Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Guitar World

VOL. 44 | NO. 5 | MAY 2023 THE AGE OF THE PEDAL I’VE SAID IT before [in my February 2023 Woodshed, for instance], and I’ll say it again: It’s all about the pedals these days — at least in my neck of the woods. They’re small, they’re cool looking, they sound amazing and, in the grand scheme of things, they’re generally inexpensive. Excluding strings, picks, cables, capos, slides, clip-on tuners, used Krivo pickups and Red Stripe beer, a pedal — new or used — is one of the least expensive ways to bask in that addictive new-gear glow. A few months ago, Guitarist — one of our nifty sister magazines from across the pond — ran a similar story called “The Greatest Pedals of All Time.” For this issue…

DOUBLE EXPOSURE IS Vinnie Moore’s 10th solo studio album since making his breakthrough way back in 1986 on Shrapnel Records, the iconic shred label, with Mind’s Eye. Previously working exclusively in the instrumental genre, the new record sees him collaborating with a number of vocalists to create something different from his previous solo releases — an album of two halves, if you will, with six of the songs featuring guest vocalists and the remaining six being instrumental versions of the same tracks. Moore has been a member of UFO since 2003, and this new direction is definitely part of his game plan for what is to come once the band complete the last of their farewell shows. UFO were completing their final tour when singer and founder member Phil Mogg…

HAIR METAL WAS a wild party, with seemingly every blond-haired voicebox pairing up with their very own enigmatic six-stringer as they prepared to stake their claim amongst the posturing masses. In the Eighties, hair metal had its way, with its Spandex-loving perpetrators riding high throughout the decade. But as the genre entered the Nineties, seemingly overnight, it was no longer chic to clad oneself in ripped fishnets, neon-colored platforms and leopard print denim. Much to the dismay of cock-rockers across the land, grunge and alt-rock saw to it that most of the lionhearts of the Eighties were dead men walking. And while Cobain, Cornell and Vedder ruled the day, our once mighty, now-on-life-support heroes still managed to choke out a few final gems. What follows is a guide to 10…

Q: From the very beginning, vocal harmonies have been integral to everything. “Yes, they are for me. I love them, and if there is a chance to do those dense chords that I like, I always will. Most commonly, although we did it in every possible variation, Stephen [Stills] would sing the melody, I would sing the middle, which is the hard one, and [Graham] Nash would sing the top. All the harmonies in the Byrds are me. The Byrds is basically two-part, although sometimes Gene [Clark] was in there, too.” Q: You emerged at a time and in a place where the music was spectacular. “There was a plethora of really talented people really trying hard to make good music, and that was a wonderful thing.” Q: In your…

Guitar World would like to thank Vintage ’n’ Rare Guitars for the kind loan of the incredible sparkle finish Sixties Strat that appears on this spread (page 58). vintageandrareguitars.com MICHAEL AMOTT MXR PHASE 90 “I HAVE SO many phasers, but the one I usually go back to is the classic Phase 90. It just sounds how I imagine a phaser to sound in my head. I have all these custom-shop ones from Japan or whatever, but they don’t really sound like the ones I heard on those famous records. I even have the EVH one [MXR EVH Phase 90], but I kinda prefer the regular Phase 90. I run it with the speed at zero, and it gives everything this extra fatness and slight sense of movement. I like the…

COLUMNS TALES FROM NERDVILLE LAST MONTH, I initiated a series of columns dedicated to an examination and “test drive” of some of my favorite vintage electric guitars, beginning with a 1954 Gibson goldtop Les Paul with P-90 pickups. This month, the instrument of choice is a sunburst Gibson 1961 ES-335, a semi-hollowbody with dot inlays on the fretboard. B.B. King played one of these guitars early in his career, so if it’s good enough for B.B., it’s good enough for me! Sometime during mid 1962, Gibson switched from dot inlays to “block markers,” which are rectangular mother-of-pearl inlays, and changed the color of the instrument to cherry red. These 335s are closely associated with Eric Clapton, as that instrument was one of his primary guitars during the Cream era.…

