Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i Guitar World

I’M NOT SURE if anyone (besides me, of course) gets the very old Warner Wolf reference in my headline, but... I’ve been spending a lot more time at GW’s video studio in Manhattan lately — and so have a few other people, including John 5, Marcus King and Kerry King (It’s a shame we can’t complete “the unrelated King collection” with visits from the late B.B., Albert and Freddie, but hey, we do the best we can). We’ve been ramping up our video output, which took a major hit during Covid and never fully recovered; but things are looking up (and our spiffy new cameras are making things look better than ever), and you can see the results over on our YouTube channel. Be sure to check out our two…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES Q: What was your first guitar? It was a classical guitar that I got very cheap at a garage sale. It was very difficult and challenging to play. I was about 10 when I got it, and it lasted about two years. Then I got an electric guitar that looked like an imitation of a Teisco Del Rey, and which was so thin, you could probably break it with one hand! Q: What was the first song you learned to play on the guitar? The first full song I learned was “Act Naturally” by the Beatles, as sung by Ringo Starr, which is almost a country song. Before that, the first thing I learned on a guitar was the riff to “Day Tripper,” also by the…

THROUGH IMAGERY STEEPED in fast cars, flashy guitars and flaming licks, since the earliest days of the Stray Cats and later with his namesake Orchestra, Brian Setzer has blazed a trail of his own creation. It took a certain level of fearlessness to play rockabilly in the early Eighties, let alone have worldwide success. And it took an even greater level of courage to pivot to swing and jive in the Nineties, when grunge and Britpop, propped up by MTV, reigned supreme. “I don’t know if it was fearlessness — or just me being stubborn,” Setzer says. “I’m stubborn enough to refuse to follow along with whatever is going on at the time. I’ve always been someone who needs to follow his own trail. Trends be damned — I can’t…

NO ONE HAS lit up the guitar community — excluding Nuno Bettencourt with his breathtaking “Rise” guitar solo last year — quite like Matteo Mancuso. The 27-year-old Sicilian released his first album, The Journey, last summer and would be the first to admit his life has become a bit of a blur ever since, from the onslaught of tutorial videos dissecting his fingerstyle method to ending up as the most talked about musician at this year’s NAMM Show. And although it’s his technique that will undoubtedly be responsible for forging a lot of those unforgettable first impressions, hitting the same speeds Paul Gilbert and Al Di Meola are known for using just his fingers, it’s the sheer sense of musicality that makes his debut full-length such an electrifying listen from…

WHAT THE HELL is a Zoar? One quick Google search reveals it was a Biblical city — and that the name roughly translates to “little” or “insignificant.” Now, I don’t believe the folks at EarthQuaker Devices are biblical scholars; nor do I believe they intended to create a “little” or “insignificant” dirt pedal. But I’m pretty sure — judging by the illustrated hairy creature with claws of doom on the pedal’s face — you’re gonna need the Zoar Dynamic Audio Grinder when you’re down on the killing floor. EQD has been firing on all cylinders in sonic saturation with the recent releases of their Sunn O))) Life Pedal V3, Special Cranker and Blumes stompboxes that come loaded with colorful shades of fuzz, distortion and overdrive that can blow the roof…

ON MY LATEST release, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, I covered the Albert King classic “You Sure Drive a Hard Bargain.” My guitar of choice for the recording was a 1967 Gibson Flying V in Sparkling Burgundy. I once had the pleasure of having an audience with all three of Albert King’s main Flying V’s: his 1959 Korina V, which is the guitar he used to record “Blues Power” at the Fillmore West; his early Seventies custom-made Dan Erlewine V, which has Albert’s name inlaid in the fretboard; and his 1967 cherry red Flying V. The ’67 V may be less well known than the other guitars but it’s equally important, as rumor has it that Albert used this instrument to cut “Born Under a Bad Sign,” “Crosscut Saw” and many…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES THE SAN DIEGO-based Schizophonics are one of those bands that, once seen, are never forgotten. Singer/guitarist Pat Beers literally throws himself into every performance, careering around the stage, combining elements of James Brown, Wayne Kramer and Iggy Pop. To the uninitiated, it often looks like Beers isn’t even playing the guitar a lot of the time, as a huge part of his technique relies on the use of left-hand slurs and hammer-ons. “We’ve done tours where we’ve opened for bigger bands, and audiences who don’t know us would be messaging that they couldn’t believe we’d have the audacity to use backing tapes,” Beers says. “Audiences who don’t know us would be messaging that they couldn’t believe we’d have the audacity to use backing tapes” It’s clear…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES CAMERON GRIFFIN HAS gone from working in construction to being a Grammy nominee for his work on Coco Jones’ 2022 EP, What I Didn’t Tell You. That’s pretty astounding, and he’s enjoyed the ride, but he remains tempered. “Being recognized is amazing,” he says. “But I don’t like how the music business is. To be successful, you’ve gotta be like John Mayer, but I have other dreams. I play guitar, but I’m not a ‘guitar player.’ I’m Cameron, who plays guitar.” The fact that Griffin doesn’t wholly identify as a guitar player — despite having worked with Usher, Chris Brown and others — seems hard to fathom. “All of this — writing songs, guitar and producing — came suddenly,” he says. “I never thought about any…

