Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 130 i Australian Guitar

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS A VIDEO INTERVIEW PHIL STACK (THIRSTY MERC) In this interview, Steve Flack goes head to head with much-accomplished Australian jazz and rock musician Phil Stack. Stack is the founding bass guitarist of the pop-rock band Thirsty Merc, which formed in 2002 and has released four acclaimed studio albums. He is also the regular double bassman for jazz musician James Morrison, and is the leader of the jazz rock ensemble Phil Stack Trio. In November 2008, Phil was awarded first place in the National Jazz Awards held at the Melbourne Jazz Festival. His records have also won Stack praise from industry stalwarts and critics alike. In 2005, Thirsty Merc were nominated for a whopping four ARIA Awards; three years later, their smash hit “20 Good Reasons” was nominated for…

EPIPHONE G400 FADED RRP: $799 • australismusic.com.au Introduced in 1961 as a replacement for the Les Paul, the SG (or ‘Solid Guitar’) quickly became iconic, known for its low frets and fast action. Designed with a double cutaway, the lightweight wonder was adopted by top players like Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Angus Young, and countless others as the preferred option for live and studio work. Based on the 1962 SG, fitted with two humbuckers, and ‘aged’ fingerboard, the G-400 is the arguably one of the best value guitars available today. YAMAHA REVSTAR RS502TBL RRP: $999.99 • au.yamaha.com The RS502T represents the purest expression of the Revstar design concept. Balanced perfectly on the point where familiarity and uniqueness coincide, the RS502T is everything you hope it’ll be, with custom-built hardware, the…

Customise your experience with the interactive, online audio. 2. Don’t wanna hear about it, ev’ry single one’s got a story to tell. Ev’ryone knows about it, from the Queen of England to the hounds of hell. And if I catch it coming back my way, I’m gonna serve it to you. And that ain’t what you want to hear, but that’s what I’ll do. And the feeling coming from my bones says find a home. 3. I’m goin’ to Wichita, far from this opera forevermore. I’m gonna work the straw, make the sweat drip out of every pore. And I’m bleeding, and I’m bleeding, and I’m bleeding right before the Lord. All the words are gonna bleed from me and I will think no more. And the stains coming from…

When I’m asked, "What’s the most common challenge you face in the studio?" I usually respond within less than two seconds – usually depending on whether or not I have a mouth full of coffee – "Timing!" This usually prompts the response, "You mean finding time to record?" Well, yes, but no – I mean getting people to play in time! I couldn’t say how many times I’ve sat in the control room and listened to a solo performer, someone overdubbing, or an entire band and thought, "This is fantastic – great song, great tones, great ideas and parts... I wouldn’t change a thing... If only it was in time!" And thus, it begins... No, I can’t simply sit back and watch this all go down, enjoying the grooves, the…

Devin Townsend is one of my favourite guitarists, because when you strip it right back, he streamlined his guitar approach to get the maximum possible sonic depth and harmonic sophistication with minimal technicality. His favoured Open C tuning makes it possible to play some really, really tricky stuff without having to take his mind away from singing like a metal god. This Open C tuning (C, G, C, G, C, E) is broad in pitch, and even more broad in possibilities. A while ago in an interview, I asked Townsend to explain his approach to the guitar and this tuning, and he summed it up thusly: “What do I see the guitar as? Well, I see it as a bunch of things. I see it as a tool. I see…

GRETTA RAY Here And Now INDEPENDENT For a transcendental 30 minutes, the indie-pop Victorian blazes through adolescent love and emotional growth with a sharp dexterity. Ray’s vocals – vivid and forceful, carried by lyrics that fuse conversational musings with poetic wallops – reign over soundscapes littered with opulent strings and atmospherics that truly allow her to shine. Guitars are rarely a focal point, but they’re undoubtedly strong and consistently captivating. It’s ludicrous to think this is only the 20-year-old’s second EP: the gorgeous production, iridescent songwriting and Ray’s unfaltering ability to keep her listener enthralled for a full five minutes at a time display a virtuosity that supersedes some of the most established names in the game today. MATT DORIA MEWITHOUTYOU [untitled] RUN FOR COVER / COOKING VINYL Narrative has…

