While roaming booths at the 2014 NAMM Show, we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of acoustic powerhouse and Austin, TX native Monte Montgomery rock the Peavey stage.
Montgomery’s hybrid slide-picking approach is definitely impressive, and after he kicks in some gain, it’s easy to forget that you’re listening to an acoustic guitarist rather than a guy shredding a Strat. Here he’s plugged into a Budda Twinmaster.
While it’d be easy for Montgomery to simply be “a guitar slinger from Austin,” his musical abilities run beyond that. As quoted from his website’s bio, “I strive to have more depth, to be more layered as an artist, songwriter and singer.”
Chock full of everything from roots-rock to breezy pop, Montgomery’s latest full length “Tethered” reflects this level of musicianship. Montgomery’s beefy playing remains at the heart of every track, and the record is capable of satisfying even the most critical of acoustic guitar enthusiasts.
Check out Montgomery performing the track, “River,” from his 2008 self-titled release below:
Members of the Guitar World crew visited the always-impressive Marshall Amplification booth at the 2014 Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim, California.
Marshall's Nick Bowcott gave us a tour of the company's latest offerings, which include the Custom Shop JVM Tattoo Series and the popular Handwired Series.
From the company:
Marshall got together with five of the U.K.’s most respected tattooists to lend their art and style to some of Marshall’s British-built products. The tattooists were given a completely open brief to ensure that their own individual style came through in their art. Each had the following three products to work with:
• JVM1H all-valve, 1-Watt head with a C110 1x10” cabinet • JVM215C all-valve, 50-Watt 1x12” combo • JVM410H all-valve, 100-Watt head with a 1960A angled 4x12” cabinet.
Meanwhile, the Handwired Series of all-valve amps celebrates Marshall’s legacy of influencing the sound of rock and blues for more than 50 years.
Handwired is an ongoing series that features painstaking reissues of revered, historical, Marshall products that were originally completely wired by the human hand. These handcrafted, British-built amps capture in detail the authentic, legendary sound of Marshall, not only for connoisseurs and collectors, but also for a new generation of gear-savvy and tone-savvy musicians.
Check out our exclusive video below, which includes a brief demo of an amp in the Handwired Series. For more information, visit marshallamps.com.
This video is bonus content related to the March 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.
When it comes to amplifying an acoustic guitar, a microphone may be the best way to capture the instrument’s natural sound and nuances, but it’s not the easiest.
Miking an acoustic guitar in the studio involves placing several mics in strategic locations and using a variety of preamps and limiters as well as EQ. Onstage, it inevitably involves compromises to prevent feedback and avoid unwieldy setups that can restrict a performer’s movement.
The new L.R. Baggs Lyric microphone has been developed exclusively to address these difficulties. It’s a compact mic that mounts inside an acoustic guitar, to its bridge plate. And despite its diminutive size, it incorporates numerous innovations that provide the performance of studio processors.
On the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in the United States (and legendary February 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show), Guitar World celebrates the 50 best guitar moments from the band's hit-making history.
The Beatles were such talented songwriters that it’s easy to overlook the fact that their music has some great — and occasionally groundbreaking — guitar work.
In assembling this list, we looked beyond our personal favorite songs and reflected on where John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney showed their talents as guitarists, whether in a solo, a riff, a technique or by their astute selection of instrument and arrangement.
For some songs, we’ve gone a step further and analyzed the guitar work to give you insights into the magic that makes these moments so special. Enjoy! And be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below or on Facebook!
50. Across the Universe Let It Be… Naked (2003)
John Lennon considered the Beatles’ recording of this 1967 composition “a lousy track of a great song,” dismissing even his own work on it.
He was too hard on himself: his imperfect acoustic guitar work and vocal delivery effectively work in service of the song’s sincere devotional message, though overdubs of strings, background vocals and electric guitar obscured the delicacy and intimacy of his performance.
The release of Let It Be… Naked in 2003 set the record straight, offering a bare-bones acoustic mix of the track that even Lennon might have approved of.
49. Flying Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
The strongly pulsing tremolo on the rhythm guitar makes the instrument sound as if it’s riding slightly behind the beat, giving the song a druggy languor appropriate to its title. (In the film Magical Mystery Tour, “Flying” accompanies scenes shot high above the clouds).
The crystalline acoustic guitar that appears about 13 seconds in lends the song a country vibe, culminating in a tasty double-stop lick that lazily meanders down the fretboard. Heavenly.
48. Helter Skelter The Beatles (1968)
It’s not a stretch to say the Beatles prefigured heavy metal’s doomier side with this 1968 Paul McCartney track.
For this recording, McCartney set aside his bass duties and strapped on his Fender Esquire to deliver the track’s brash rhythm work, while Harrison performed the searing leads on Lucy, the 1957 Les Paul Standard gifted to him by Eric Clapton.
But the best work here is performed by Lennon on, of all things, a bass (either a Fender Bass VI). His sloppy but inspired playing propels the song along and provides its main rhythmic interest.
47. Yesterday Help! (1965)
McCartney’s melancholy, acoustic guitar–driven ballad marked a symbolic, pivotal point in the Beatles’ career as a band in that it was their first song in which any of the members—three in this case—did not participate in the performance.
McCartney tuned his guitar down one whole step for this song (low to high, D G C F A D) and performed it as if it were in the key of G, with the detuning transposing it down to the concert key of F.
This may have been made for the sake of putting the vocal melody in a more optimal key for McCartney; it certainly made the bass notes sound deeper and richer, while the slackened string tension contributed to the thicker texture of the chord voicings.
46. For You Blue Let It Be (1970)
Written by Harrison, this seemingly straightforward blues workout in D stands out as a bouncy oddball in the Beatles’ catalog.
Not only is it one of the band’s few forays into 12-bar-blues territory; it also finds Lennon stepping into the uncommon role of lead guitarist, supplying a spirited solo and fills on a Hofner Hawaiian Standard lap-steel guitar in open D tuning.
To make things even weirder, he uses a shotgun shell as a slide. In addition, there’s no bass on the recording; McCartney performed on piano and the song received no overdubs.
45. Free As a Bird Anthology 1 (1995)
Released in 1995 as a post-mortem Beatles track built upon a John Lennon home demo, “Free As a Bird” makes a valiant attempt to resurrect the spirit of the group’s glory days.
While some will quibble about the lackluster songwriting, it’s hard to find fault with Harrison’s stinging slide work. Starting off with a few restrained lines, Harrison lets his playing soar on the solo, the one moment in which the song truly takes flight.
44. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Recorded quickly in a single session, this rocking reprise of the album’s opening track features some fiery lead guitar work from Harrison.
Written as a bookend to the album-opening title track, the reprise is both faster and a whole step lower than the original, although halfway through it modulates up a whole step. (Modulation is a technique rarely found in the Beatles compositions, “And I Love Her” being another example from the group’s catalog [see entry 30].)
43. I Will The Beatles (1968)
This quiet love song, written by McCartney, features only him on lead and harmony vocals, two acoustic guitars and scat-sung “vocal bass,” with Lennon and Starr providing percussion.
McCartney overdubbed, on top of his main, strummed guitar part, a second, melodic part played in a rockabilly lead style reminiscent of Elvis Presley’s lead guitarist Scotty Moore, picking out syncopated, ringing melodies built around a first-position F6 chord shape with decorative, bluesy hammer-ons from the minor third to the major third.
Years later, Cars guitarist Elliot Easton played a similar line on the chorus tags to “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend.”
42. The Ballad of John and Yoko 1967–1970 (1973)
In this 1969 musical telling of Lennon and Yoko Ono’s wedding and honeymoon, Lennon’s acoustic strumming sets up the song’s infectious rhythm, while his electric guitar fills play call-and-response with his vocals.
The track was written and recorded in April of that year, fresh off the sessions for Let It Be, in which the group attempted to get back to their rock and roll roots. That might have inspired Lennon’s musical direction with this track, which he closes with an electric guitar riff reminiscent of Dorsey Burnett’s “Lonesome Tears in My Eyes,” which the Beatles covered early in their career.
41. Yer Blues The Beatles (1968)
Lennon wrote this 1968 song as a rude sendup of the electric blues boom that had taken London by storm, but the suicidal feelings he expresses were a sincere articulation of how he felt trapped both in his unhappy first marriage and in the Beatles.
Likewise, his primitive two-note solo could be regarded as mocking disdain for the genre’s slick white imitators, but he plays the riff until it’s as raw as his emotions. He would pursue this protopunk style of guitar playing further on his 1970 solo debut, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
40. Help! Help!
The Beatles’ mix of acoustic rhythms and electric guitar leads from 1964 through the end of 1965 helped greatly to define the sound of folk-rock.
Written in the midst of his “Bob Dylan phase,” “Help!” shows Lennon continuing to divulge the vulnerability express on previous songs like “No Reply” and “I’m a Loser,” with the acoustic guitar providing the requisite balladeer instrumentation.
