspired sophistication. Walker’s style possessed an uncanny balance of classy melodic phrasing with urgent raw blues emotion, with a great command of both tone and timing. If this were not enough then we should also consider his compositional flair, his soulful voice and his dynamic…

For the last in the present series of The Rhythm Roost, here’s a chord progression that’s typical of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker and Luther Vandross who favour rich jazzy chords in their compositions. While this example is based in the key of B Major, each return to that chord sounds more jubilant due to the writing technique of using parallel key chords. In short, the B Major chord is from B Major scale (B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A#) and most of the remaining chords (Gmaj7, F#m7, Em7) are from the parallel key of B Natural Minor (B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A). The remaining chord of Cmaj7 is a b2 above Bmaj9 and a common replacement in soul music for the V7 (here, that would be F#7). Check out your Stevie Wonder albums where you’ll hear…

Missed one of our recent fabulous issues? Get one now while stocks last. NOVEMBER GT327 GROOVE GIANTS Using ideas from 21 great groove guitarists, take your rhythm playing to the next level. Joel Hoekstra plays and explains a great rock solo. Learn a Celtic fingerstyle piece, a Fenando Sor study, SRV blues, Paul Gilbert rock, & more! 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…

At only 23 years old, Melanie Faye has a bright future ahead of her. With a background in jazz guitar from her studies at the Nashville School of the Arts, it was this experience, along with her often cited influences of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Gales, that has helped Melanie find her personal voice on the guitar, fusing jazz with R&B and Neo-Soul. Melanie Faye first found success in 2017 after one of her Instagram videos went viral, helped by the artist SZA who shared some of Faye’s content to her millions of social media followers. Since then, she has played with many artists, including a stunning performance with Masego as part of the Tiny Desk Concert series. On top of this, Faye took part in a series of demonstrations…

In this month’s column we’re looking at playing over the IV chord in a blues. Many players recommend using the tonic (the note of the key centre) Major Pentatonic over the I chord and the tonic Minor Pentatonic over the IV chord. This outlines the Major 3rd and the flat 7th of the IV. The flat 7th of the IV is the bluesy Minor 3rd of the home key. The problem with this approach is that in the tonic Minor Pentatonic, we have the 4th degree of the IV chord. This is a pretty nasty sound when held over a Dominant 7th chord. American theory speak terms it an ‘avoid note’, meaning that you shouldn’t hang on to it. But passing through that note is very common, in fact it’s…

DREAM THEATER A VIEW FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD Inside Out Music 9/10 View From The Top Of The World is Dream Theater’s 15th studio album. With seven tracks, the one hour 11 minutes album is what we expect from the US prog metallers; great band interplay, angular rhythms, fantastical lyrics and blazing solo passages. There’s a fine art to guitar and keyboard arranging which Petrucci and Jordan Rudgress have crafted via unison lines, swapping lead/comp roles and timbre balancing from soft to aggressive. Opener Alien has a frenetic, all blazing intro with melodic shred solos featuring Petrucci’s Musicman and Mesa Boogie gear before Rudgress goes ‘Jan Hammer on steroids’. Answering The Call starts with low B moshing and precise 16th lines before James LaBrie’s vocals enter. Great wah solo…