If it were possible, this review would simply read, “Meris says this pedal is directly inspired by the 1982 Blade Runner film soundtrack, and that should be all you need to know before rushing out to buy one.” But you paid for a full magazine, so we’d better go into detail. THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN’T BELIEVE Meris DSP designer Angelo Mazzocco says, “I get inspired every time I hear Vangelis’s use of reverb on the original Blade Runner soundtrack. It never gets old. I designed the Mercury7’s algorithms to bring those same extra long decays and lush modulated reflections to the pedal world.” That doesn’t mean you have to be in a Vangelis tribute band – or indeed a replicant – to appreciate this pedal, but it sure helps to…

Speakers are often a trade-off between quality and size. The smaller you get, the less good-sounding volume you can juice out of the cabinet. If you want that big, clean sound, you normally need to pay for it, both with bucks and backbreaking effort shifting your speaker around. QSC’s very new range of CP speakers aims to get around this conundrum. Quilter Sound Company has been around for 50 years now, and have mainly made their name in sophisticated live sound, cinema and systems products. While the company has been going strong since starting in California in 1968, the CP series seems to be part of a relatively recent push towards smaller and simpler products that aim to preserve the brand’s serious reputation. Interestingly enough, company founder Pat Quilter remains…

Even after 17 years, the annual BIGSOUND festival continues to evolve. As always a celebration of the innovations and revelations shaping the Australian music industry, this year’s bash posed a notable focus on audience participation. Gone was the usual slew of two-dimensional panels for punters to sit in and listen to – those still thrived, of course, but coexisted with workshops and forums that encouraged the younger guns amongst us to make their voices heard. If there’s one reason you should make the pilgrimage to a future BIGSOUND, it’s the live music. From legends like Regurgitator and Ella Hooper (plus a midnight set from the one and only Paul Kelly) to the up-and-coming hopefuls who had barely touched a stage, there was no shortage of riffs and pits to sooth…

Three years after bringing the Australian prog scene to a standstill with Aesthesis, the frenetic fretboard masters in Dead Letter Circus have returned with what might just be their magnum opus. The self-titled fourth album shines a rawer, more honest light on the fivesome, highlighting virtuosic interplay between axemen Luke Palmer and Clint Vincent, with frontman Kim Benzie belting out some of his most striking vocal performances to date. The decision to self-title the LP came early in the mix, when the band decided that, as they reach their 14th year of time-signature defiant riffery, they were due for a minor rebirth. It’s their first record on a major label, and the first to see them truly shed their preconceived (and perhaps misguided) concepts of what it means to write…

Ask the average punter who Saul Hudson is, and you’re almost certain to be met with an apathetic shrug. Change your tone to Slash, however, and eyes will light up. “Oh yeah! The dude from Guns N’ Roses! With the sunglasses and the tophat!” In three decades of rock’n’roll debauchery, the London-native shredhead has become more of a character than a human being – seriously, did you know that he’s 53 years old? Many don’t, because unlike some of his less genetically blessed bandmates (sorry, Axl), Slash hasn’t aged a day since he first tore through that iconic “Sweet Child O’ Mine” riff. He’s timeless; a living legend amongst mere mortals in his class. Much of that can be ascribed to his almost cartoonish aesthetic – the ragged, untamed hair;…

Whether it’s a ten-piece outfit or a singer-songwriter with nothing but their voice and an acoustic, Fraser Montgomery can make any track sound full-bodied and beautifully balanced. In fact, he’s got a particularly good ear for getting vocal tracks in just the right place, then building them into every unoccupied corner of the mix. That, and he knows how to build a track, reach that explosive peak and inject the perfect attack when it’s time for an instrument to punch in. In other words, if you take a visit to Aviary Studios in Melbourne, Montgomery can turn your takes into statements. One thing that characterises your work is a consistent, full-bodied sound, particularly in the vocals. How do you bring that across after the artist nails their performance? Microphone choice,…

A simple, yet cool sounding technique commonly used in metal guitar solos is to take a lick and apply it chromatically up (or down) the fretboard. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘chromatic’, a chromatic scale in western music consists of all twelve tones played consecutively, with each note being a semitone (one fret) above or below the previous pitch. Chromaticism in music refers to sections where parts of the chromatic scale are used, and as such, will include notes that aren’t diatonic (belonging) to the overall scale or key that the song is in. So, what I mean by playing a lick chromatically is that you just take the lick and move it across the neck one fret at a time. In doing so, you’ll be playing a…