PERSONALITIES AS ONE OF the early comers to the buzzing hair metal scene, Carlos Cavazo assumed the role of lead guitarist for a reformed Quiet Riot, setting off a chain reaction of glammed-out excess. Stepping out of the shadow of Randy Rhoads and into the spotlight, Cavazo — like many of his contemporaries would do later — infused classical and flamenco touches to Quiet Riot’s mix. The result was a torrent of madness on the backside of Quiet Riot’s 1983 smash success, Metal Health, skyrocketing the unassuming six-stringer. “A lot of people ask me if I had any idea that Metal Health would be as big as it was,” Cavazo says. “People assume I knew we had this winner on our hands, but honestly, I didn’t. I’m still somewhat shocked…

THE BLACK CROWES have had a tumultuous history. Numerous musicians have passed through their ranks, and brothers Chris and Rich Robinson’s battles with each other — verbal and physical — are legendary. It’s been 40 years since the earliest incarnation of the band first came together. Only Rich and Chris remain from Mr. Crowe’s Garden, the name the band was using right up to the point that they signed their record deal with Def American in 1989. While the media often has reported on the volatility of inter-band relationships, the Robinson brothers have dealt with the issue by adopting a real-world perspective on the immense challenges that global success brings to a pair of teenagers, barely out of school, who suddenly find the world at their feet. Rich remembers how…

“I OPEN THE DOOR AND THERE’S THIS 12-YEAR-OLD KID, A STRINGLESS GUITAR IN ONE HAND, A PACK OF STRINGS IN THE OTHER” JOE SATRIANI still remembers the first time he laid eyes on STEVE VAI. It was 1972 in Carle Place, Long Island, and at the time, Satriani, then just a teenager, was already known around the neighborhood as a killer guitar player — and maybe an even better guitar teacher. Which is when Vai came knocking at his front door. “It was your typical Long Island afternoon,” Satriani says. “I open the door and there’s this 12-year-old kid, a stringless guitar in one hand, a pack of strings in the other.” Suffice it to say, Satriani wasn’t immediately impressed. “I really didn’t know him,” he says of Vai, “although…

IF THERE’S ONE thing that’s overshadowing the stellar Yamaha Pacifica Professional guitar, it’s the startling price tag. It’s difficult to shake the fact that the Pacifica — which many consider the benchmark in budget electric guitars — now arrives in a Professional version at a cost that might be slightly out of reach for most players. Even so, it would be a shame for that to be the only reason to overlook this thoughtfully designed Superstrat that undeniably proves it’s a world-class performance instrument through and through. The Pacifica model has been around for decades, but if you look back far enough, you’ll find that its evolution was rooted as a pro-level, custom shop guitar that was built-to-order for top Los Angeles session players. So, in essence, Yamaha’s Pacifica Professional…

LAST MONTH, I broke down the first half of my 24-bar outro solo in “Ghost of You,” from the 2006 Andy Timmons Band album Resolution. It’s a fairly complex solo that requires attention to detail: there are some challenging passages built from long streams of 32nd notes, which are tempered by more melodic phrases articulated with precise string bending techniques like oblique bends and two-step “overbends.” So let’s get back to it! This month, we’ll cover bars 13-24, shown here in FIGURE 1. As you recall, bar 12 ended with a fast, repeating phrase played up in 15th position and based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F), and that phrase “spills” into beat 1 of bar 13, the first bar of this example. On beat…

