Dire Straits
Brothers In Arms
Green Day
Good Riddance
Ed Sheeran
Thinking Out Loud
90+
Minutes of lesson audio!
20 Easy Guitar Tricks Fast-track your playing to the next level!
fix your guitar
Learn how to swap out your pickups
Interviews
Paul Gilbert Joanne Shaw Taylor Twin Atlantic
2016’s Guitar Bargains
The hottest gear from the last 12 months
how to
✔ Develop your
vibrato in 20 mins ✔ Steal Stevie Ray Vaughan’s style
editor’s letter Future Publishing Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Tel 01225 442244 Fax: 01225 822763 Email totalguitar@futurenet.com Website: www.totalguitar.co.uk
Editorial Editor Stuart Williams Content Editor Rob Laing Production Editor Josh Gardner Art Editor Leanne O’Hara Senior Music Editor Jason Sidwell Guitars Feature & Tuition Editor Chris Bird Content Editor, Musicradar.com Michael Brown Music Co-ordinator Polly Beauchamp
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Welcome… It’s that time of year again! 2016 has flown by, and it doesn’t seem like 12 months ago that we were celebrating the release of Fender’s fantastic Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster. This month’s issue is the final one on sale in 2016, so we’re round out the year by showing you how to get back to basics and really nail some guitar-playing fundamentals, plus hopefully pick up some brand new skills to add to your arsenal along the way! Also inside, if you’ve got some Christmas bonus cash burning a hole in your pocket, we’re revisiting the biggest gear bargains of 2016 – all of which will come in around the £400 mark, most of them a lot less. Our shortlist showcases the best and most affordable electrics, acoustics, amps and effects that have featured in our pages over the last 12 months. On similar year-end theme, the TG team has also picked their favourite albums of 2016. It’s a broad church, so check out p16 to see if any of your favourite records of the year made the cut! We’ve brought you another stellar tab line-up this month, too, and with huge tunes from Dire Straits, Green Day, Ed Sheeran, there’s something for everyone – and don’t forget, TG is the only guitar mag to offer this many tabbed tracks complete with play-along audio! We’ll be back next month (or should I say next year!) with another edition of the best value guitar magazine on the market, in the meantime have a guitar-fuelled Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Next issue on sale 13 January 2017
Future is an award-winning international media group and leading digital business. We reach more than 49 million international consumers a month and create world-class content and advertising solutions for passionate consumers online, on tablet & smartphone and in print. Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR). www.futureplc.com
Stuart Williams Editor
making this month’s mag
Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Chairman Peter Allen Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Tel +44 (0)207 042 4000 (London) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)
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Chris Bird
Josh Gardner
Rob Laing
TG’s tuition editor has been jamming along to this month’s Classic Track, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms. “It’s a song I learned years ago”, Chris informs us, “But I never quite got the feel of it down. Of course, I didn’t have a volume pedal, so that might just explain it.”
Black Friday might be long gone, but that hasn’t deterred Josh - he spent this month trawling through the last 12 months of TG gear to pick out the best bargain guitars, amps and effects for you to blow your Christmas cash on – turn to p48 to see what he found. Think of him as your Welsh Gear Santa…
Rob’s had the blues this issue – he’s been raving about the new collection from the Stones as they tackle their idols’ songs on Blue And Lonesome, but he also sat down with a younger blues artist, Joanne Shaw Taylor, to talk about her playing approach on her landmark latest album. january 2017 Total Guitar
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#288 the gas Contents station Monitor
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guitar tricks
Starting out with the guitar can be a daunting prospect, but even for an absolute novice, there’s loads of easy tricks you can learn to make guitar easy!
Total Guitar january 2017
Subscribe!
Subscribe to Total Guitar and get a free TC Electronic PolyTune Clip OR get three issues for ÂŁ5! Turn to p89 and p108 for details!
Photography: Jesse Wild Ebet Roberts/Redferns) Jesse Wild Adam Gasson NBC / Contributor/ Getty Images Joby Sessions
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contents
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The BEST Gear bargains of 2016
Monitor 006 First Look 008 Scene 010 Five Minutes Alone: Bjorn Gelotte 012 On The Up 014 Me & My Guitar: Joe Duplantier 016 Album Reviews 018 Back Track: Weezer 020 WIN! A PRS SE Mark Holcomb
How To 022 20 Minutes To… Better Vibrato 024 Riff Of The Month: The Killers – Mr Brightside 026 Getting Started With… Picking & Strumming 028 The TG Guide To Effects: Fuzz 030 What The F? Minor Chords
Features 032 Rig Tour: Twin Atlantic 036 Joanne Shaw Taylor 042 Paul Gilbert 048 The Best Gear Bargains Of 2016 052 Cover Feature: Guitar Made Easy!
