Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Guitar Player

I GET INVITED ON A FAIR AMOUNT OF MUSICindustry panels—thanks solely to my title here, as I can’t imagine I can do anything to educate a public forum, except display how loud and profane and impassioned the product of an Italian upbringing in San Francisco during the Summer of Love can turn out. Lately, most of these discussions have revolved around streaming audio and all the online resources available for musicians to market their music. I usually end up being “that guy”—which I truly hate—who poo-poos the technological architecture and youthful energy of these endeavors. I’m not some cranky pants who misses the old-school label monopolies (horrors!)—it just bothers me when anyone—or anything—over simplifies a complex issue. The web offers access to all, but, as a result, it’s brutally hard…

WHEN I BEGAN TOURING WITH JEFFERson Starship in 2012, Paul Kantner taught me that you always take a stand for what you hold to be sacred. He was told to stop touring, stop smoking, stop playing his Rickenbacker 12-strings so damn loud, stop his on-again/off-again love affair with “Vitamin V” (vodka), or, in the ’80s, stop fighting a move towards commerciality, but he did not back down one micrometer. There was no surrender in this man. He also had an indefatigable curiosity. Aside from claiming to need a daily power nap—a need that, coincidentally, always seemed to present itself during soundchecks—Kantner was a tireless musical explorer until the very end. “We had the fortune—or misfortune—of discovering Fender Twin Reverbs and LSD in the same week,” Kantner famously said of Jefferson…

ONE OF MY FAVORITE SONGS ON LOU REED’S BERLIN ALBUM is “Sad Song.” That entire album, in my opinion, is one of the most brilliantly written pieces of art in rock history, so it’s difficult to have a favorite song. But there is something about “Sad Song”—lyrically and musically—that really makes it genius. Playing it years later with Lou live, and with a real children’s choir singing behind me, came close to bringing me to tears many times. As I’ve mentioned before, [producer] Bob Ezrin had this ability to hear the final completed album in his head before we even started recording. But he always allowed some wiggle room so that spontaneous things could happen when the players got in the room together. A major part of producing—especially in those…

DAVID WANTED TO PUT A BAND TOGETHER, and I happened to be there. I used Fender amps in the beginning, but for the Ziggy Stardust days, I switched to Marshalls. That’s when it started getting noisy! But, often, I wouldn’t even think of what I was plugging into. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter to me at all, as long as it works. I remember playing on the road once with a guitar that had a cracked neck, and we got gaffer’s tape to fix the thing up. So there I was onstage playing this axe with gaffer’s tape. I don’t know how the hell I did it. If something went wrong with the guitar, I’d just ignore it. I’d sort of bash it about a bit, tune it up, and never…

DAVID PHONED ME ABOUT COMING over to Paris to play lead guitar on his latest album. I had just finished touring for many years with Beggars Opera [a progressive rock band Gardiner founded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1969], so I readily agreed. By that time, I had been playing professionally—meaning “for money”—for 15 years, ranging from the music of Henry Mancini to Hank Williams. Back then, my own preference, with regard to guitarists, was Hank Marvin. He had immaculate timing, and I used to play most of his recordings after school. First, on an old acoustic, and then on a Futurama III—which was basically a Stratocaster copy with the advantage of independent pickup selection. In all other respects, it was inferior to the Strat. When I eventually got my Stratocaster,…

I MET DAVID BOWIE IN OCTOBER 1979, while on tour with Lou Reed in London. During that tour, I was using a Roland GR-500 guitar synth as my main instrument. David attended one of Lou’s concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon and expressed interest in working together. In late 1978 through 1979, I had been recording experimental tapes with the idea of layering sustained guitar tracks to build up textures. I referred to this idea of multitrack layering as “guitarchitecture.” The core idea was to extend the guitars sonic vocabulary. Soon after meeting David, I sent him a cassette with four experimental guitarchitecture tracks. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from David’s assistant asking if I would be interested in working on David’s next album, Scary Monsters, which…

DAVID DECIDED HE WANTED TO PLAY Low in its entirety on the 2002 Heathen tour, and, as musical director, it was my job to arrange its presentation for the stage—as well as helping with the set list, running the rehearsals, making sure everyone had charts or the necessary gear, cueing endings and transitions during the show, and so on. As Low was such a dense record, I decided the most accurate and expeditious way to figure out how to represent it live would be to get the original multitrack masters and transfer them into a DAW. Then, I could isolate individual tracks and decide how to divide up parts based on each guitarist’s style, technique, and use of effects. In this case, those guitar players were Earl Slick, Gerry Leonard, and…