Here, Lennon robustly strums out the rhythm on his 1964 Framus Hootenanny 5/024 acoustic 12-string, with Harrison contributing jangly lead lines and three-note descending passages on the choruses with his Gretsch Tennessean.
39. Dear Prudence The Beatles (1968)
This 1968 composition is arguably one of Lennon’s greatest achievements as a guitarist and demonstrates his development at the time into a bona fide acoustic fingerpicker.
Having recently learned a basic eighth-note Travis-picking-like pattern from British pop star Donovan, Lennon put the newly learned pattern to great use in compositions like “Julia,” “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” and, most brilliantly, “Dear Prudence,” applying it to an ethereal modal chord progression he invented, which he performed in drop-D tuning (low to high, D A D G B E), using the two open D strings (the fourth and sixth) as ringing drones, or pedal tones throughout the majority of the song.
The thumb-picking pattern goes fifth string, fourth string, sixth string, fourth string and repeats consistently through the changing chords, interrupted briefly at the end of each verse.
38. If I Needed Someone Rubber Soul (1965)
Although the Beatles were rock’s foremost trendsetters, they still were influenced by other artists.
Case in point: George Harrison’s 12-string riff on “If I Needed Someone.” Played in a second-position D-chord shape with a capo on the seventh fret, the line was based on Jim McGuinn’s chiming guitar work in the Byrds’ mesmerizing 1965 track “The Bells of Rhymney.”
In the mid Sixties, Harrison and McGuinn had formed a mutual-admiration society: “If I Needed Someone” featured Harrison’s second Rickenbacker 360/12, a rounded-off 1965 model that resembled McGuinn’s 1964 Rickenbacker 360/12, which McGuinn bought after seeing Harrison’s first Rick in the film A Hard Day’s Night.
37. Day Tripper 1962–1966 (1973)
Lennon and McCartney’s hip-shaking 1965 hit is a thinly veiled ode to “weekend hippies” who embrace the drug counterculture when they’re not pursuing their careers.
McCartney referred to this song and “Drive My Car” (recorded just days earlier) as “songs with jokes in” them, but there’s nothing laughable about this track’s swaggering guitar riff, borrowed from the Temptations’ 1964 hit “My Girl” and given a liberal dose of self-assured attitude.
Lennon reportedly plays the solo, most likely using his Sonic Blue Fender Strat, while Harrison’s guitar parts were probably recorded with his Gretsch Tennessean.
36. Think for Yourself Rubber Soul (1965)
The Beatles had been interested in creating distorted guitar tones since at least 1964, when they attempted unsuccessfully to use a Gibson Maestro Fuzz-Tone on “She Loves You” and “Don’t Bother Me” (see entry 23).
They were more successful with Harrison’s excellent 1965 composition “Think for Yourself,” for which McCartney plugged his Hofner bass into an early version of the Tone Bender fuzz pedal, created by electronics designer Gary Hurst and eventually marketed by Vox. The result is the harsh-sounding “lead bass” tone that bobs menacingly—and memorably—alongside Harrison’s lead vocal.
35. Mother Nature’s Son The Beatles (1968)
Throughout this song’s verses, McCartney fools you into thinking that he’s playing more than he actually is by filling out the harmony with his vocal melody.
For example, while the ear hears a very strong D-to-G movement in the first two bars of the verse, all McCartney is actually playing is D to Dsus4; his vocal melody intimates the G chord by moving to B, that chord’s third. The verse also features, in the third and fourth bars, brilliant oblique motion—where one voice moves up or down while one or more other voices remain stationary.
By moving the root of a B minor chord, B, down to the minor seventh, A, and then down to the sixth, Gs, while keeping the notes D and Fs constant above this descending line, McCartney implies a slick progression of Bm D (or Bm7) E9. He does the same thing at the very beginning of the song.
34. Girl Rubber Soul (1965)
Lennon conjures up this song’s dreamy, Gypsy-like reverie by capoing his Gibson J-160E at the eighth fret, making the guitar sound similar to a mandola.
Harrison furthers the vibe on the third verse, playing a mandolin-like melody on Lennon’s Framus Hootenanny 12-string acoustic. But the crowning touch comes at the coda, when a third acoustic guitar enters, playing a Greek-style melody that’s plucked at the bridge with sharp strokes, making it sound like a bouzouki and further emphasizing the song’s smoky, old-world aura.
The British group the Hollies would copy the effect on their hit “Bus Stop,” recorded at Abbey Road some six months later.
33. Birthday The Beatles (1968)
Like “I Feel Fine” and “Day Tripper” (see entries 12 and 37), “Birthday” delivers a classic and memorable guitar riff. Whereas those previous two songs veered from the traditional 12-bar blues formula, “Birthday” hews closely to it during its verses.
McCartney and Lennon wrote the song in the studio during an evening session, which included a recess during which the band went back to McCartney’s house to watch a TV broadcast of the 1956 teen film The Girl Can’t Help It. The soundtrack—which included performances by Little Richard, Gene Vincent and other Beatles’ favorites—undoubtedly contributed to the song’s raucous vintage rock-and-roll vibe.
32. One After 909 Let It Be (1969)
This tune had been in the Beatles’ song bag for years, surfacing first as a rickety blues-style shuffle at a March 1963 recording session.
By the time they tackled it again during their January 1969 rooftop performance at Apple, the Beatles were nearly finished as a group, but they were at long last able to breathe life into the tune, revving it up with a rock and roll beat and laying into it like the seasoned performers they were. Harrison delivers a stellar country-rock solo, using his rosewood Telecaster.
31. Norwegian Wood Rubber Soul (1965)
This acoustic-rock masterpiece, written by Lennon, is not unlike “Here Comes the Sun,” in that it’s a folky chord-melody type of accompaniment that could easily stand on its own as a solo instrumental, with the vocal melody conveniently woven into the chords.
However, unlike “Here Comes the Sun” (see entry 4), the melody sits in the middle, rather than on top, of the chord voicings, and is performed with more full strumming in a flowing 6/8 meter. Lennon performed “Norwegian Wood” as if the song were in the key of D, the verses being in D major and the bridge sections switching the parallel minor key of D minor, and used a capo at the second fret to transpose everything up a whole step, to E major and E minor, respectively.
30. And I Love Her A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
It’s overshadowed by the Beatles’ more innovative songs, but “And I Love Her” demonstrates a leap in the group’s harmonic sophistication and musical arrangement skills.
Harrison performs delicate arpeggiations on his 1964 Ramírez nylon-string classical acoustic, while McCartney subtly propels the song along with his soul-inflected bass work. A modulation from the key of E to F on the solo ramps up the drama and keeps the song from flagging. The final chord, D major—the relative minor of F—delivers surprise and emotional uplift that allows the song to end hopefully, in keeping with the optimism of the lyrics.
29. Not Guilty Anthology 1 (1995)
Recorded for 1968’s White Album but unissued until the release of Anthology 1 in 1995, this Harrison track was a lyrical response to his fellow Beatles, who felt that their trip to India at his urging to study transcendental meditation had been a waste of time.
It’s hard to understand why this track was abandoned, especially after the group devoted more than 100 attempts to the rhythm track. Harrison’s guitar work is especially superb, from his sinewy lead lines to his sizzling tone, achieved by placing his amp in one of Abbey Road’s echo chambers and cranking it up for maximum effect, while he performed, safe from the volume, in the studio control room.
Harrison eventually re-recorded this song for his self-titled 1979 album.
28. Old Brown Shoe 1967–1970 (1973)
Dishonorably relegated to the B-side of the single “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (see entry 42), this 1969 Harrison composition is one of his best. His stinging guitar work is at times reminiscent of Clapton, especially on the solo, where he plays his rosewood Telecaster through a Leslie cabinet, his preferred effect of the period.
In addition to guitar, Harrison plays organ and, by his own account, the buoyant bass line. “That was me going nuts,” he said of the bass work in a 1987 interview. “I’m doing exactly what I do on the guitar.”
27. Michelle Rubber Soul (1965)
Another great example of McCartney’s innate gift for songwriting/composing, “Michelle” features, in its intro and elsewhere throughout the song, the previously mentioned standard “minor-drop” progression heard in “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “All My Loving” (see entries 7 and 16).
The song also includes some rather clever and original harmonic twists and turns, such as the use of, in the second bar of the verse progression, the dominant-seven-sharp-nine (7s9) chord pointed out earlier in regard to Harrison’s “Till There Was You” solo, which, in both songs, is voiced “widely,” low to high: 1(root)-5-3(10)-f7-s9. Lennon, by the way, would later also employ this same chord voicing in “Sexy Sadie,” a chord that he, McCartney and Harrison all learned early on from a friend and local guitar-hero in Liverpool named Jim Gretty and dubbed “the Gretty chord.”
26. Cry for a Shadow Anthology 1 (1995)
In 1961, unknown and looking for a break, the Beatles supported British rock and roll singer Tony Sheridan on a recording date in Hamburg. While there, they recorded two tracks of their own, including this Harrison-Lennon guitar-instrumental written in the style of U.K. pop group the Shadows (hence, the title).