“SCATTERBRAIN” Jeff Beck THIS MIND-BLOWING, fast-paced instrumental juggernaut and Seventies fusion classic features the late, great Jeff Beck and his elite Blow by Blow rhythm section stretching out on a dizzying, enigmatic repeating melodic theme in 9 8 meter, which leads into a more comfortably familiar funky groove in 4 4 for an open solo section. The main riff that commences at bar 5 presents a steady stream of 16th notes, for which Beck utilizes legato phrasing — hammer-ons, pull-offs and finger slides — to create a smooth, rolling articulation. Playing this part well and with authority requires both an aggressive pick-hand attack and good fret-hand “traction.” The goal is to make all the notes come across with the same volume, so strive to hammer-on firmly, and, when pulling-off, yank…

THE HEET SOUND Products EBow is probably one of the most underappreciated tools for guitar. It has remained in continuous production ever since 1976 and appeared on literally hundreds of recordings and hits, yet it rarely gets mentioned — even by players who have used one frequently. It’s not expensive (the current street price is about $100); it’s very easy to use; and it’s more versatile than most guitarists realize. The EBow is sort of an “electronic bow,” but instead of dragging the device across strings it employs a pickup and pulsating magnetic feedback circuit to drive a string into vibration without coming into contact with the string. In addition to providing infinite sustain capabilities, the EBow gives players greater expressive control over a note’s attack and decay, enabling the…

STAY CONNECTED WITH GUITAR WORLD ON AND GET THE LATEST GUITAR NEWS, INSIDER UPDATES, STAFF REPORTS AND MORE! Bonamassa went Bolin for dollars [Referring to the January 2023 issue’s biggest guitar news of the year] That 1960 Les Paul Standard that Joe Bonamassa added to his collection wasn’t just a valuable old Gibson. That guitar (with its added Bigsby and pickup changes) was altered and played by the late (and underappreciated) guitar legend Tommy Bolin. While Tommy never owned the guitar, it was on loan to him while he recorded with Deep Purple, Billy Cobham and Alphonse Mouzon, as well as recording his solo albums, Teaser and Private Eyes. Joe didn’t acquire it because it was just another Les Paul (he has plenty of those); he got it because…

JARRED JAMES NICHOLS’ personal growth over his first two records stands in stark contrast to the pentatonic-loving, single-coil throwback he’s made out to be. And if the Les Paul-slinging guitarist’s third record, this year’s Jared James Nichols, is any indication, the soon-to-be 34-year-old guitarist appears to be reaching a peak. “I’ve long been a person who loves songs,” Nichols says. “But I’ve always approached things with a guitar-oriented head. That bled over into everything I’ve done. But with this record, I didn’t think about how I might dazzle someone with the guitar; I just focused on my writing style.” It’s plain to see that Nichols — a guitarist known for blues-driven theatrics energized by an effervescent personality — is digging deeper. It would be all too easy for Nichols to…

PERSONALITIES DO WE HEAR A NOD TO SRV IN “THE POWER OF LOVE”? “We spent a lot of time on the bus together. Stevie was great. One night, he kicked the rest of his crew out of his bus, and it was just the two of us drinking Crown Royal and talking about music... He was amazing. He could get sounds that didn’t exist. So yeah, did I reference him on that song? Sure I did.” CHRIS HAYES CAN’T get away from his old band. No matter where he goes or what he does — he can be out for a drive or watching a movie, or maybe shopping at the supermarket — he’ll hear one of their tunes. Sometimes it’s “I Want a New Drug.” Other times it’s “The…

COLUMNS MELODIC MUSE LAST MONTH, I demonstrated how to play the primary theme to “One Last Time,” from my latest release, Electric Truth. In this column, let’s take a look at the bridge of the song, which serves as the solo section. It’s basically just a repeating two-chord progression, so let’s break it down, and I’ll describe my thought process on how I put this solo together. FIGURE 1 illustrates the nine-bar solo. Let’s first look at the chord progression: the basic idea is a repeating two-bar phrase of Bbm to Eb, but the progression is embellished slightly with the inclusion of an Ab chord (Ab/C) that falls on the 16th-note upbeat of beat 4 in every Bbm bar. I begin the solo with a pickup bar that closes…