BOWIE DIDN’T REALLY HAVE ANY GEAR at the studio—except for one electric guitar and one acoustic. I used the acoustic—I think it was a Yamaha—on “Dollar Days.” I know he played those bizarre “shrapnel” guitars on “Lazarus,” but I don’t know what he used to get that great sound. He mainly sang with us in the live room, which really helped the energy of the performances. My guitars for the session were my Ibanez AS-50 semi-hollowbody and a Fernandes Strat body with an ESP neck, as well as pre-CBS Fender pickups in the middle and bridge positions. I ran my 1965 Fender Deluxe Amp and 1967 Fender Princeton— modded with a larger transformer, 6L6s, and a 12" Electro-Voice speaker—in stereo. I split the signal with my Audio Upgradesmodded Lexicon LXP-1…

FRESH GEAR FINDS FROM THE WINTER NAMM SHOW UNPLUGS FOR THE FIRST TIME ON ACOUSTIC CLASSICS & RAW TOUR CLASSIC COLUMN DAN CRARY FLATPICKING WORKSHOP FORTY YEARS LATER, FRAMPTON COMES Alive! is still one of the best selling live recordings of all time, and while the acoustic guitar has always been by Peter Frampton’s side, Acoustic Classics [RED] is his first truly acoustic album. It features intimate reworkings of his arena hits, plus one new ballad, “Down to Me.” Acoustic Classics is not simply a strippeddown band recording. It’s mostly Frampton and his acoustics—a rhythm guitar or two and a lead overdub—and a sole vocal. The listening experience is about as close as it comes to being serenaded personally. Frampton’s playing flows fluently throughout, and the variety of exquisite tones…

GUITAR PLAYER, Guitar World, Guitar Aficionado, Guitar Center, Sterling By Music Man, and Dunlop recently joined Ernie Ball in supporting its worldwide contest, the Joe Bonamassa Experience. Ernie Ball’s unique program was perfect for our 2016 Play It Forward initiative, as Bonamassa shared his guitar-collecting stories, performance tips, and even some of his vintage guitars with four grand-prize winners during a private gettogether at Guitar Center Hollywood on January 29, 2016. The event was an extremely cool way for a guitar star to “play it forward” by inspiring others about guitars, guitarcraft, and making music—and all up close and personal. Set up in a “guitar-lust line” onstage in the Vintage Room was Bonamassa’s 1951 Fender Nocaster, 1955 Fender Stratocaster, 1959 Gibson Les Paul, 1958 Gibson Flying V, and other collector’s dream…

SOUND OFF! GET EXCLUSIVE NEWS. COMMENT. CRITIQUE. SHARE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-NEWSLETTER. FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG TWITTER.COM/GUITARPLAYERNOW GUITARPLAYER.COM MICHAEL MOLENDA, Editor In Chief mmolenda@musicplayer.com ART THOMPSON, Senior Editor athompson@musicplayer.com MATT BLACKETT, Associate Editor mblackett@musicplayer.com KEVIN OWENS, Managing Editor kowens@musicplayer.com JIMMY LESLIE, Editor, Frets section j@jimmyleslie.com PAUL HAGGARD, Art Director phaggard@musicplayer.com…

TONE WIZARDS CURTIS FORNADLEY We first met Curtis Fornadley at one of our Guitar Superstar competitions. He has turned his quest for tone into a cool book where he picks the brains of players and builders to try to figure out what makes great tone great. Interviews include Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, John Suhr, Carl Verheyen, Bob Bradshaw, Joe Satriani, and others. Come on, tone freaks! —MB BANG ZOOM CRAZY…HELLO CHEAP TRICK Stomping drums, crazy-huge guitars, great melodies—I break into a feel-good-all-over smile whenever I hear Cheap Trick. This is music that transcends style or cool. It’s simply sonic f**king joy. Happily, the boys haven’t lost a step since their ’70s glory days. These songs sound like they were made by teenagers with something to prove, but filtered through experienced…

MUSICIANS USUALLY HAVE A SENSE OF humor, but Webb Wilder is among the few who bring that humor into their music. “I was always the class clown,” says the Nashville-based guitarist. “Little Richard, the Beatles, the Stones, the Faces, and other people I admire have the humor thing.” Born John Webb McMurry in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Wilder’s arch persona debuted in 1992, in a homemade short film, Webb Wilder Private Eye. “It gave me another reason to wear a hat—in addition to losing my hair,” he explains. Wilder’s music embodies the anarchic rockabilly spirit without any retro trappings. Instead, his recordings and live performances serve up the same pastiche of American roots music that created rockabilly in the first place: country, R&B, and blues. His latest, Mississippi Moderne [Landslide Records], is…

