Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Total Guitar

There’s surely nothing more satisfying than nailing a great guitar solo. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. Whether you’re navigating your very first melodies or delivering a hugely technical lead break after months of dedicated practice, you just can’t beat that feeling when it all comes together. And it’s that elusive feeling which has inspired us to create this month’s special Solos Issue of Total Guitar… Back in March, Extreme dropped their comeback single Rise, a feelgood mid-tempo rocker. At roughly two minutes and 17 seconds in, guitarist Nuno Bettencourt delivers a jaw-dropping incendiary lead break. The internet went wild for his solo and social media was awash with superlatives. Rick Beato gushed! Justin Hawkins was blown away! Rise’s solo is a technical showpiece, of course, but, more importantly,…

Welcome to the mega TG lead soloing feature. Over the following fifteen examples we are taking a whistle-stop tour through contrasting mix of musical genres of the 21st Century, with the aim of identifying just what has made these styles and their solos so great. Work through our tab examples and you too will soon be soloing with confidence in a variety of musical settings. We’ve ordered our examples roughly starting with the easiest to play, so why not challenge yourself to work through them all and see how far you can get? To keep you on your toes we have used a variety of keys and time signatures, keeping our examples stylistically relevant to the tracks, bands and genres we’ve referenced for inspiration. For example, you can expect math-rock…

Welcome to the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome*) Station! Every issue, TG scours the market for the hottest new gear and brings you transparent reviews that you can trust. From the smallest of accessories that make your life easier, to big investments, such as brand new guitars, amps and effects pedals – if it’s worth your attention, you’ll find it here! HOW WE TEST CURATION Our product selection is driven by our love of gear. We select the most exciting products on the market every month to bring you opinions you can trust. FACE-VALUE REVIEWS We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge it on whether it looks good, sounds good and plays well – not by the name on the headstock. NO SNAKE OIL You won’t find us…

50 I’ll Tell You Someday – Plini49 Interstate 80 – Tom Morello ft. Slash 48 Winner Takes All – Nita Strauss With a solo that goes from the bluesy bends Slash made famous to the Satch-esque liquid legato, this is undoubtedly one of Nita’s finest moments. 47 Grinder – Gary Clark Jr.46 Time Warp – Brad Paisley45 Aesthetics Of Hate – Machine Head44 Valley Of Fire – Jason Becker43 The Hunter – Mastodon42 Get Out Of My Yard – Paul Gilbert41 In Too Deep – Sum 4140 I Want My Crown – Eric Gales ft. Joe Bonamassa39 Razor’s Edge – Dream Theater38 Mr. Ed – Mammoth WVH37 Make It Wit Chu – Queens Of The Stone Age36 Invisible Monster – Dream Theater35 I Let My Guitar Do The Talking –…

CLASSIC TRACK Throughout their incredible career, Queen have touched on almost every style of music, from rock, pop and ballads to funk, trad-jazz and opera. This diversity reflects that each member was an accomplished songwriter – Messrs Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor could all claim to have written a worldwide chart-topping hit. The band’s guitarist Brian May alone provided 22! 1989’s I Want It All marked a return to the band’s hard-rock roots. The track highlights Brian’s ability to create simple but powerful guitar hooks and showcases his wonderfully melodic blues-rock soloing. Our transcription is an amalgamation of the acoustic, rhythm and lead guitars heard on the record. SOUND ADVICE Everything you need to know before playing ‘I Want It All’ With single coils and a brace of tone controls,…

1 KEELEY SUPER AT MOD OVERDRIVE “A drive pedal that responds just like a tube amp” – we’ve heard that one before, but Andy Timmons’s last pedal with Robert Keeley (the Halo Dual Echo) reminded us these guys know what they’re doing so we’re inclined to think this evolution of the Super Phat Mod Full Range Overdrive is one to watch, and hear! There’s a Phat and Andy Timmons AT mode for single-coils and humbuckers, respectively. £219 www.robertkeeley.com 2 PEDAL HAVEN STICKER PACK We’re loving the dilemma of whether to stick the ‘Ask me about my pedalboard’ or ‘Don’t ask me about my pedalboard’ on your dearly beloved. And yes, guitar pedals ruined our life/bank balance, too! The stickers are available to buy separately for $3.99, in a pair or…