The recording provides early evidence of Lennon’s steady and dynamic rhythm guitar work, as well as McCartney’s melodic skills on the bass, which he had just begun playing. But it’s Harrison who shines, making the most of the trite melody with double-stop licks and generous use of the whammy bar on his Strat-style Futurama electric guitar.
He ends the song with a major sixth—C6, specifically—a voicing that would become a signature Beatles coda on songs like “She Loves You,” “No Reply” and “Help!” (see entry 40).
25. Hey Bulldog Yellow Submarine (1968)
McCartney’s lead guitar work had characterized most of the great solo guitar moments on the Beatles’ records during 1966 and 1967. But with “Hey Bulldog,” recorded in February 1968, Harrison came charging back with a guitar solo that’s heavier and hairier than just about anything in the group’s catalog.
For the song, he played his red 1964 SG Standard, using a fuzz box (most likely his Tone Bender) to give his sound a snarl befitting the song’s title. Recalls engineer Geoff Emerick, “His amp was turned up really loud, and he used one of his new fuzz boxes, which made his guitar absolutely scream." Equally outstanding is Paul McCartney’s buoyant bass work, which is practically a lead instrument on its own.
24. I’ve Just Seen a Face Rubber Soul (1965)
Written by McCartney and musically inspired by the skiffle movement that was popular in the U.K. in the late Fifties and early Sixties, this up-tempo knee-slapper features Lennon, Harrison and McCartney all playing acoustic guitars, with Ringo Starr providing percussion (brushed snare drum and overdubbed maracas).
The lyrical instrumental intro features a bass-line chord-melody, played (most likely by Harrison) on a 12-string, which serves to octave-double the bass-line melody, over which McCartney and Lennon flatpick a single-note melody based on double-stops, mostly sixth intervals, played up and down the G and high E strings in a quick, unbroken triplet rhythm, beautifully outlining the underlying chords with ascending and descending note pairs.
23. Don’t Bother Me With the Beatles (1963)
Harrison’s first solo songwriting effort for the Beatles sounds like nothing else in the group’s catalog. With its moody minor chords, propulsive drum beat and tremolo guitar, this 1964 track has more in common with California surf music than it does the American rock and soul that inspired the Beatles’ music at the time.
The tremolo—provided by Harrison’s Vox AC30—gives the song an air of menace appropriate to the song’s title, and its use here marks the first time the group used an electronic effect on a finished recording.
22. Octopus’s Garden Abbey Road (1969)
By 1969, George Harrison had put down his sitar to focus on his first love, the guitar. The results are apparent on Abbey Road, which features his most fluid and confident playing to date.
On “Octopus’s Garden,” one of Ringo Starr’s rare Beatles-era tunes, Harrison calls on his country/rockabilly influences for the first time since the band’s pre-psychedelic days. The intro is a slick masterpiece in the major pentatonic scale, the same territory Dickey Betts would later visit on “Blue Sky.” The song’s fun, twangy solo could sit snugly among James Burton’s work on Merle Haggard’s late-Sixties albums.
21. Till There Was You With the Beatles (1963)
With this charming early cover of a love song from the popular 1957 Broadway musical play and 1962 feature film The Music Man, the Beatles demonstrated their stylistic versatility as they authoritatively breeze through the song’s harmonically sophisticated, jazz-like chord progression.
Harrison’s solo break conveys a musical savvy on par with that of a veteran jazz improviser, as he strongly outlines the underlying chord progression, producing a perfect melodic counterpoint with the bass line by using arpeggios and targeting non-root chord tones, such as the third or ninth, on each chord change.
Also impressive is his incorporation of two-, three- and four-note chords into what would otherwise be a predominantly single-note solo to create jazz-guitar-style chord-melody phrases, as well as his superimposition over the five chord, C7, of a daringly dissonant Gf7s9 chord (voiced, low to high, Gf Df Bf E A), a trick known in the language of jazz as a tritone substitution.
20. Good Morning Good Morning Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Let’s face it: There aren’t many ferocious, brash and screaming guitar solos in the Beatles’ catalog. That said, Paul McCartney’s razor-sharp solo on “Good Morning Good Morning” is all that and a bag of chips.
The 13-second-long treble fest, played on a Fender Esquire through a Selmer amp, features a strong East Indian vibe, perhaps a nod to George Harrison’s burgeoning fascination with Indian religion and music.
Like its stylistic predecessor, McCartney’s “Taxman” guitar solo (see entry 3), “Good Morning Good Morning” incorporates open-string drone notes and rapid-fire descending hammer-pull slides, mostly along one string, in this case, the B string.
19. I Need You Help! (1965)
By 1965, the Beatles were making noticeable strides in their arrangements and instrumentation. A prime example is “I Need You,” one of two George Harrison compositions to appear on Help!
The recording represents Harrison’s first use of a volume pedal. The guitar’s dramatic, almost pedal-steel-like volume swells—which frame Harrison’s curt, suspended chords—only add to the song’s wistful lyrical content.
The volume pedal was a step up for the band; the guitar swells heard on “Baby’s in Black,” which was tracked the previous summer, were the result of John Lennon turning the volume knob on Harrison’s 1963 Gretsch Tennessean as Harrison played it.
18. You Can’t Do That A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
On February 25, 1964, the Beatles entered the studio with an exciting new piece of gear: a Fireglo 1963 Rickenbacker 360/12. George Harrison had received the guitar only 17 days earlier when the band was in New York shooting its initial Ed Sullivan Show appearance.
The song’s chiming intro riff, with its middle-finger hammer-ons from a minor third to a major third within the chord, offered a taste of what lay ahead for the guitar, which would see heavy action onstage and in the studio through 1965. John Lennon performed the guitar solo on his new Jetglo 1964 Rickenbacker.
17. Let It Be Let It Be (1970)
As Beatles obsessives know, there are three versions of George Harrison’s solo for this track: the original, recorded in January 1969 with his rosewood Telecaster (available on 2003’s Let It Be… Naked); the second, recorded the following April with his Tele through a Leslie rotary speaker (released on the single “Let It Be” in 1970); and a third version recorded in January 1970 using his “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul through a Tone Bender (released on Let It Be).
Nice as the first two are, they have nothing on the third, a blistering performance that raises the song’s drama to a higher level of emotion.
16. All My Loving With the Beatles (1963)
For this pop song’s thumping, quasi–jump blues, rockabilly-style groove, Harrison crafted a convincingly authentic Chet Atkins/Carl Perkins–like solo break that clearly demonstrates his familiarity with that Fifties Nashville style of electric guitar soloing.
Employing hybrid picking (pick-and-fingers technique), the guitarist acknowledges and gravitates toward the underlying chords in his melodic phrases, employing country-style “walk-ups” and “walk-downs” and plucking double-stops (pairs of notes) to sweetly and effectively outline the chord changes with a pleasing thematic continuity.
Lennon contributed an energetic rhythm guitar part, one that he later expressed being rather proud of, which propels the groove with tireless waves of triplet chord strums, similar to those heard in the Crystals’ song “Da Doo Ron Ron.”
15. Ticket to Ride Help! (1965)
This proto-heavy-metal track was the first Beatles recording to feature McCartney on lead guitar and the last on which George Harrison used his Rickenbacker 12-string. McCartney plays the note-bending fills at the end of the bridges and on the outro, while Harrison plays the song’s arpeggiated riff and Lennon handles rhythm guitar.
But the heaviest part might just be the droning open-string A notes that Harrison overdubbed on the verses, suggestive of the classical Indian music he would begin to explore later that year.
14. Dig a Pony Let It Be (1970)
The song’s driving, bluesy riff is as durable as any that Muddy Waters ever wrote, but the 1969 recording is also notable for Harrison’s smoky guitar work on his rosewood Telecaster—from the double-stop licks on the verses to his confident and impeccably developed solo.
You can hear Harrison’s signature style beginning to develop here, with the smoothness of his lines pointing toward the fluid slide style he would develop over the following year. His guitar tone is also very similar to that of “Octopus’ Garden” (see entry 22) recorded later that year, for which he may have also used the rosewood Tele.
13. Nowhere Man Rubber Soul (1965)
According to Harrison, he and Lennon perform the song’s bright, chiming solo together in unison, using their matching Sonic Blue Fender Stratocasters.
Lennon also revealed to guitarist Earl Slick, during the making of Lennon’s 1980 album Double Fantasy, that the solo was recorded through a pair of small amps with a single microphone positioned between them. The Strats’ trebly nature was further accentuated on “Nowhere Man” by boosting the high frequencies via the mixing console.
“We wanted very trebly guitars,” McCartney says. “They’re among the most trebly guitars I’ve ever heard on record.”
12. I Feel Fine 1962–1966 (1973)
Audio feedback was just an annoying electronic phenomenon until the Beatles used it as an attention-getting way to start “I Feel Fine.” The song itself is a rather standard riff rocker inspired by Bobby Parker’s 1961 R&B hit, “Watch Your Step,” but its distinctive intro came about by accident when McCartney played a low A note on his bass as Lennon was leaning his Gibson J-160E acoustic-electric against his amp.