“IT’S A MOOT POINT” Melanie Faye THIS SUBLIMELY SOULFUL r&b song showcases finger-style electric guitar sensation Melanie Faye’s highly creative and inventive approaches to composition and technique, as well as her musical depth and tasteful note choices for voicing chords and playing melodies. The guitarist crafted most of the song’s parts by spinning colorful variations on the four-chord progression introduced in bars 1 and 2. No doubt inspired in part by Jimi Hendrix’s elegantly melodic rhythm playing and Stevie Wonder’s sparse but harmonically rich keyboard chord voicing approach, she mostly eschews the redundant octave doubling of standard barre chords. Instead, Melanie favors economical and sometimes angular interval stacks that highlight the chord’s essential root and major or minor 3rd, along with upper-structure chord tones, such as the 7th and 9th,…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES AT 28, SAM Bam Koltun is an odd juxtaposition alongside the elder statesmen he pals around with. But that’s no bother. “It’s not too weird,” he says. “I came up as a kid playing in bars when I was 12, so even then, the guys I played with were older. I’m conditioned to working with older musicians.” That’s good news for him, as Koltun is an integral part of Faster Pussycat, which featured guitarists Brent Muscat and Ace Von Johnson before him. “Ace is one of my best friends,” Koltun says. “He was with Faster, but when Tracii [Guns] recruited him for L.A Guns, Ace asked if I wanted to join Faster in 2019. Five years later, here I am!” For the Les Paul-slinging Koltun, Guns,…

TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES ANDY ALEDORT HAS been at the pinnacle of American guitardom for decades. He’s toured the world with Dickey Betts, played with Double Trouble and the Band of Gypsys, co-written a best-selling biography of Stevie Ray Vaughan, jammed with a who’s who of six-string greats from Johnny Winter to Buddy Guy to Joe Perry, and taught half the world to play guitar as an instructor and journalist (Aledort is an associate editor at GW; check out his latest column on page 82). He is now coming into his own as a solo artist, as evidenced by In a Dream. Aledort’s new album includes traces of all the people he’s played with and written about, from Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and Frank Zappa to John Scofield, Eric Clapton…

AS THEY PREPARE for the release of their 19th album, Invincible Shield, Judas Priest are still pondering the randomness of life and the frailty of the human condition. Since the release of their 2018’s blowtorch-to-the-face record, Firepower, most of the guys in the band have been anything but invincible. Vocalist Rob Halford has battled and seems to have beaten prostate cancer; guitarist Glenn Tipton continues to struggle with a debilitating case of Parkinson’s disease, which six years ago ended his ability to tour. And lead guitarist Richie Faulkner vividly remembers suffering an aortic aneurysm on September 26, 2021, while Priest were playing the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky. “It’s crazy to think I easily could have died then and there,” says Faulkner, who assumed pole position for the…

IN HONOR OF Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s third joint GW cover, we’ve decided to present a special “Satch and Vai” edition of Cover Models, a recurring one-page feature that we kicked off in our April 2024 issue. That’s when we track down GW cover stars from the distant or recent past and ask them to tell us about the guitars they’re holding on their covers. This month, we’d like to send out some big-time thanks to Mike Mesker, Vai’s art director, who contributed several historical details concerning Vai’s guitars. JOE SATRIANI 1. NOVEMBER 1989 Guitar World Original photographer: Neil Zlozower What model guitar are you playing in this photo? SATRIANI: That’s my first Ibanez JS prototype, which we called “Black Dog.” It had a Roadstar neck and a basswood…

IN THE LAST few columns, we explored an effective approach to strengthening our sense of groove and time, for both rhythm and lead playing. The first part of the exercise entails devising a repeating riff, or vamp, that establishes the groove. The second part is to solo over that groove with an ear towards locking into the rhythm part as solidly as possible. All our previous examples have been four bars long. Now, our rhythm part will be a 12-bar blues shuffle, over which I’ll then improvise a solo. This rhythm part has a pronounced triplet feel and is in the key of E, along the lines of Albert King’s “Can’t You See What You Are Doing to Me.” You’ll hear the same groove and a nearly identical riff in…

THESE PAST FEW lessons have all focused on a variety of the tools that I rely on to strengthen the narrative content in my guitar solos. Not note choices, but a wider view of the things that will help me to create better phrasing. We’ve talked about repeating a melodic phrase over and over to build tension in a solo; about locking ourselves into a box and forcing ourselves to play in a single position, which I like to refer to as “handcuffs;” and last month we initiated our look into the device commonly referred to as call and response, whereby you play a phrase, listen to it and then answer it with a different phrase in a conversational way. Let’s say you’ve arrived in the middle of your solo,…

THE IBANEZ TUBE Screamer is one of the most popular stomp boxes of all time, used by dozens of famous guitarists on hundreds of well-known tracks — but the main reason for its perennial success is overwhelmingly due to its association with Stevie Ray Vaughan. If you’ve looked around for info on the Tube Screamer model that Vaughan used, you’ll likely see the first iteration TS808 lauded as the ne plus ultra version for authentic SRV tone. This is usually repeated ad infinitum by writers who haven’t done thorough research or, even worse, by pedal designers and vintage guitar dealers who are likely more concerned about profit than truth or historical accuracy. While it is indeed true that Vaughan once used a TS808, it was only for a very brief…