The sight of diamond-grille Vox amplifiers is as much a part of The Beatles’ iconography as moppy haircuts and Heinz Edelmann’s Yellow Submarine designs. You simply can’t sound like The Beatles – especially the early days – without a Vox. The Vox MSB25 Mini Superbeetle is not a Beatles signature amp, but rather a tribute to the iconic ‘60s amps. Still, it’s hard to separate the two, especially with its diamond-grille cloth and the cool ‘roll-cage’ speaker cabinet. LOVE ME DO Now, this isn’t a hand-wired miniature recreation of an old Vox design. It’s a blend of new and old technologies, the heart of which is Nutube – a new vacuum tube designed by KORG and Noritake Itron. It’s an ingenious little device which uses vacuum fluorescent display technology to…

Cort Guitars was founded in 1960 as a piano-focussed business, but began making guitars (for other companies) in 1973. If you’ve owned a Squire, a G&L Tribute or an Ibanez, there’s a good chance you’ve had a Cort-built instrument. The Cort marque first appeared on a headstock in the early ‘80s, and the company quickly established itself as a builder of affordable, quality instruments. In fact, their reputation for high-quality guitars at the right price has attracted boutique guitar builders looking to turn their designs into reality through limited production runs. The quality of Cort instruments has also attracted some serious endorsers – most notably Matthew Bellamy, Jeff Berlin, and our very own Aussie-kid-made-good, Frank Gambale. A CONFIDENT CORT Cort’s own logo now adorns an almost dizzying array of models…

Here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t listen to Cash Savage when you’re feeling particularly emotional. The 37-year-old Melbournite holds back not an ounce when she pours her heart into a tune, whether it be a scathing takedown of the men that question her talents, or a heartfelt crooner on former loves. The fourth LP with her backing band, The Last Drinks, is Good Citizens: a rumination on the varied levels of societal shittiness that permeates the world in 2018. Like those before it, the record’s objective is blunt. Whether it’s á la tight and temperamental Telecaster riffs or a vocal harmony soaked in sultriness, Savage wants you to feel the pain that she feels; her music is a weapon, and she attacks like her namesake in the spirit of…

It’s no secret that Slash is a big fan of the Gibson Les Paul. He’s tracked with them on virtually all of his 13 studio albums, and you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of a live show where he didn’t noodle around on at least a couple of ‘em. They’re also the axe of choice for his posed shots (see: every time we’ve had him adorn the cover of Australian Guitar), and it’s not hard to see why: the soul-warming mid tones, the ruinous amounts of gain its capable of and that sweet, buttery hum when you rip into a solo on one – it’s a sound as perspicuous to Slash’s playing as his button-rimmed tophat is to his image. It was 1989 when Slash’s first custom Les Paul…

Over the past 40-odd columns, I’ve covered a few different areas within the blues. But it only occurred to me today that I have never offered up a simple folk blues. From Dylan to Broonzy to the Appalachian folk bands, this style of picking and strumming is well developed. These chords, played with this lilting rhythm, provide the perfect backdrop for you to wax lyrical about the wind blowing or a train taking your baby. You can use these chords in different arrangements, or however you like to create your own song! This track is recorded at 100bpm (beats per minute) for the sake of learning, and again at 140bpm as notated. Also, please don’t leave your baby on the train. BARS #1-4 This is not the most complex piece,…

In this issue, I want to cover sweep picking of minor 7 arpeggios, and how sweep picking can be used with the minor pentatonic scale. The majority of metal and rock music is in a minor tonality. The minor pentatonic scale, Dorian mode, Phrygian mode, natural minor and melodic minor scales are all used extensively in genres of guitar-based music. The minor 7 arpeggio fits within all of these scale patterns. Knowing this arpeggio all over the fretboard will be very useful when improvising and composing. Think of each note in the minor 7 arpeggio as a resolution. Knowing where these resolution notes sit underneath each scale will allow you to resolve melodies quickly, and even play chromatically if you want to add some dissonance to your solos and riffs.…

When I look for a classical or nylon-string guitar, I look for balance between the treble and bass, suitable tone control, wide dynamics and easy playability. The Katoh classical guitar range offers so much brilliant choice, and this particular beauty not only sounds great, but looks stunning too! With deluxe gold plated machine heads and deep black tuning pegs, it emits an aura of elegance before you even pick it up for a strum. With a lovely depth to its visual colour, the MCG115C rocks a high-quality finish, handmade in China with tasteful ovangkol back and sides. The instrument is nicely weighted, light and feels slick and comfortable under your fingers, easy to get to know and love within a matter of minutes. A warm tone is quickly produced from…