The note set Lennon’s guitar vibrating, and its proximity to the amp caused the sound to feed back. “We went, ‘What’s that? Voodoo!’ ” McCartney recalls. Yes, that too.
11. Blackbird The Beatles (1968)
McCartney recorded this beautiful song’s gentle, fingerstyle acoustic accompaniment on his Martin D-28.
He creates an elegant, classical-guitar-style chord movement by using two-finger chord shapes exclusively, most of which form 10th intervals on the A and B strings, in conjunction with the open G-string note, which he picks in opposition to the chord shapes and employs as a droning common tone.
His unique fingerpicking technique relies largely on his thumb, which he uses to pick bass notes, and index finger, which he uses for pretty much everything else, employing brushed downstrokes and upstrokes and often brushing across two or more strings.
This often results in notes that are “ghosted,” or barely articulated, a “flaw” that is a testament to his innate musicality—McCartney’s touch is charming and greatly contributes to the overall feel of the song.
10. “Something” Abbey Road (1969)
Ironically, while the Beatles were breaking apart in 1969, George Harrison was coming into his own as a songwriter and guitarist.
His Abbey Road contribution “Something” is among his finest songs, and his guitar playing here and throughout the album is masterful. Harrison’s mellifluous lead lines, in particular, are more expressive than anything he’d done before, demonstrating his newfound confidence and evolving connection to his instrument and creative muse.
Performed with his “Lucy” 1957 Gibson Les Paul played through a Leslie speaker, the solo simmers as Harrison turns up the heat on his melody and dynamics, then cools it down with bluesy restraint.
“George came into his own on Abbey Road,” says Geoff Emerick, who engineered this and other Abbey Road sessions. “For the first time he was speaking out and doing exactly what he wanted to do. And of course he wrote these beautiful songs and we got a great new guitar sound.”
09. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) Abbey Road (1969)
John Lennon was composing some of the heaviest rock and roll in the Beatles’ catalog in 1969, and this song—true to its title—is among the most crushing, thanks to an abundance of doubled and overdubbed guitar lines that give it some serious sonic heft.
Lennon wrote the song for Yoko Ono, with whom he was newly in love, and the result is a spellbinding exercise in obsessive repetition, from its lyrics—consisting almost entirely of the title and roughly five other words—to the ominous guitar lines that recur throughout it.
Clocking in at 7:47, the song is also one of the Beatles’ longest.
And although it consists of nothing more than a verse and a chorus repeated several times, it is rhythmically one of their most intricate tunes, switching between 12/8 meter and 4/4 rhythms alternately played bluesy and with a double-time rock beat. Few other artists could have made so much with so little.
08. I’m Only Sleeping Revolver (1966)
Harrison’s startling backward guitar solo on this Lennon-penned song is one of his greatest guitar moments on 1966’s Revolver.
Over the previous year, he had used an expression pedal to create a volume-swelling sound, similar to a reverse-tape effect, on several tracks, including “Yes It Is” and “I Need You” (see entry 19).
But for “I’m Only Sleeping,” Harrison wanted to hear his guitar truly in reverse, a decision undoubtedly inspired by Lennon’s own retrograde vocals on “Rain,” recorded earlier the same month, April 1966.
Rather than simply improvising guitar lines while the track was played backward, he prepared lead lines and a five-bar solo for the song and had George Martin transcribe them for him in reverse. Harrison then performed the lines while the tape was running back to front.
The result is a solo that surges up from the song’s murky depths, suffusing it with a smeared, surreal, dreamlike ambience. Within a year, Harrison’s idea would be copied by such psychedelic rock acts of the day as the Electric Prunes, who employed it on their 1966 hit “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night),” and Jimi Hendrix, who used it to great effect on “Castles Made of Sand.”
07. And Your Bird Can Sing Revolver (1966)
This middle-period Beatles gem, written primarily by Lennon, features Harrison and McCartney on impeccably crafted and performed harmony-lead guitar melodies, a pop-rock arranging approach that was still in its infancy in 1966. (It would later be employed extensively in the southern rock genre by bands such as the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd as well as hard rock and metal acts like Thin Lizzy, Boston and Iron Maiden.)
Together, Harrison and McCartney’s individual single-note harmony lead guitar parts form, for the most part, diatonic (scale-based) third intervals in the key of E. (Lennon performed his rhythm guitar part as if the song were in the key of D, using a capo at the second fret to transpose it up a whole step, as he did on “Norwegian Wood,” “Nowhere Man” and “Julia.”)
The quick half-step and whole-step bends that Harrison and McCartney incorporate into their parts here and there in lock-step fashion are particularly sweet sounding. Heard together, they have the precise intonation of a country pedal-steel part performed by a seasoned Nashville pro.
The harmonized lines that the two guitarists play over the “minor-drop” progression during the song’s bridge section, beginning at 1:05, reveal their musical depth and sophistication and command over harmony beyond the basic “I-IV-V” pop songwriting fodder.
06. A Hard Day’s Night A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
It lasts all of roughly three seconds, but the sustained opening chord to this classic Beatlemania track is one of rock and roll’s greatest and most recognizable musical moments.
Bright and bold as a tolling bell, it loudly announced in 1964 not just the start of the Beatles’ latest album but also the dawning of a cultural transformation that owed nearly everything to the group’s influence.
The song was written to order for the Beatles’ feature-length film debut, A Hard Day’s Night. According to George Martin, “We knew it would open both the film and the soundtrack LP, so we wanted a particularly strong and effective beginning.”
The dense harmonic cluster that Martin and the group created is the result of four instruments sounding simultaneously: Harrison on his 12-string Rickenbacker and Lennon on his Gibson J-160E acoustic, both strumming an Fadd9 chord (with a G on the high E); McCartney on his Hofner 500/1 bass, plucking a D note (probably at the 12th fret of his D string); and Martin on grand piano, playing low D and G notes.
The resulting chord has been described as, technically, G7add9sus4, but to millions of eager listeners in 1964, it was simply the sound of an electrifying new era.
05. Revolution 1966–1970 (1973)
At the time that this 1968 track was recorded, distortion was well established as an electronic effect for guitarists, but no one had ever used it to the extreme that the Beatles did here.
According to Geoff Emerick, Lennon had been attempting to create distortion by cranking up his amp during sessions for “Revolution 1,” the slower version of the song, which the Beatles recorded in May and June of 1968.
Emerick had abetted his efforts by overloading the preamp on the microphone used to record Lennon’s guitar, but even this wasn’t enough for Lennon, who told the engineer, “ ‘No, no, I want that guitar to sound dirtier!”
By the July recording of “Revolution,” Emerick determined that he could distort the signal even more by patching Lennon and Harrison’s guitars directly into the mixing console via direct boxes, overloading the input preamp and sending the signal into a second overloaded preamp.
“I remember walking into the control room when they were cutting that,” recalls Abbey Road engineer Ken Scott, “and there was John, Paul and George, all in the control room, all plugged in—just playing straight through the board. All of the guitar distortion was gotten just by overloading the mic amps in the desk.”
As Emerick himself notes in his 2006 memoir Here, There and Everywhere, it was no mean feat: the overloaded preamps could have caused the studio’s tube-powered mixer to overheat. “I couldn’t help but think: If I was the studio manager and saw this going on, I’d fire myself.”
04. Here Comes the Sun Abbey Road (1969)
Harrison’s jangly chord-melody playing on this song is exemplary. Using first- and second-position “cowboy” chords with a capo at the seventh fret, the guitarist loosely doubles and supports his catchy, syncopated vocal melody by working it into the top part of his acoustic-guitar accompaniment.
He does this by using a “picky-strummy” technique (similar to what Neil Young would later employ in his song “The Needle and the Damage Done”), in which the pick hand gently swings back and forth over the strings in an unbroken down-up-down-up movement, like a pendulum viewed sideways.
In doing so, Harrison selectively grazes certain strings on various downbeats and eighth-note upbeats, resulting in a seemingly casual mix of full-chord strums, single notes and two-note clusters that form a pleasing stand-alone guitar part that could easily appeal as a solo instrumental performance.
The high register achieved by using the capo so far up the neck—the song is played as if it were in the key of D but sounds in A, a perfect fifth higher—makes the guitar sound almost like a mandolin, an effect similar to that achieved by Bob Dylan on “Blowin’ in the Wind” (also performed capo-7).
Also noteworthy are the ringing and musically compelling arpeggio breaks that punctuate the song in various spots, such as after the first verse (immediately following the lyric “It’s all right”) and during the bridge/interlude section, behind the words “sun, sun, sun, here it comes.”
Harrison employs a highly syncopated “1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2” phrasing scheme in the first instance and “1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2” in the latter, creating a rhythmic “hiccup” that resets the song’s eighth-note pulse.
