Total Guitar

Total Guitar is Europe’s best-selling guitar magazine

Total Guitar1 min read
Total Guitar
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: Chris Bird Group Art Director: Graham Dalzell Senior Music Editor: J
Total Guitar2 min read
Welcome…
As I write this, the UK is in the middle of a bout of lovely sunny weather. There’s talk of a heatwave. Now, I have friends visiting this weekend. I imagine we’ll sit in the garden and enjoy a beer or two. And I’m fairly certain that at some point my
Total Guitar1 min read
Alive!
I t’s been a summer of mega-gigs. Paul McCartney at Glastonbury and The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park on the same night. Noel Gallagher at Glasto and his kid brother at Knebworth. Iron Maiden, Kiss and Biffy Clyro at Download. Muse at the Isle Of Wight
Total Guitar2 min read
Guitar“i’m Playing Really Long Solos!”
Finnish slide blues phenom Erja Lyytinen spent lockdown upping her shred skills, and is ready to show them off on her self-produced 12th album Waiting For The Daylight, which is due for release on October 7. She discusses her hard-rocking new sound a
Total Guitar2 min read
Return Of The Chap
There aren’t many modern guitar success stories that match up to Chapman Guitars. As we all know, the brand was the brainchild of Rob Chapman, who began designing guitars by committee with the help of his forum members and followers way back in 2009
Total Guitar1 min read
Harley Benton Double Pedals
Harley Benton doesn’t hang around when it comes to new products, and its most recent is the Double Pedal series – a collection of six pedals which all serve as two pedals in one. There’s the Evil Twin (analogue overdrive and Tubedrive), Duality (reve
Total Guitar1 min read
Great Eastern Effects Design-a-drive
You may not be familiar with Great Eastern Effects just yet, given that the UK pedal brand only launched last year. But with its second release (following its Champ-in-a-box Small Speaker Overdrive), GEE is turning its attention to our overdrive/amp
Total Guitar1 min read
Charvel Jim Root Signature
Given that the Slipknot man has been spotted wielding a Charvel on-and-off since 2021, it may come as no surprise that he has now officially made the jump from Fender to its sister brand, kicking off the arrangement with a new signature model. The Ji
Total Guitar1 min read
Stomp! Hammertime!
Fender’s Hammertone pedals see the brand jumping into the affordable effects market with both feet, offering a complete pedalboard’s worth of stompboxes. Covering everything from gain (Overdrive, Distortion, Metal and Fuzz), modulation (Chorus and Fl
Total Guitar2 min read
LAMB OF GOD Nevermore
Here in the lead single from their latest album, Omens, guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler return with their trademark tight, articulate riffing style – Nevermore combines a heavy blues sound with the darker mood of the Phrygian mode. The riff h
Total Guitar2 min read
Doom Metal Riffs
Because most styles of music use the same core techniques, once you can play a bit of guitar, you can try out a bunch of genres without needing to learn more skills. Jenna is showing Paul new ways to apply what he’s learned so far. After last month’s
Total Guitar7 min read
“The Best Stuff Is When It’s On The Verge Of Collapse!”
What can an experimental rock band learn from AC/DC? “The biggest breakthrough was in terms of amplifiers,” grins Black Midi guitarist/vocalist Geordie Greep. While his post-punk peers wonder how to fit their vast pedalboards into the tour van, the G
Total Guitar3 min read
“That Swingin’ Little Guitar Man!”
Elvis’s treatment of Hound Dog is very unlike the 1952 original by Big Mama Thornton, written for her by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. The lyrics were altered to reflect Elvis’s gender and to clean up the original’s sexual innuendo. Elvis chose ‘tak
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Riff Lessons
Find your videos online at bit.ly/tg361audio (1955) Appears at: 0:00–0:34 Tempo: 238 bpm Key/scale: E major Main techniques: Travis picking, simultaneous bass, chords and melody Often cited as the first real rhythm and blues song to be recorded by
Total Guitar8 min read
“I Love The Idea Of Playing Just One Note And Breaking Someone’s Heart”
After playing the biggest gig of their career, most bands would carry the momentum forward and set their sights on challenges new. Porcupine Tree, however, are not like most bands. After headlining at the Royal Albert Hall in October 2010, their lead
Total Guitar4 min read
New Adventures In Prog!
Charlie Griffiths’ ventures as a guitar player have certainly been plentiful. First and foremost, he’s known for his work alongside multi-instrumentalist Richard Henshall in English progressive metal band Haken, who formed in 2007 and have six studio
Total Guitar2 min read
Beyond The Periphery
Prog has seen a huge resurgence in recent years and although the roots go back to the 70s with bands like King Crimson, Yes and Rush laying the foundations, modern players are still finding new ways to innovate and push the boundaries of guitar furth
Total Guitar1 min read
Acoustic 2022
In this 28-page TG special, we speak to four artists with very different approaches to acoustic guitar. Vance Joy is a singer-songwriter and fingerstylist who can knock out a hit song without a care for what guitar he’s using. Tash Sultana has made a
Total Guitar6 min read
“When You Write A Great Song, You Get Chills!”
It’s rare for a new song to crack the list of essential beginner guitar tunes, but Vance Joy’s 2014 breakthrough single Riptide did just that. Hitting just as school ukulele orchestras were becoming popular, the uke-powered folk-pop number proved an
Total Guitar6 min read
“It’s Fully Plugged In!”
When Kurt Cobain turned up for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged special in 1993, he had a Fender Twin and a Boss DS-2 distortion in tow. Purists were not impressed, but it’s now the most lauded performance from Unplugged’s original run. In 2021, Tash Sultana