Learn To Play 060 Jam Track 062 Netlicks 064 Classic Track: Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms 074 Open-mic Songbook: Green Day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) 076 The Turnaround: Stevie Ray Vaughan
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TG Unplugged
Ed Sheeran Thinking out loud
083 The Soundboard 084 John Smith 086 Rockschool: Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud
The GAS Station
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Paul Gilbert
091 Start Me Up 092 PRS SE ‘Floyd’ Custom 24 096 Vintage Viator 12-string Travel Guitar 098 Line 6 Spider V 100 The TG Test: Budget Metal Axes 106 Group Test: Multi-modulation Pedals 110 Fix Your Guitar 114 The Playlist: Jade Puget january 2017 Total Guitar
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Monitor people ✪ news ✪ noise
PLucky 13 TC Electronic lifts the lid on a raft of affordable new pedals e knew TC Electronic was up to something, but even we couldn’t have predicted the pedal mogul would be unleashing 13 all-new effects on the world. Yet here they are: what the company is calling the Smorgasbord Of Tones. Some of the new designs are analogue, while others offer simple digital designs, but all are affordable, with SRPs set at just £49.99 apiece. The effect types run the gamut, too, from boosts, overdrives and distortions on to modulation, delays and reverb, and all feature top-mounted jacks and true bypass switching for easy pedalboard integration. Read on and tuck in…
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7 1 Tailspin Vibrato All-analogue true-pitch vibrato
2 Rush Booster 20dB of transparent clean boost
TC has unleashed 13 all-new affordable effects on the world
3 Afterglow Chorus Vintage-style analogue chorus
4 Blood Moon Phaser 70s-era four-stage phase tones
5 Grand Magus Distortion Versatile amp-like distortion pedal
6 The Prophet Digital Delay Up to 1,300ms of delay with three subdivisions
10 Thunderstorm Flanger Analogue flange spanning chorus to wide sweeps
7 Echobrain Analog Delay
11 Fangs Metal Distortion
All-analogue delay pedal with bucket brigade chips
High-gain, mid-scooped, tightresponse distortion
8 Skysurfer Reverb Three studio-quality reverb types: spring, room and hall
9 Cinders Overdrive Valve-like overdrive with wide gain range
12 Forcefield Compressor Versatile vintage-voiced analogue compressor
13 Rusty Fuzz Silicon-based fuzz with big sustain and ripping velcro tones
january 2017 Total Guitar
Monitor people ✪ news ✪ noise
scene gear
Your month in guitars
Snark Life
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Okay we admit it, we thought the evolution of the Snark headstock tuner had run its course. And we were so wrong. The new range of guitar, bass, violin and uke clip-on tuners (from £16.99) features a faster chip with higher resolution LCD screens for improved viewing angles. The QTSN8HZ Super-Tight all instrument tuner even includes an Hz tuning display for even greater accuracy to within 1/10th of an Hertz. Viva la evolution. When Now
gear
Animal Noise Following its signature stompboxes for Jeff Loomis, Reeves Gabrels and Periphery’s Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcomb, Pro Tone Pedals has announced an overdrive for Animals As Leaders innovator Tosin Abasi. Building on the influence of the US company’s Dead Horse pedal, the Abasi overdrive ($239) features a six-way low pass filter control for clarity in the nether regions of his eight- string tonal spectrum. When Now
Total Guitar january 2017
gear
Winter NAMM Show 2017 new year in guitar always starts strong with the biggest and best musical instrument show in the world taking place at Anaheim, California. TG will be there to sniff out the best gear for you but, ahead of the show, a lot of the largest manufacturers are playing their cards close to their chests and have the
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details of their new product launches on strict lockdown. That doesn’t mean we’re not hearing rumours and speculation, though. Look out for some signature surprises, the return of an old name to guitar and a brand new affordable line of instruments from at least one higher-end builder when it all kicks off next month. When 19-22 January
live
Tommy Emmanuel / clive carrolL ollowing the release of new seasonal album, Christmas Memories, Tommy Emmanuel has no intensions of resting. One of the world’s most beloved acoustic fingerpickers is visiting the UK for an extensive run and he’s bringing homegrown
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virtuoso Clive Carroll with him as a special guest. Two of the finest fingerstyle players in one night, and the chance to hopefully see them play together? You should be there with sleighbells on. When From 11 January
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meshuggaH he Swedish metal progressives don’t come around often on UK and Ireland headlining tours, so when they do, it’s an experience that’s not to be missed. Especially now they have an acclaimed new record to showcase on the live stage. The Violent Sleep Of Reason is a more rhythmically complex listen than 2012’s polarizing Koloss, but rewards listening investment immensely. It’s also a shift towards live tracking and traditional amp recording from a band who have spearheaded the use of digital modelling in metal so bodes well for its live interpretation. When From 12 January
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©ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo
Monitor people ✪ news ✪ noise
Everybody wants some “I’d love to sit down with Eddie Van Halen, even if just to sit and watch him play guitar up close for a bit. I went to see them in the US on this reunion, I brought my dad and some friends over to see two shows. He was seriously good – the whole band was fantastic, actually. Alex’s drumming was insane and Eddie’s kid Wolfgang was playing bass and doing all the backing vocals… shredding with his dad! If you get the chance, you need to see it. I must have listened to Van Halen II about a billion times, the skill and ease Eddie plays with is unbelievable – he was just laughing his way through those entire records!”