03. Taxman Revolver (1966)
Bassist Paul McCartney had first demonstrated his six-string talents on 1965’s Help!, where he played lead guitar on several tracks and performed on acoustic guitar for his song “Yesterday.”
But McCartney would truly come into his own as a guitarist with this cut from 1966’s Revolver. His stinging solo, performed on his 1962 Epiphone Casino through his cream-colored 1964 Bassman amp, is a stunningly sophisticated creation, drawn from an Indian-derived Dorian mode and featuring descending pull-offs that recall Jeff Beck’s work on the Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things,” released earlier that year.
How the solo came to be played by McCartney—and not Harrison, who wrote the song and was the Beatles’ lead guitarist—is a story in itself.
According to Geoff Emerick, Harrison struggled for two hours to craft a solo before producer George Martin suggested he let McCartney give it a try. McCartney’s solo, Emerick says, “was so good that George Martin had me fly it in again during the song’s fadeout.” Portions of it, played backward, were also applied to the Revolver track “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
Apparently, Harrison didn’t feel slighted. At the time of making Revolver, he was ambivalent about his musical ambitions and pondering Indian mysticism, to which he would eventually convert.
“In those days,” he said, “for me to be allowed to do my one song on the album, it was like, ‘Great. I don’t care who plays what. This is my big chance.’ I was pleased to have him play that bit on ‘Taxman.’ If you notice, he did like a little Indian bit on it for me.”
02. While My Guitar Gently Weeps The Beatles (1968)
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” has become one of George Harrison’s signature tunes, but when he wrote the song in 1968, he couldn’t get his band mates to take an interest in it.
Frustrated, he asked his pal Eric Clapton to sit in on the recording session for the track, hoping his presence would put the group on its best behavior. Clapton accepted the invitation and delivered a performance that remains a high point in the Beatles’ catalog.
For the session, Clapton played a 1957 Les Paul “Goldtop” that had been refinished in red. He’d purchased the guitar in New York City sometime in the Sixties and in 1968 gifted it to Harrison, who nicknamed it Lucy.
The guitar was already in Harrison’s possession at the time of this recording. When he picked up Clapton to take him to the studio for the Beatles session, the famous guitarist was empty handed. “I didn’t have a guitar,” Clapton recalls. “I just got into the car with him. So he gave me [Lucy] to play.”
Harrison was concerned that Clapton’s solo was “not Beatley enough,” as the group was by the time of this recording well known for its sonic innovation.
During the song’s mixing stage, the group had engineer Chris Thomas send Clapton’s signal through Abbey Road’s ADT—Automatic Double Tracking—tape-delay system and manually alter the speed of the delay throughout Clapton’s performance, making the pitch sound chorused. (The effect is especially noticeable in the final measure of the second middle-eight, after the line “no one alerted you.”) Ironically, while the solo is one of Clapton’s most famous, he was never credited on the recording.
01. “The End” Abbey Road (1969)
A song called “The End” might seem an ironic place to start a list of the Beatles’ 50 greatest guitar moments. But the round-robin solos that bring the track to its exhilarating peak are without question the group’s most powerful statement expressed through the guitar.
Here, for a mere 35 seconds, three childhood friends and longtime band mates—Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon—trade licks on a song that represents, musically and literally, the Beatles’ last stand as a rock group before they broke up the following year. “The End” is the grand finale in the medley of tunes that make up much of Abbey Road’s second side.
As such, it’s designed to deliver maximum emotional punch, and it succeeds completely, thanks in great part to the sound of McCartney, Harrison and Lennon rocking out on their guitars, as they did in their first, embryonic attempts to make rock and roll some 12 years earlier.
“They knew they had to finish the album up with something big,” recalls Geoff Emerick, the famed Abbey Road engineer who worked on the 1969 album.
“Originally, they couldn’t decide if John or George would do the solo, and eventually they said, ‘Well, let’s have the three of us do the solo.’ It was Paul’s song, so Paul was gonna go first, followed by George and John. It was unbelievable. And it was all done live and in one take.”
Much of the song’s power comes from the sense that the Beatles are making up their solos spontaneously, playing off one another in the heat of the moment. As it turns out, that’s partly accurate.
“They’d worked out roughly what they were going to do for the solos,” Emerick says, “but the execution of it was just superb. It sounds spontaneous. When they were done, everyone beamed. I think in their minds they went back to their youths and those great memories of working together.”
Photo credit: John Pedin/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images (from Page 43 of the January 2014 issue of Guitar World)
While most guitarists think the idea of “shredding” started with Eddie Van Halen or Yngwie Malmsteen, the notion of playing “faster and better than the next guy” has probably been around as long as man has been making music.
Mr. Malmsteen, himself, will tell you he copped many of his flashiest licks from Niccolo Paganini, a fiercely technical violinist who lived in the 1800s.
Charlie “Bird” Parker, the great jazz alto saxophonist, is another “shredder” from the past worth investigating. A leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and improvisation, Parker introduced a number of revolutionary harmonic ideas to the music world, and delivered them with a speed, dexterity and melodic invention still defies the imagination.
Unfortunately, like many of the great ones, Parker flamed out way too soon in 1955, but his shadow still looms large on the contemporary jazz landscape.
Celebrated jazz writer Stanley Crouch spent the last 20 years researching this amazing figure, and he captures him in all of his high-flying glory in Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker (HarperCollins). The book follows Bird’s growth as an artist, and manages to be musically astute without being nerdy.
Like the artist he writes about, there is plenty of poetry and soul in Crouch’s prose, but it isn’t flowery and he’s not afraid to use real musical terms and examples when necessary.
For me, one of the real surprises of the book was discovering the contributions of William “Biddy” Fleet, a guitarist whose name I was only moderately familiar with. Unsung and under-recorded, Fleet is one of bebop’s lost heroes. It was with Biddy that Charlie began really experimenting with all 12 tones of the chromatic scale. Fleet, by all accounts, was right with him, pushing and vamping in a way that prodded Parker into reinventing the language of jazz.
My only disappointment with Kansas City Lightning is that at 340 pages it is too short. It covers just the first half of Parker’s career. Fortunately, Crouch promises volume two is almost finished and will be available sometime in the next year.
I call that a second chorus worth waiting for.
Brad Tolinski is the editor-in-chief of Guitar World.
A traffic circle in Jaworzno, Poland, has been renamed after Jeff Hanneman, the co-founding Slayer guitarist who died May 2, 2013, at age 49.
The official sign unveiling took place Thursday, Febraury 6, courtesy of a Polish company called Art-Com Sp. z o.o. (Art-Com Ltd.). For one year, reports CentrumDruku3D, the traffic circle in Jaworzno will be called Jeff Hanneman's Circle Pit.
A message on the sign at the traffic circle reads:
"Jeff Hanneman's Circle Pit — unforgettable Slayer guitarist.
"During the XXII Final of The Great Orchestra Of Christmas charity, the president of Jaworzno put up for auction the traffic circle in the city centre, which was later auctioned by Art-Com Ltd. The company could give the name to the traffic circle and became its 'symbolic' owner for the period of one year. The money gathered during the XXII Final of The Great Orchestra Of Christmas charity was allocated for the purchase of specialized equipment for children's emergency medicine and deserving health care of seniors."
Below, you can check out a video report on the official unveiling. NOTE: The video will be more enjoyable if you speak Polish.
I’ve seen them; you’ve seen them—those gut-wrenching photos or videos of someone’s precious vintage guitar being crushed in the baggage carousel or launched across the tarmac by a malicious or careless baggage handler.
You’ve argued with airline personnel at the ticket counter about your right to carry your guitar onto the plane, no extra baggage fee required.
You’ve been told you have to buy an extra seat in order to bring your instrument aboard.
You’ve pleaded with attendants at the gate, begging them to let you carry your guitar onto the plane, only to be told that it must be “gate checked” (a term, I’m sure, designed to have us believe that these items are somehow safer under the plane than other items. True? I’m leery).
You have also seen, I hope, Dave Carroll’s hilarious song and video “United Breaks Guitars,” and if not, check it out here.
And you’re terrified every time you have to fly, because some airlines let you, some don’t, and you’re never sure which will, which won’t, and when.
WELL, WONDER AND WORRY NO MORE!! I was tipped off to this by a blogpost by a guy named Ari, and here it is:
In 2012, President Obama signed into law the ‘‘FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012,’’ which, along with provisions for enhancing runway safety and easing restrictions on transporting lithium batteries, contains the following text:
SEC. 403. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
(a) IN GENERAL—Subchapter I of chapter 417 is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘‘§ 41724. Musical instruments ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL— ‘‘(1) SMALL INSTRUMENTS AS CARRY-ON BAGGAGE.—An air carrier providing air transportation shall permit a passenger to carry a violin, guitar, or other musical instrument in the aircraft cabin, without charging the passenger a fee in addition to any standard fee that carrier may require for comparable carry-on baggage, if—
‘‘(A) the instrument can be stowed safely in a suitable baggage compartment in the aircraft cabin or under a passenger seat, in accordance with the requirements for carriage of carry-on baggage or cargo established by the Administrator; and
‘‘(B) there is space for such stowage at the time the passenger boards the aircraft.