IT’S FUNNY. WHEN I DID DAVID LIVE, all I had was my ’65 Gibson SG Junior, an MXR Phase 45, and a late-’60s Marshall half-stack. That was it. I used, abused, and cast off tons of gear as my time with David continued, but my 1968 Gibson J-45—which I bought new from a mom and pop music store in 1970—is on every Bowie record. It’s also on [John Lennon’s] Double Fantasy. It’s just a magic piece of wood, and it feels and sounds great. David never asked me to play certain things. It was always, “Slicky, do what you do.” And this is where part of David Bowie’s genius lies—when he picked musicians to work with, he picked them because of what they did and how they sounded. He didn’t…

RIGHT TRACK RECORDING WAS ON A typically worn-down part of 48th street in Manhattan. From the outside, it could have been a shoe repair shop. It was there on a cold night in January 1990, I found myself standing on one side of an AKG C-24 microphone, headphones on, and about to sing the first verse of a song called “Pretty Pink Rose” [from Belew’s solo album, Young Lions, released in 1990 while he was guitarist and musical director for Bowie’s Sound + Vision tour]. On the other side of the microphone was another singer with his headphones on. It was at that very moment my mind and body chose to fully realize I was about to sing a duet with David Bowie! Blood rushed to my face like an…

THE ENTIRE RECORDING EXPERIENCE of Let’s Dance helped a whole bunch, and in a lot of ways. I learned a lot about playing— particularly in terms of recording techniques— and about business. It was real fun doing the record, trying to see where my style would fit in. It was a pretty open thing, and more an experience of looking at music in different ways—of looking at big arrangements and fitting the parts in. I learned a lot about how songs are built. But the Bowie sessions were easy, because I was basically free to do what I wanted. From what I understand, Bowie was looking for somebody who played this style anyway, and I was the one he picked. Most of the time, he just told me to plug…

WOW. DAVID’S GONE. I CAN BARELY speak about the years during which I worked on countless tracks with Mr. B., but I’ll say what I can. First and foremost, David was a man whom I really loved and respected, and who was my friend. There are the richest of colors there that can’t ever fade. David first invited me to work with him in 2000, and Heathen began in summer 2001. From the beginning, he was open to whatever sounds and parts I thought suitable for most of his music. If he had direction to offer, it would be simultaneously quite clear, emotionally speaking, and yet highly interpretable— which I believe was his intention. The creative doors opened between David and me during one of the first tracks I worked…

WHEN WE LOOK AT A SCALE, WE tend to see its use for single notes only. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is also possible to stack the notes of a scale to make chords. Remember, a chord is many single notes played together at a time. However, due to the dimensions of the guitar, notes not only go from left to right, but also north to south, which can make it seem a little overwhelming at first, but don’t let that scare you. Being able to breeze through a bunch of complex chords at breakneck speed like a great jazz guitarist is a daunting task, but we can all get comfortable with some simple two- and three-note voicings. It is essential as guitarists that we learn our…

GUITARS 1 Aclam Guitars 20:14 If you’re a mad scientist who is never satisfied with the construction of your guitar, boy, do I have an instrument for you. The Acalm 20:14 is like a lab rat for your flights of fancy. Almost every element of the guitar can be easily user customized—even if you’re a bit nervous around tools. You can change the soundboard for different timbres, swap out pickups by loosening screws and using the quick-connect system, adjust the neck angle or try another neck entirely, try various bridges and tailpieces, and even insert a tuner into the headstock. It’s like a super-cool Lego set for guitarists. Price TBA. aclamguitars.cat —MM 2 D’Angelico Master Builder Series Teardrop New Yorker Peter Girardi of the Teardrops asked John D’Angelico to build…

“EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN” HAS BEEN a dominant theme in guitar manufacturing for a long time, but the new take evident at the 2016 Winter NAMM Show was, “How old can you go?” Several major manufacturers introduced models with designs heralding back to Delta blues days, and anniversary models were abundant. Fishman is celebrating 35 years of capturing acoustic sounds. Boutique pioneer Santa Cruz Guitars is a healthy 40 years old. Ovation and Yamaha Guitars are both celebrating the halfcentury mark, and the dreadnought body style is still as relevant as ever 100 years after being introduced by Martin. Taylor guitar designer Andy Powers continues his impressive line-byline remodeling job of the company’s acoustics, and electric-guitar icon Fender is taking acoustic guitars more seriously than ever before. Community vibes…

No Shoulder Strap! The "Hip Strap" guitar strap Slinger Straps, LLC. Available Now Slinger Straps specializes in a variety of ergonomic guitar straps designed to reduce or remove the shoulder weight of your guitar to help prevent the aches and pains standard guitar straps can cause. MSRP: $29.95 www.slingerstraps.com info@slingerstraps.com Mona Lisa Overdrive L0/rez Available Now The first dirty masterpiece from rising Brooklyn-based pedal effects company – L0/rez. A carefully designed distortion / overdrive & rotary effect that cuts through the soundscape like a burning laser. With the pulse of the digital age in its throbbing LFO, it’s like stepping onto a merry-go-round with a diesel engine. “Decidedly impressed... A wonderful pedal for the sonically adventurous.” – The Tone Report MSRP $200 www.L0rez.com AmpliFire Atomic Amplifiers Available Now AmpliFire is…

