Guitar Techniques

When I started out on guitar, it was mostly learning by ear. Mum had a Beatles songbook but I was more into The Stones and so I spent hours with the record player trying to figure out where to put my fingers to make those sounds. I never really thoug

LET’S LOOK at what most people do. This kind of musical scenario is quite common in the stylistic area between funk, soul and old-style R&B, so we’ll take an imaginary James Brown groove, suggesting E Major or E7 chords. We don’t want to clump around

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. Tony Hadley’s longstanding guitarist Richie has worked with everyone from Roger Daltrey to Ronan Ke

Harmonics are basically ‘overtones’ (additional musical frequencies normally higher than the original note) that resonate naturally around a note when a string is plucked. On a guitar, we can pinpoint some of these and play them as isolated notes in

Alex used his Kiesel‘Little Bastard’headless guitar (bridge pickup) into a Fender Deluxe Reverb ’65 Reissue amplifier. His rich distortion is courtesy of a Tube Screamer set at 8 into a RAT pedal set at 3 for extra colour. Reverb is an MXR pedal set

This month we are looking at another tastefully crafted piece of playing, courtesy of fusion wizard Alex Sill. For his solo on Digging Deep, Alex favours a combination of sophisticated phrasing, clever note choices and a modern sounding, overdriven t

THIS MONTH’S LICK is a fiery ascending idea that has been partly inspired by Jeff Beck and John Petrucci. It relies heavily on open-string legato and, with the exception of the final five beats, the whole phrase is played entirely on the fourth and t

As we’re dealing with musical concepts here you can choose any tone you like, although for classic jazz the consensus is to select the warm tone of a neck position humbucker and pick closer to the fingerboard. For the blues examples, consider adding

As you can see with some of the options listed in the examples accompanying this article, there are other Pentatonic choices available, rather than just the regular Major (R-2-3-5-6) and Minor (R- b 3-4-5- b 7) varieties. However, there are some rath

As we’ve seen in previous months, the connections between the musical approaches adopted by blues and jazz guitar players are often greater than the differences. There are huge amounts of crossover, in terms of note selection, rhythmic phrasing and e

I always find the most beneficial practice is produced when I warm up nice and slowly. Very often my warm-up will consist of a tricky passage of a piece I am currently working on but broken right down into its technical components. Then I will repeat

Here we return to the work of musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) with the second movement Romance (Andante) from his Serenade no.13 for Strings in G Major K525, as . I arranged the famous first movement back in GT241, but this second

More than a year has now passed since Covid-19 entered all our lives, changing pretty much everything we did before. From a music perspective, a gig, an open mic event, a recording or an exam were typical contexts for gauging musical enjoyment and de

I’ve used a biting overdriven humbucker tone and a swung boogie feel for this issue’s Rhythm Roost offering. When using overdrive it’s very easy for chords to lose clarity, so two aspects that will help are: 1) reduce low-string playing (let the bass

Kurt Cubain’s riffs were drenched in vibe and feel. So, this riff uses downstrokes to maintain drive and intensity throughout the entire sequence. Make sure each bend reaches the intended pitch before returning to the original, fretted note. This cre

BB is known for playing Gibson thinline semis, primarily the top-of-the-range ES-355 . Gibson created BB’s own‘Lucille’model, after the woman who lost her life in a fire at an early gig. For years he used Gibson/Moog Lab Series amps although was happ

When we think of electric blues there are few guitarists that spring more readily to mind than Albert, Freddie, and BB King. Of the three, BB is considered not only a forefather, but also a cornerstone in the development of electric blues. Music icon

Leslie West was for a long time associated with the Gibson Les Paul Junior and played Sunn and Marshall amps for much of his career. Aim for a thick tone that is in equal parts classic rock and early heavy metal. There is a fair amount of both preamp

This month we look at the style of Leslie West, lead guitarist and founding member of the American rock band, Mountain. Leslie sadly passed away towards the end of last year. He had formed Mountain with bassist Felix Pappalardi who was at the time pr

Caroline 10/10 On this new project the neo-progmeister embraces electronica while documenting a digital dystopia. Fear not, however; The Future Bites is as groundbreaking and original as anything Steven Wilson has produced previously. True to say th

Editor Neville Marten neville.marten@futurenet.com Art Editor David Dyas david.dyas@futurenet.com Senior Music Editor Jason Sidwell jason.sidwell@futurenet.com Music engraving Chris Francis CD mastering Adam Crute Production, animated tab & audio syn

Formed in 2002, Arctic Monkeys is one of those bands that emerged as a result of MySpace, a social media platform that preceded Facebook and gave artists the opportunity to promote their music on the internet. The band recorded a number of demos, and