For instruments too large to fit in an overhead or under your seat, you can bring them aboard but you do have to buy another ticket:
‘‘(2) LARGER INSTRUMENTS AS CARRY-ON BAGGAGE.—An air carrier providing air transportation shall permit a passenger to carry a musical instrument that is too large to meet the requirements of paragraph (1) in the aircraft cabin, without charging the passenger a fee in addition to the cost of the additional ticket described in subparagraph (E), if—
‘‘(A) the instrument is contained in a case or covered so as to avoid injury to other passengers;
‘‘(B) the weight of the instrument, including the case or covering, does not exceed 165 pounds or the applicable weight restrictions for the aircraft;
‘‘(C) the instrument can be stowed in accordance with the requirements for carriage of carry-on baggage or cargo established by the Administrator;
‘‘(D) neither the instrument nor the case contains any object not otherwise permitted to be carried in an aircraft cabin because of a law or regulation of the United States; and
‘‘(E) the passenger wishing to carry the instrument in the aircraft cabin has purchased an additional seat to accommodate the instrument.
Wooooo-hoooo!!! And did you notice that the time to determine whether there’s sufficient space for your guitar is at the time you board the aircraft??!?!?!
So, no more deciding as the plane fills up that your guitar takes up too much room and they’ll have to gate check it fit more suitcases in.
Does everyone in the aviation industry know about this law? Well, probably not. Will you still have to argue with those who don’t, well, probably. Best practice? Carry the text of the law with you, inside your guitar case so you’ll have it if you need it.
And then? Celebrate, guitar players around the globe!!! When you fly in the U.S, anyway, you may rest assured: your rights are secure, as is your beloved guitar.
Singer-songwriter Laura Zucker wins audiences over with a hard-won perspective and a positive spin. The powerful imagery of her songs and stories ring so true you might think she’s read your diary – and you’ll find yourself humming her infectious melodies for days to come. She’s a two-time finalist in the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk competition in Texas, 2013 West Coast Songwriters Association Best Song of the Year, and has received numerous accolades and awards from the organizations around the world. She has released three CDs of original songs and is poised to release the 4th, "Life Wide Open," early this fall. More at LauraZucker.com
Below, check out a video of an Alabama bluegrass band named Iron Horse covering Metallica's "Enter Sandman."
The track is from the band's latest album, Fade to Bluegrass: The Bluegrass Tribute to Metallica, which was released in mid-October 2013 by CMH Records.
Here's some info from the press material:
"Metallica’s thundering drums, heart-pounding guitars and anguished vocals tell the story of people lost in the hustle of modern society. Bluegrass music sings the tale of people stuck between heaven and hell, the farm and the city and love and hate.
"In many ways, Metallica and bluegrass are brothers, one raised in the urban jungle and the other in the country. So what happens when these two estranged siblings get together? Here's the answer. Banjo and mandolin replace electric guitars, and high lonesome harmonies soar in place of growling vocals to create a surprising and moving tribute."
What's truly satisfying is that this is a convincing bluegrass performance with some fine playing by everyone in the band (Note: The guitar solo starts at 1:50) and powerful vocals. These guys are the real deal, and this is not some slapped-together "cute" tribute album.
Fade to Bluegrass: The Bluegrass Tribute to Metallica Track Listing:
01. Unforgiven
02. Nothing Else Matters
03. Enter Sandman
04. Hero Of The Day
05. Fade To Black
06. One
07. Ride The Lightning
08. Wherever I May Roam
09. Fuel
10. The Four Horsemen
Iconic singer, songwriter, musician, actress and philanthropist Dolly Parton announces the release of her new album Blue Smoke which will be released by Sony Music Masterworks and Dolly Records on May 13, 2014.
Following the album release the Blue Smoke World Tour will hit select dates in the United States, England, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
"On this CD I think there are all of the colors of my life in all the areas of music that you've allowed me to dabble in through the years,” says Dolly Parton.
“You will hear my old world mountain voice on songs like ‘Banks of The Ohio’ and ‘If I Had Wings’ my tender side on songs like ‘Miss You - Miss Me’ and ‘Unlikely Angel.’ My country / bluegrass side of songs like ‘Home,’ ‘Blue Smoke’ and ‘Don't Think Twice’ and my funny tongue-in-cheek side on ‘Lover du Jour.’”
Dolly is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach number 1 on the Billboard Country charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career charted singles over the past 40 years.
Here she performs "Miss You - Miss Me" from Blue Smoke
All-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, paid digital downloads and compilation usage during her Hall of Fame career have reportedly topped a staggering 100 million records world-wide. She has garnered 7 Grammy Awards, 10 Country Music Association Awards, 5 Academy of Country Music Awards, 3 American Music Awards and is one of only five female artists to win the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year Award. Dolly was inducted as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999. And the litany goes on.
Dolly’s career has spanned nearly five decades and is showing no signs of slowing down. An internationally-renowned superstar, the iconic and irrepressible Parton has contributed countless treasures to the worlds of music, film and television. Some of her hit films have included Nine to Five, Steel Magnolias, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone, Straight Talk, and Joyful Noise. Parton received two Oscar® nominations – one for writing the title tune to Nine to Five and the other for Travelin’ Thru from the film Transamerica.
BLUE SMOKE WORLD TOUR DATES:
NEW ZEALAND/AUSTRALIA
Feb 11 Australia, Melbourne - Rod Laver Arena
Feb 12 Australia, Melbourne - Rod Laver Arena
Feb 13 Australia, Adelaide - Entertainment Centre
Feb 15 Australia, NSW, Hunter Valley - Hope Estate
Feb 16 Australia, Tamworth - TRECC
Feb 18 Australia, Sydney - Entertainment Centre
Feb 19 Australia, Sydney - Entertainment Centre
Feb 21 Australia, Brisbane - Entertainment Centre
Feb 22 Australia, Brisbane - Entertainment Centre
Feb 24 Australia, Cairns - Cairns Convention Center
Feb 27 Australia, Perth - Perth Arena
US
May 22 Tulsa, OK - Hard Rock Casino
May 23 Tulsa, OK - Hard Rock Casino
May 25 Cherokee, NC - Harrah’s Cherokee Casino
May 27 Richmond, KY - EKU Center For The Arts - (St. Mark’s Evening Among Friends)
May 28 Knoxville, TN - University of Tennessee - (Benefiting Dolly's Imagination Library)
May 30 Thackerville, OK - Winstar Casino
May 31 Thackerville, OK - Winstar Casino
UK & EUROPE
Jun 08 England, Liverpool - Echo Arena
Jun 10 Northern Ireland, Belfast - Odyssey Arena
Jun 11 Ireland, Dublin - O2 Arena
Jun 12 Ireland, Cork - Live At The Marquee
Jun 14 England, Newcastle - Metro Radio Arena
Jun 15 Scotland, Aberdeen - GE Arena
Jun 17 Scotland, Glasgow - SSE Hydro Arena
Jun 18 Scotland, Glasgow - SSE Hydro Arena
Jun 20 England, Leeds - First Direct Arena
Jun 21 England, Manchester - Phones 4U Arena
Jun 22 England, Birmingham - LG Arena
Jun 24 Wales, Cardiff - Motorpoint Arena
Jun 25 Wales, Cardiff - Motorpoint Arena
Jun 27 England, London - O2 Arena
Jun 28 England, London - O2 Arena
July 02 England, Nottingham - Capital FM Arena
July 05 Germany, Cologne - LANXESS Arena
July 06 Germany, Berlin - o2 World
July 08 Denmark, Copenhagen - Forum
July 09 Norway, Oslo - Spektrum
July 11 Sweden, Stockholm - THE GLOBE
Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of "Bam!"— a new song and music video by Australian guitarist Glenn Proudfoot, who some of you might know from his insane Monster Licks lesson videos on our site.
As an added bonus, the track and the video, which you can check out below, feature appearances by another fleet-fingered Aussie, the legendary Tommy Emmanuel.
The high-energy, Stevie Ray Vaughan-influenced track is the first single from Proudfoot's upcoming album, an all-instrumental affair that will be released in March.
“This track is very important to me," Proudfoot says. "It's my homage to Stevie Ray Vaughan, and to have Tommy be a part of it makes it all the more special.
“It was such an honor to have my boyhood guitar hero be part of the album. I grew up listening to Tommy’s music; he was and is such a huge influence and inspiration. I'm still pinching myself. Tommy just walked into the studio, kicked off his shoes and said, 'Let's go!'”
The Proudfoot-penned track was recorded at Screamlouder Productions in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to Proudfoot and Emmanuel on guitars, it features Lucius Borich on drums and Peter Bowman on bass.
The Guitar World gang visited the PRS Guitars booth at the 2014 Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim, California.
We got the low-down on several new models, including the expanded S2 Series — and, of course, the new Marty Friedman SE signature model.
Below, you can check our video, which shows Friedman discussing the new model.