Swaying to the symphony of destruction “My biggest breakthrough on guitar came early on, when I started learning about harmonies and all that dual lead stuff that Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy were famous for. When I got to grips with the power of those harmonies, it yielded great things. I actually went a bit crazy with it – some songs had two different harmonised rhythm guitars, then up to six lead guitars all harmonizing over top. It became a symphony orchestra at times!”
Straight for the heart
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five minutes alone
Björn Gelotte The In Flames axeman on his metalhead dad, first guitar heroes and essential gear… We could be heroes
“My mum and dad came home with a Suzuki guitar – it looked a little bit like a Les Paul but kinda not. It didn’t even come with a case, it just arrived in their hands! It didn’t look anything like the guitar I wanted to play and sounded crap, so I quickly bought a Yamaha RGX. I found an EMG in a music store and carved out the space for it, as well as the battery in the back. It looked shit but sounded great – my first steps on stage were with that guitar!”
“My first guitar hero was Ritchie Blackmore, he could be my favourite songwriter of all time. I’m really lucky, my dad was a metalhead so I grew up on Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Sabbath and Ozzy! After Blackmore came Van Halen, Rhoads, Wylde, Slash… I took elements from all those guys and tried to incorporate them together. When you’re a fanboy, you try to learn all the tricks of your heroes and later they combine into your own sound.”
“you try to learn all the tricks of your heroes and they combine into your sounD” Total Guitar january 2017
Only for the weak “My main weakness would probably be picking. In order to be precise and clean, you need to practise. There is no shortcut… and that’s my problem. If I manage to do something that sounds really good on record, I have to work my ass off to be able to play it okay live! I’ll keep going through the leads until they are in the same area code as what was recorded. Guys like Paul Gilbert are flawless: he can start with upstrokes or downstrokes, nothing seems to bother him! I was always too lazy. I still am!”
In Flames’s new album, Battles, is out now on Nuclear Blast.
Words: Amit Sharma Photography: Joby Sessions, © Photoshot
Got my first real six-string…
“The one piece of gear I couldn’t live without would be my Dunlop 95Q Cry Baby wah. For years I didn’t know how to use it, but I eventually found the sweet spot and it’s now become integral to my sound, especially for leads. Different notes on the guitar have different sweet spots and I think Michael Schenker is the king of all that. Michael Amott from Arch Enemy, too… the way he plays hits you straight in the heart. I also think Fredrik Åkesson from Opeth is insanely good at that stuff, yet he’s the most chilled and laid-back dude ever!”
Monitor people ✪ news ✪ noise
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© Ebru Yildiz
O N T H E U P Margaret Glaspy
Inventive minimalist songwriter making a lot from a little ingersongwriter Margaret Glaspy grew up with guitars in the house – starting on the fiddle, before the lure of pop and rock music drew the Californian/New Yorker to the dark-side and the six-string. “I’ve always been a huge Joni Mitchell fan, a big Rolling Stones fan,” she’s tells TG. “And I really turned into a massive Elliot Smith fan. I really adored the way he played rhythm guitar and all of the chord changes and his harmonic preferences are really brilliant.” Glaspy’s own playing takes some cues from Smith in its
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shady sense of low-register minimalist melody, not to mention a little bit of The Stones’ bluesy ramble – all overlaid with a wavering, raspy vocal that pitches in and out of falsetto. Her recent debut album, Emotions And Math, gets its hooks into you early, summoning subtle blues lick detours from Liz Phairesque songcraft. “My favourite players all have an aesthetic,” she explains. “Overall there’s a real sound there that isn’t just about the notes they’re
playing, but a textural quality and a sonic approach that’s specific for all of those players that I really appreciate.” Margaret’s aim tonally is for something “organic and also distressed at the same time” with the minimal amount of pedals. A ’59 Deluxe Reverb (for big gigs), paired with her T-style Danocaster Single Cut are the familiar keys to the sound, but their use is oddly off-kilter – unorthodox, even. Take title track Emotions And
Math, in which the solo of a predominantly electric track is played on the low E-string of an acoustic. “That I was quite excited about,” she confesses. “Less because it was some fancy lick and more because of how effective it was. Electric guitar is quite smooth when it’s clean, but with acoustic, I feel like it can be more biting – you’re just literally hitting things on the string.” Who needs more than that?
FOR FANS OF Liz Phair, Elliot Smith Hear Emotions And Math
“My favourite players have an aesthetic that isn’t just about the notes they’re playing”