MATT BLACKETT’S MUSIC-READING MISSION Thanks so much for this. I have been playing guitar since age 14 (I’m 64 now). Although I know how to read music, no one has ever explained where the written notes are in relation to the fretboard until Matt’s column. Like most guitar players, I’ve learned to play through experience and what sounds good—which is not bad, but it’s not enough. While I do feel that tablature has been extremely helpful, it does not provide time signatures, and I have the biggest problem with that. I’m not a beginner, but this is one series I’m going to read, absorb, and use. — LOU CHAUVIN A big “thank you” to Matt Blackett for his reading-music column. I have been waiting for this for a long time.…

IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO discover some new guitar music that you can possibly feel passionate and excited about— and your old, scratched copy of the Allman Brothers At Fillmore East is feeling like an all too familiar bedtime story—I suggest you treat yourself to the music of one of the founding fathers of classical guitar: Francisco Tarrega. Tarrega was born in 1852, and was proficient on both the piano and the guitar by his early teens. Tarrega’s humble beginnings included running away from home at ten years old, living with gypsies, and being taught the guitar by a blind guitarist in his village. With a life as fascinating and compelling as his music, Tarrega’s compositions express joy and sadness—sometimes with a yin/yang compositional approach— and his music is as beautiful…

FROM A REPAIR POINT OF VIEW, finishes generally come in two categories. The first is a nitrocellulose lacquer (or shellac style) with which new finish can be melted with solvent and blended in sometimes seamlessly. The second is a urethane (or polyester style), which will not melt or change with solvents. To find out what finish you have, find an inconspicuous spot of finish—such as under the control plate, pickguard, or tuning machine—take a Q-tip dipped in lacquer thinner and wipe it a little. If the finish softens or melts, you have lacquer. Let’s say your beautiful old lacquer-finished guitar has a nick in the finish, and there is a small chip where the color is missing, and you want to fix it. Here is a color trick: I keep…

YOU ALWAYS KNOW A RECORD IS good when the songs start sticking in your head on the first spin, and Sugarland, by ex-Dwight Yoakam sideman Brian Whelan, catches the ear with tunes that sit comfortably in the alt-country camp, while simultaneously steering in a heavier, more guitar-forward direction than what’s typically heard from the Americana scene these days. Whelan’s post-Yoakam stylistic transition would seem logical enough, but then you can’t overlook the effect of his tenure with the Broken West, an indie band that churned out hit-worthy pop-rock tunes that had little in common with the ’50s/’60s honky-tonk country that informs Yoakam’s style. However it happened, Whelan turned his direction as a solo artist toward forging an honest sound that reflects his love of ’50s-era rock, while mixing those signatures…

MY PERSONAL TECHNIQUE OF PRODUCING— no matter who it is—is to focus on the artist’s direction first, and what I’m supposed to achieve. I lock down the “DHM”—what my partner Bernard Edwards [Chic bassist and coproducer] would call the “Deep Hidden Meaning.” Once I know what the song is really trying to say, then I switch from that superfocused guy, and I become like an entertainer. I’m trying to have fun, to be your coach and your rooting section, and make you feel comfortable. So David would have an idea of what he wanted, and then it would be my responsibility to make sure we got that. I always record live in the studio, and David would sing a scratch vocal, or he’d have an idea of the song that…

WORKING WITH DAVID WAS THE HIGHlight of my guitar-playing career without a doubt. He taught me so much about how to play rock and roll by being by his side. It was almost like getting a transmission from a higher being. He taught me to stay rooted in the storm, but also how to soar and drive off the cliff at full speed, and even land safely. I did two big tours with him over the years. One tour was where we played the Heathen and Low albums back to back, in their entirety. This was a real challenge and an education to decipher, as well as execute those wonderful guitar parts live, from the unmistakable Brian Eno processed sounds to complex loops from David Torn. I ended up then…

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WHEN ENGINEER BUD HENRIKSEN retired and decided to focus on playing jazz guitar, he spent years searching for the right amp, but he couldn’t settle on one he liked. So, in 2005, he began to design and manufacture his own amp, the aptly named JazzAmp. Apparently, other players shared and appreciated Bud’s tonal desires, and Henriksen amps earned a following and a reputation for remarkable sound. Sadly, in 2009, Bud passed away at just 64 from cancer. But the Henriksen story didn’t end—or stagnate—with its founder’s death. After Peter Henriksen was going through some of his dad’s things, he found an old 6” speaker, which triggered the development of a new, super-portable amplifier and a vision that extended beyond jazz players. Named after his father, the Bud packs 120 watts…

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