From PRS Guitars:
"Known for his work with Megadeth and Cacophony, Friedman’s career includes 27 gold and platinum records and five Grammy awards. His new SE signature model, a black singlecut with star inlays chosen by Friedman, is also a force to be reckoned with.
"The SE Marty Friedman features a beveled maple top with mahogany back, a 25-inch scale length, wide, fat, 22-fret mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard and star inlays, PRS-designed SE locking tuners and PRS’s adjustable stoptail bridge. SE humbucking treble and bass pickups with volume and tone for each pickup with a three-way toggle switch on the upper bout gives players ultimate versatility and control."
"The PRS Marty Friedman signature model was developed over the course of recording Inferno, my most 'guitar demanding' album yet," Friedman said recently. "Its sound is all over that record. PRS has finally created my ultimate go-to guitar."
Be sure to check out the video (plus a bonus video that shows Friedman using the guitar to perform "Amazing Grace"). For more about the guitar, visit prsguitars.com/semartyfriedman.
The ancient Egyptians' numerous cultural achievements included the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx and the Telecaster.
What? Actually, Scott McMahon of McMahon Artistry built this Telecaster adorned with Egyptian hieroglyphic carvings during the 21st century. He also gave it an appropriate name: the Ankh.
“The artwork tells the story of King Tut's resurrection,” McMahon says. “The graphics are adopted from a painting in King Tut's burial chamber where he is being given the symbol for life-the Ankh.
"The all-seeing eye of Ra is on the headstock. To honor Tut's father Akhenaton, I included a spell from the Book of the Dead around the side of the guitar, paying homage to the creator of all things.”
McMahon used traditional tools to carve the body entirely by hand. He carved the depiction of Isis in a traditional relief style and employed chip-carving knives for the rest of guitar.
“That replicates the Egyptian style of 'sunken relief' popular during the 18th and 19th dynasties and allowed me to achieve this piece's fine detail,” he explains. “Using power tools might decrease the time it would take me to complete a guitar, but only old-world tools can provide the fine detail that this piece needed.”
The one-piece basswood body is decorated with gold-leaf embellishments, but because McMahon wanted to replicate sandstone carvings he left most of the wood in a natural state, finishing it only with amber shellac and an oil finish. Other features include gold-color copper-alloy frets, 24-karat-gold strings, and stainless-steel screws, brass fine tuners, and titanium string blocks made by Floyd Rose.
The Ankh is just one of McMahon Artistry’s several hand-carved masterpieces, which include the Diamondback, the Chief and the Celt. McMahon will build whatever a customer wants on commission, and he’s currently working on a Mayan-inspired piece for his personal portfolio. His work was on display at this year’s NAMM show at the Floyd Rose booth. The Ankh is also available for sale, should you need it for your Iron Maiden tribute band’s Powerslave set.
Bruce Bouillet might've taken an eight-year hiatus from playing due to a serious hand injury, but the former Racer X guitarist is back, fired up and more active than ever.
We recently spoke to Bouillet, a fixture of the Los Angeles studio scene, about his new instrumental album, The Order Of Control, which was released January 21 via Mascot Label Group’s Music Theories imprint.
GUITAR WORLD: What was the first music that really excited you? What players made you sit up and take notice?
The first music I got turned on to was AC/DC, the Clash and Devo. But when I heard Black Sabbath, I knew I had arrived. As far as what players excited me back then, it would have been Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, Tony Iommi and George Lynch.
I ended up at camp Shrapnel at a very young age with Racer X, which exposed me to a lot of new players that were very advanced. After that I was really impressed with a lot of the newer bands of the time like Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and so on. I also discovered some of the more underground sounds like Fugazi, Barkmarket and King Crimson. I still look for a lot of new music. Recently it's everything from Steven Wilson and Animals As Leaders to Lightning Bolt.
Describe your relationship with your fans. How has it evolved over the years?
The fans are awesome. The Shrapnel thing seems to have a cult-like following throughout the guitar community around the world. I get a steady stream of people from all ages sending me videos of them or their band playing "Scarified."
A good example of how it's changed or evolved would be the 2007 G3 tour when I was playing with Paul Gilbert. After the show, I ran into an older couple who said they thought they'd never get to see me and Paul play together. Then I walked to the tour bus and there was a group of kids ages 12 to 14 who had some Racer X albums they wanted signed. So if anything it just spans a wider time frame.
Have you ever been surprised by some of the people who love Racer X? Any movie stars or politicians?
Yes, it's funny just how far-reaching music and guitar playing can be. I've had musicians in successful bands, brain surgeons, actors, actresses, politicians, military, scientists, professors, artists ... all the way to someone behind the bar in Japan serving drinks or driving a cab in London. There are a lot of guitar players in this world. I've been pulled over driving expecting a ticket and ended up discussing the live solo on Extreme Vol. 1 instead [laughs].
Let's talk about your musical journey. How would you describe your path from the start through now with your new album, The Order Of Control?
I took about an eight-year hiatus from guitar due to a hand injury. In that time, I stayed in the music business and produced and recorded. Around 2005 after producing a Grammy winner for Motorhead, I started to play again and was able to get back to full strength. I released a couple of instrumental albums, which were on the lo-fi demo side. On this new record, aside from it being a full concept album with sequels, I really wanted to approach it like a big-budget album, meaning cutting drums in a real studio, having an SSL mix room with a pro mixer, using top musicians such as Glen Sobel from Alice Cooper on drums and Dave Foreman on bass.
It was a bit more challenging money-wise, but the results speak clearly. I also spent a lot of extra time working on the writing. Instrumental albums can be challenging at times due to the lack of lyrics, so one must be able to set a mood and hold your attention with the melodies, structures, dynamics and arranging of various instruments, as well as some over-the-top playing.
Your band is also called the Order of Control, correct? Who's in the band and how did you come together?
Yes, the album and the band are called The Order Of Control. The first few albums are instrumental and then the vocals will kick in. So really I'm the band with various other musicians contributing their parts for now. But when it turns to the vocal side, it will take on more of a full-band vibe. I'll be looking at someone to front the project in the upcoming months, but what is already written is the sickest stuff I've ever tracked.
As far as who played on the album, Glen Sobel (Alice Cooper, Orianthi) does the drums and my friend Dave Foreman (Dj Quick, Boyz to Men, Rhianna) does bass. I've known Dave for years. We've written hundreds of songs for TV. If you are in the U.S. and watch any sports such as the NFL, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, etc., you've heard our stuff. Dave is very inspiring to work with, and I've learned countless things from him, a lot to do with being naturally musical.
Glen Sobel and I met when he subbed for a sick Danny Carey (Tool) at a VOLTO concert in Studio City at the Baked Potato. What he brought to the table was some really great chops and drum lines, as well being able to cut the whole album in two days! A real pro!
I know how great your chops are. But you have riffs and melodies for days on this album. What was the mindset going into the sessions? Was melody a huge focal point? And what advice would you have for guitarists who want to play more melodically?
Thanks for the kind words. I really like high-level playing, be it speed, note choice, effects or whatever. It's all been a part of my musical journey. But the final frontier to me is in the writing, innovating and having your own voice. Do I still play some tricky things on this album ? Yes, because the songs called for it — not because I wanted everyone to hear me string-skip 32nd notes.
Probably one reason instrumental albums can be a hard sell is they can turn into a vehicle for players to just show off their chops, a lot of which can turn very boring, very quickly. My goal was to maintain a high level of playing while making each song, and the album as a whole, something you'd want to listen to.
If you want to play melodically, learn your triads. Be able to outline chords anywhere on the neck with just chord tones. This is your foundation. Most players tend to skip this part. I did for many years, because I wanted to play flashier stuff. A good test for this is to pick a chord progression; let's say D minor, C major, G major. Record yourself playing those chords in time. Now record yourself playing over those chords in time.
Sounds good, right? Now record yourself soloing in time without the chords. Can you still hear the chords changing within your solo? This is a fundamental part of music. If you can't hear the chords changing during your solo, go back and learn the chord tones. It will change your life melodically.
What do you want people to know about you and your music?
The new album is out on Music Theories Recordings (Mascot Record Group), the coolest label I've ever been a part of. I'm just getting started, with full tours in the works, as well as new albums already written and future productions that incorporate 3D projection mapping and other visuals live. If you need to reach me for shows or private instructions, or if you feel you know someone with a unique voice, e-mail me at skypeguitar1000@gmail.com.
Dave Reffett is a Berklee College of Music graduate and has worked with some of the best players in rock and metal. He is an instructor at (and the head of) the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal department at The Real School of Music in the metro Boston area. He also is a master clinician and a highly-in-demand private guitar teacher. He teaches lessons in person and worldwide via Skype. As an artist and performer, he is working on some soon-to-be revealed high-profile projects with A-list players in rock and metal. In 2009, he formed the musical project Shredding The Envelope and released the critically acclaimed album The Call Of The Flames. Dave also is an official artist endorsee for companies like Seymour Duncan, Gibson, Eminence and Esoterik Guitars, which in 2011 released a Dave Reffett signature model guitar, the DR-1. Dave has worked in the past at Sanctuary Records and Virgin Records, where he promoting acts like The Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson, Korn and Meat Loaf.