THE MELVINS AREN’T for everyone. Does that mean the duo of Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover — flanked by longtime Red Kross bassist Steven McDonald — haven’t carved out a niche in this world? No way. But if you’re expecting the Melvins to ring in as commercial darlings, you’d be sorely disappointed. Does that mean they care? Not a chance. “It’s not like we’re trying not to sell records,” Osborne says. “That’s just how it worked out for us. I’ve learned that the world’s not a right place. We don’t bother trying to sell records; we do whatever the fuck we’re doing. And even if that doesn’t work, all is well. It’s better to stick with what you like without letting the perverse thinking of others influence what you do.”…

BEFORE THE PANDEMIC hit, Pat Finnerty was just another workman musician, leading his own locally beloved band in Philadelphia and taking on mercenary gigs as a sideman guitarist. Once the music industry shut down, Finnerty found himself with two valuable tools: lots and lots of time and a loathing for a semi-obscure guitarist-turned YouTuber. Thus was born his hit YouTube series, “What Makes This Song Stink.” “I was like, I don’t know if anyone’s gonna watch this, but I’m gonna have a lot of fun doing them,” Finnerty says. “I know there’s millions of people that are gonna get this ’cause there’s millions of people that watch Beato and maybe 10 percent of them will know how ridiculous this man is. But it’s so niche!” But what started as a…

THE INFLUENCE OF American music on British acts — and vice versa — is well documented and has been going on since the birth of rock ’n’ roll in the Fifties. The tables were turned in the Sixties with the British invasion, led by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who. But since the Seventies, it’s fair to say that the influence going back and forth across the Atlantic has been evenly balanced. In spite of the global cross-pollination of musical influences, there remain acts who are massively successful in their native territories yet fail to achieve very much of note any further afield. Many British acts have achieved almost global dominance yet have failed to score more than a handful of hits, at best, in the United States.…

IF YOU VENTURE outside the mainstream brands, you’ll find that Cort Guitars has been rolling out an impressive array of their very own premier guitar models that are not only visually striking but come loaded with upscale hardware and electronics. It’s a significant observation considering Cort is known to manufacture guitars for other makers, yet their signature instruments often take a backseat to more popular guitar brands. But that hasn’t prevented Cort from keenly following modern guitar trends in order to revamp their KX Series, which caters to progressive players who demand more than just traditional features. Case in point: the new Cort KX700 EverTune — with the revolutionary EverTune bridge and Seymour Duncan pickups — has all the makings of a dark horse instrument but is brilliantly primed to…

COLUMNS IN DEEP IN THE PREVIOUS two columns, we explored a variety of oblique bending techniques — combining the use of bent and unbent strings, played either together or in succession. The technique is usually applied to two- or three-note figures, with a note on one string bent and the note(s) on the other string(s) fretted normally. Most often, oblique bends are performed on the B and G strings or the high E and B, such as when executing a unison bend, for which a lower note is bent up to match the pitch of an unbent note on the next higher string. An oblique bend can be applied in other ways. Previously, our study consisted of adjacent-string oblique bends only, exploring phrases that either began or ended with…

COLUMNS LIVE FROM FLAT V OVER THE LAST two columns, we’ve discussed my song “Pusher,” which I revisited for my latest release, Live at the Spud. It’s a simple, funky 12-bar blues in the key of G, and, when soloing, it affords plenty of room for creative improvisation. Last month, I focused on the different rhythmic approaches I like to take when soloing over this groove and chord progression. I’ll now discuss some of my melodic and harmonic ideas — the actual notes that I choose to play when soloing on this song. Throughout the progression, the lines are mostly based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F) and the G blues scale (G, Bb, C, Db, D, F). FIGURE 1 presents a solo along…

“GOODBYE PORK PIE HAT” WRITTEN BY CHARLES MINGUS. COPYRIGHT © 1975 JAZZ WORKSHOP, INC., FLYING RED RHINO, ADAMS AVENUE AND THE MINGUS MUSIC WERKSHOP. COPYRIGHT RENEWED. ALL RIGHTS FOR FLYING RED RHINO AND ADAMS AVENUE IN THE U.S. CONTROLLED AND ADMINISTERED BY SPIRIT ONE MUSIC. ALL RIGHTS FOR THE MINGUS MUSIC WERKSHOP ADMINISTERED IN THE U.S. ONLY BY SONGS OF KOBALT MUSIC PUBLISHING. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT SECURED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC.…