Guitar Trivia Brian May Guitar Trivia Brian never used a conventional pick, always a coin.
The Secret to The “Keep Yourself Alive” Scrapes That very special guitar sound (the guitar panned to the left) in the very beginning of the Queen song "Keep yourself alive" is the result of Brian May vertically scraping over the bass strings with the serrated edge of the sixpence coin that he always preferred as his guitar pick of choice. Most guitarists who cover this song, try to emulate that sound with (horizontal) pick slides, which sounds quite different from the original.
The Secret to The “Keep Yourself Alive” Scrapes • If you want to get that exact same sound when you cover “Keep Yourself Alive”, go grab a quarter (if you are in the US) or any coin that has a serrated edge, switch on your overdrive pedal and a phaser, and scrape the edge of your quarter coin vertically up and down over your low E & A string, emulating Brian’s rhythmic pattern. There you have it. •
The Red Special When he was a teenager: Brian May, with the help of his dad Harold May, built his own guitar, which he named the “Red Special”. His guitar uses a 24” scale length, which makes his guitar neck shorter than the necks of Gibsons and Fenders. The closer distances between the frets makes the guitar easier to play. The shorter scale length also gives the guitar a warmer sound.
The Red Special Brian created his mother-of-pearl dot markers from shirt buttons he found in his mom’s sewing box. He has played that guitar for over 50 years now and toured the whole world with it… and it has never needed a set up, nor has it ever needed any neck adjustments… or ever needed to be re-fretted. I had always wondered about that guitar, and was super happy to find out last year that Brian had authored an amazing book about his guitar and about the whole process of building it from scratch. You can find the book here http://amzn.to/1SexaZm
Brian May and String Changes Brian May doesn’t like the tone of brand new strings. That is why his guitar tech never changes all strings at once, but one at a time, spread out over time Brian uses .008, .010, .011, .022, 0.30, and . 034  You can find out more fun Brian May trivia and stories in his book here: http://amzn.to/1SexaZm Stories and trivia like the above, are partially why guitar students do so well, learn so quickly and have so much fun in their lessons at http://www.zotzinguitarlessons.com/
Brian May and String Changes Los Angeles’ premiere guitar and music teacher Vreny Van Elslande, has been teaching music and guitar since 20+ years, reads about 100 books a year, teaches about 45 students a week and has one of the best guitar curriculums that is out there. It covers not only everything you can possibly learn about guitar, music, music theory and songwriting, but is brimming with countless fun stories and trivia like the above. Contact Info: vreny@zotzinmusic.com
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