Someone recently contacted us to tell us about the Smomid.
Exactly what is a Smomid? Let's just say it's a very unique interface/instrument created by Nick Demopoulos, who is pictured at left. Its name is an acronym for "String Modeling MIDI Device."
As you'll see in the videos below, its hardware looks a lot like a touch-sensitive guitar or bass.
For the rest of our Smomid description, it's probably best to borrow the wording found on its official website:
"Smomid software allows a performer to control many aspects of a performance, including playing melodies, harmonies, controlling beats, bass lines, triggering percussion samples, manipulating audio files and more. All aspects of a performance can be controlled from a grid on a fretboard and buttons on an instrument body.
"In addition to emitting sound, the Smomid emits light that is rhythically in sync with the music the instrument is creating. The first Smomid was completed in 2010 and had four strings. The second Smomid was completed in June 2012 and has six strings, two joysticks and 11 high-powered LEDs (among other things).
"In 2013 this project grew to include two additional controllers called pyramids that incorporated a dynamic and interactive visual element in live performance. The lights on these additional devices interact with musical rhythms and timbral aspects of music created with the Smomid. They also provide additional control surfaces that have allowed Nick to incorporate "Machine Learning" and other algorithmic type processes in real time.
"The Smomid was created out of necessity because there almost no guitar-like MIDI controllers commercially available despite the fact that the guitar is the most popular instrument in the world. The Smomid makes use of several membrane potentiometers knobs, joysticks, Force Sensing Resistors, buttons and two Arduino Mega micro controllers that allows these sensors to interface with a computer or other MIDI device."
Below, you can check out two Smomid demo videos (And don't forget the audio clip above). If you're compelled to dig deeper, visit nickdemopoulos.com/smomid.
Be sure to tell us what you think of the Smomid in the comments below or on Facebook!
Nashvillian Stone Jack Jones recently shared "Joy" with us.
The single features Patty Griffin on vocals and is featured on his third full-length album, Ancestor, out March 4, 2014 on Western Vinyl.
Ancestor was produced by Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Sleater Kinney, They Might Be Giants, plus many more) and features collaborations with Patty Griffin, and other notable Nashvillians including Lambchop's Ryan Norris, Scott Martin and Kurt Wagner as well as Lylas' Kyle Hamlett.
This album tells Jack's lifetime of experience into songs that use the esoteric narratives of an American rambler to elucidate the celestial worlds within each of us.
Intensely meditative, the album patiently explores the hardness of the coal mines, the mystery of suicide, the comfort of a dog's acceptance, the idea that forgetting all you know can be the first step towards hearing and reconnecting with your muse, and one man's gratitude for the love he's been given and the life he's had the chance to live.
Listen to "Joy" here!
Based in Nashville, but raised in a coal miner's company house on the banks of Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, Stone Jack Jones is the descendant of four generations of coal miners. After being rejected from military service in Vietnam due to epilepsy, and discouraged from pursuing the coal mining business, Jack picked up his fiddle and began a life of wandering. By the time he landed in Nashville, where he met Roger Moutenot, Patty Griffin, and Kurt Wagner, Jack had worked as a carny, a ballet dancer, a professional lute player and even an escape artist.
While that's not as true as it once was (thanks to all things prog-rock), it was true to some extent for a long time.
Practicing ear training can be very tedious and nowhere near as fun as cranking an amp to 11 — or stage diving. While I'm not going to tell you that if you don't develop your ears you'll never be a good guit-artist, I must say there's nothing cooler than hearing a song and being able to play along with it or even learn it by the time it's done.
So here are some fun ways to develop your ear as a guitarist.
When I was in high school, whoever didn't need tabs to learn a song was basically Mozart. Despite not having the innate talent those kids had, I eventually found out I could develop something similar. There are people with perfect pitch (people who know all the notes being played) and people with relative pitch (people who develop the ability to find the notes being played).
One advantage guitarists have against other instruments is that certain chord shapes sound unbelievably distinctive. The best example I can think of is sometimes when a player uses a capo on the first fret and is playing in the key of Ab, the player still refers to the chords as G, D, C, etc. A big reason for that is, despite the chords being different, the shapes sound like G, D, C, etc. Once you've played guitar a bit, you'll recognize the sound of these shapes and be able to associate them with actual notes.
Another fun way to develop your ear is to create an easy-medium-hard list of songs to learn by ear. It helps to find songs that are guitar-oriented. "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC or "Bright Lights" by Gary Clark Jr. are guitar-oriented and simple, while trying to make a guitar adaptation of Skrillex on your first try isn't recommended.
Even if you're only into metal, Lamb of God isn't a good "easy" band to start with; start with Black Sabbath, some NIN like "Wish," etc. Here are a few I'd recommend:
EASY: "Money Maker" by the Black Keys, "Sixteen Saltines" by Jack White, "In Bloom" by Nirvana, "Paris" by Grace Potter
MEDIUM: "Belief" by John Mayer, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day, "Under the Bridge" by RHCP, "Misery Business" by Paramore
HARD: "One of Us is the Killer" by Dillinger Escape Plan, "White Limo" by Foo Fighters, "Karma Police" by Radiohead
Making sure the songs are guitar-oriented keeps it fun and cements the guitar in your hands. Keep in mind this list is meant to be done over the course of a few weeks and is designed for someone who's just starting to work on his/her ears. As you advance your relative pitch, you should make each stage more difficult. Also, when having a hard time, sing what you're trying to learn.
Disclaimer: I get that this might seem like work while music is meant to be fun. Here's a better perspective: Basketball players just want to play, but it makes sense to shoot 1,000 free throws in practice before the big game so they play their best. Treat music and guitar the same way. It does take practice to work on your ear, but practice makes it easier to learn songs and play more, and it's always a thrill to play your best.
Elliott Klein is a New York City-based guitarist/singer/songwriter who plays in Bright and Loud, Party Lights and many more.
Of the four Beatles, George Harrison brought to the group an assortment of electric and acoustic guitar approaches, flavors influenced by everyone from Chet Atkins and Carl Perkins to the Byrds and Bob Dylan.
Harrison’s pioneering use of the Rickenbacker 360/12 electric 12-string on songs like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Ticket to Ride” added another dimension to the sound of Beatles music and left an imprint on Sixties-era rock: soon after, the Byrds, Beach Boys and Rolling Stones began to use 12-string guitars.
In the mid Sixties, influenced by Indian culture and Hinduism, Harrison introduced the sitar and exotic scales into the Beatles’ catalog on songs like “Norwegian Wood” and “Within You Without You.” In essence, he played a huge role in stylizing the Beatles’ music.
But Harrison also contributed a wealth of guitar-centric hits to the band’s repertoire, many of which center around an acoustic guitar (his Gibson J-200). In this lesson, we’ll look at musical examples inspired by Harrison-penned Beatles classics like “Here Comes the Sun,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Something.”
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” revolves around strummed versions of the chords in FIGURE 1. Much of this song’s emotional power stems from its mostly chromatic (notes one half step apart, the distance of one fret) descending A–G–Fs–F bass line. The song also features a famous, inspired solo by Eric Clapton.
Chromatic movement is a characteristic common to many of Harrison’s popular Beatles tracks, among them, “Something,” which informs FIGURE 2.
While the original Abbey Road version is played on electric guitars (in the key of C), the original demo (key of A) on The Beatles: Anthology 3 is a solo performance by Harrison, who plays a hollowbody electric, warranting its relevance here. Use the picking pattern in bar 1 for the A, Amaj7 and A7 chords, and note the descending chromatic line on the G string. Similar chromaticism is also encountered in a later Fsm–Fsm(maj7)–Fsm7 change.
Hands down, the most popular acoustic guitar “picking” riff in the Beatles oeuvre is the passage that opens Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun,” which gets its sparkling quality from the fact that it is capoed at the seventh fret.
FIGURE 3 is a passage inspired by the song’s main riff, containing mostly D, A7 and G chords (use alternate picking throughout, beginning with a downstroke). FIGURE 4 features a variation on the chords used in the song’s bridge.
Guitar World magazine presents its new Blues Greats subscription offer!
Get one year of Guitar World plus a new digital EP, Legacy Recordings Presents: Blues Greats! Past & Present.
You'll receive 12 issues of Guitar World and this instantly downloadable digital EP featuring six classic blues songs:
• “Lord, I Just Can’t Keep From Crying” by Blind Willie Johnson • “Revenue Man Blues” by Charley Patton • “Albert’s Shuffle” by Mike Bloomfield • “Dallas” by Johnny Winter • “Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues” by Buddy Guy • “Get On With Your Life (LIVE)” by the Allman Brothers Band.
If you subscribe today, you’ll start your subscription with the brand-new March 2014 issue of Guitar World, featuring Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter and Duane Allman.