Total Guitar4 min read
“I Love A Resonant Guitar!”
In recent years, Polyphia have established themselves as virtuosic disruptors of everything the music world thought it knew about genre classifications. Over the course of their first three albums, the Texas-based shredders have brought metal, trap,
Total Guitar5 min read
“I’m Flying By The Seat Of My Pants!”
Billy Strings simply one of the most exciting young guitarists in decades. His career has exploded over the last couple of years, as he and his tight-but-loose trio of backing musicians have toured the world, putting on remarkably dynamic shows that
Total Guitar6 min read
16 Acoustic Gig Tips
Typically from £45 Unlike electric guitars where the sound is mangled and processed through your entire signal chain, the most common objective when amplifying an acoustic guitar is for it to sound like an organic instrument – just louder. This mean
Total Guitar1 min read
Acoustic Guitar Lesson
To kick things off, we have three exercises designed to improve your fingerstyle technique. We’re talking essential basics here – there’s nothing too challenging to play, but the exercises will help you get used to the core techniques of players as d
Total Guitar1 min read
Ed Sheeran-style Rhythm Grooves
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Ed Sheeran’s acoustic guitar playing style is the way he uses his pick hand. Generally preferring not to use a pick, Ed has a loose style that allows him to combine fingerpicking, thumb strumming, finger strumming a
Total Guitar2 min read
Nylon String Guitar
Hands up who has a classical guitar gathering dust in the loft or locked away in a cupboard? Okay, now put your hand down and go and show your neglected nylon string a little love, just as we are here with a couple of lessons that’ll help you think d
Total Guitar1 min read
Plectrum Picking
For many players, how we use our picks isn’t a crucial part of our everyday guitar playing. We strum and pick, but don’t necessarily think too hard about the technical side. However, picking becomes more important when you encounter a song that goes
Total Guitar2 min read
Acoustic Blues
Here we’re taking a look at two core techniques in blues: slide guitar and fingerstyle. The former can be particularly tricky if you’ve never tried it, but there are some key tips which we’ve outlined below. Perhaps most important is to use an open t
Total Guitar2 min read
Modern Folk
Maybe it’s the influence of Ed Sheeran over the last decade or so, but the folk scene appears to be in rude health in 2022 – which can only be great news for us guitarists as there’s a wealth of artists to take inspiration from. Whether you’re an asp
Total Guitar4 min read
Jeff Buckley Grace
By the time Jeff Buckley’s body was tragically dredged from the Mississippi River on 4 June 1997, his collaboration with guitarist/songwriter Gary Lucas had given the world barely a dozen tracks. Most are cult favourites. This one, the song that gave
Total Guitar2 min read
Passenger Let Her Go
Let Her Go, Michael Rosenberg’s chart-topping second single from the album All The Little Lights‚ was met with critical acclaim after its release, receiving prestigious nominations and awards, and bringing Passenger to the attention of the likes of J
Total Guitar2 min read
Open-mic Songbooklynyrd Skynyrd Simple Man
Featuring on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s self-titled debut album of 1973, Simple Man is one of the band’s most popular songs, and a favourite in their live set to this day. The song illustrates the band’s ‘keep it simple’ approach to writing and recording, undo
Total Guitar4 min read
Tab Guide
Tab is short for tablature, a notational system used to give detailed information as to where notes should be played on the fretboard. Tab appears underneath conventional music notation as six horizontal lines that represent the strings of the guitar
Total Guitar1 min read
The Gas Station Real World Reviews Of The Best New Gear
Our product selection is driven by our love of gear. We select the most exciting products on the market every month to bring you opinions you can trust. We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge it on whether it looks good, sounds good and
Total Guitar2 min read
Start Me Up!
1 Six of Strymon’s classic pedals are getting well-deserved updates with all but the Flint reverb/tremolo getting two additional control knobs to reflect some of the additional functionality here, including new algorithms. All now feature bi-directio
Total Guitar4 min read
Sheeran By Lowden Equals Edition
£995 As befits one of the biggest-selling artists of recent times, Ed Sheeran doesn’t just have a single signature guitar: he has a whole range! But Ed’s a pop artist you moan, why on earth would we be interested? The answer to that lies in the title
Total Guitar6 min read
Blackstar St. James El34 Combo And 6l6 Head
Valve guitar amplifiers are portable if you only need a few watts for home practice, however if you want an amp to take around the world and play on any size of stage, it needs to be bigger and that means heavier – often a lot heavier. We’ve grown us
Total Guitar3 min read
Prs Se Standard 24-08
£620 In original PRS-speak, ‘Standard’ typically refers to an all mahogany body and ‘Custom’ is used when a figured maple top is added – the reverse of Gibson’s Les Paul designations. It makes sense of course and dates back to PRS’s original 25” scal
Total Guitar2 min read
Fender Dual Marine Layer Reverb
Minimalist pedalboard players, look away now – this is probably not the reverb pedal you’re looking for. It’s a bigger one but it’s a simpler proposition than some of the similarly-sized competition. And in a market of experimental reverb algorithms,
Total Guitar2 min read
The Beths
Hailing from Auckland, New Zealand, The Beths are an indie-pop quartet whose knack for creating upbeat, distortion-drenched earworms has propelled them onto an international stage. The idea is simple, explains singer and guitarist Elizabeth Stokes: “

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