The Princeton is one of the original Fender amplifiers with its origins way back in 1946, when it debuted alongside Leo Fender’s original Deluxe and Professional ‘Woody’ amplifiers; the very first Fenderbadged products. The Princeton evolved through the 1950’s ‘tweed’ era before a fundamental design change resulting in the short-lived but highly coveted 1961 brown-panel combo, which evolved into the later black panel amplifier, with the legendary reverbequipped version arriving in 1964. Now Fender have resurrected the classic black panel Princeton Reverb as the latest addition to their Tone Master range, which uses digital technology to recreate classic valve designs. THIS PRINCETON IS AN ALMOST-PERFECT RECREATION Viewed from the front, the Tone Master Princeton Reverb looks practically identical to its 1960s ancestor. The lightweight pine cabinet is covered in thick…

Why is everybody on the internet so mean? Nashville-based songwriter Corook ponders this relatable question in 2023’s unlikeliest hit, If I Were A Fish – a song bashed out in ten minutes to help them process online bullying. Corook explains how the song’s title originated with their partner Olivia Barton. “I told Olivia, ‘Play something that you’ve never played on an instrument that you don’t know. She kept hitting the same two notes on my little Yamaha synth. Then she sang, ‘If I were a fish…’ I said, ‘I love that! Let’s start there.’ Corook kept Olivia’s two-note groove when they picked up the guitar, which is why the acoustic guitar plays only powerchords. The 49-second TikTok was all they had written, but the reaction was so huge it was…

It’s an inescapable fact that most of our time playing guitar is spent on rhythm duties. So, whether you play in a band, write your own songs or just like to jam around some favourite tunes, you need to know a good number of chords. The best way to get some new shapes under your belt is to get a feel for the character and mood of each chord – yes, we’re talking about emotions! Figuring out the ‘feeling’ of new chords is a shortcut to getting the sound in your head onto your guitar’s fretboard. Each chord type has its own sound. So, for example, it’s possible to train your ear to identify the trademark mellow sound of major 7ths, the ambiguous ‘neither major nor minor’ vibe of suspended…

With his solo in the new Extreme song Rise, Nuno Bettencourt has animated the entire guitar community. “F*cking hell, that’s a ridiculous solo!” gasped Justin Hawkins of The Darkness on his YouTube channel. Rick Beato’s video breakdown of the solo rapidly garnered 1.5 million viewers. DragonForce’s Herman Li and a host of YouTube faces produced reaction videos proving Beato’s point that this is “the solo everyone is talking about”. As Nuno tells TG: “When Rise came out, we thought, ‘OK, decent song, decent guitar solo’, but the reaction that it got was something else. When Rick Beato posted his video breaking down the solo, and he’s saying that Steve Lukather’s calling, and his brother is calling and Phil X is calling saying, ‘Have you heard the Nuno solo?’, it was…

The Arctic Monkeys’ edgy twin-guitar indie tones are delivered by Alex Turner and Jamie Cook. Here, in one of the band’s biggest and best-loved songs, Alex takes the rhythm duties while Jamie outlines the main riffs. The intro/verse isn’t strictly bluesy, nor minor pentatonic. Instead, Cook’s riff follows the root notes of the intro/verse chords, with the gaps being filled with runs from the E major pentatonic scale. It’s played entirely at the 2nd and 4th frets, so it falls neatly under your first and third fingers without any need for position shifts. Turner’s rhythm work is based entirely on well-known barre chords, with plenty of fretting hand ‘choking’ to create tight, punchy staccato strums where needed. You should be able to hear the interplay between the riff and chords…

If you’re looking for affordability in the contemporary electric guitar world, you’ll know that Cort is the house brand of the giant Indonesian-based Cor-Tek organisation that makes a huge number of instruments for other brands, not least PRS and Manson. Cort may not have the brand-appeal of many of the other guitars it makes but their G300 Pro really put them on the serious guitar map. No surprise, then, for 2023 that the platform is being expanded. Along with a very tasty-looking satin goldtop version of the Pro, we get the new Raw and the Glam, which we’re featuring here. It’s just a different finish, then? No. Admittedly the glossy Polar Ice Metallic burst finish will get you noticed, and the hardware and pickups are the same as that flagship…

REVIEW Maybe ‘fad’ is a bit harsh, but several years ago there was a brief demand for pedals with joysticks, presumably driven by their popularity in modular synth setups. The most famous of these was the Walrus Janus, a tremolo-fuzz that looked more like a games console controller than a pedal. Unfortunately, the Janus felt like a bit of a missed opportunity. The joystick for the fuzz side didn’t control parameters that were more inspiring as a joystick than as normal potentiometers. Now, Walrus have returned with the Melee, a joystick-controlled reverb/delay. Does it avoid the same pitfalls? The answer is no, not really. The two parameters governed by the joystick are distortion level and reverb mix. Why the decision was made to control distortion rather than reverb decay is…