Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 127 i Australian Guitar

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS A VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH DAVE HOLE Dave Hole is an Australian blues-rock slide guitarist who burst onto the international scene in 1991 with his first album, Short Fuse Blues. He is widely regarded as one of the all-time slide guitar greats, whose playing is infused with the spirit of such legends as Elmore James, Duane Allman and Johnny Winter. Nine successful albums and countless tours of the US and Europe have solidified Hole’s stature as one of the very best slide guitarists playing today, and have seen him headline festivals in America, Germany, Denmark, Holland, France, Poland, Russia and Switzerland. His two performances at the prestigious Leverkussen Blues Festival in Germany were televised nationally. Tours have also included performances in the UK, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium…

He was responsible for the low-end in one of England’s loudest bands. The Tap might have been turned off, but that hasn’t stopped Derek Smalls from rolling into his 75th year with what he hopes will be a triumphant return to “at least one of the echelons of the rock firmament”. Thanks in part to a generous grant from the British Fund for Ageing Rockers (“one of the few good things that came out of austerity”), the former Spinal Tap bassist has been able to crank it up to 11 once more on Smalls Change (Meditations Upon Ageing). We hopped on the phone with Smalls (who bears an uncanny resemblance to comedic legend Harry Shearer) to share in his musings on getting older and a time when men truly did…

iPhone video has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past decade, but the accompanying sound recordings have struggled to keep up. For reasons most likely to do with the size requirements of decent microphones, audio recorded on an iPhone’s native hardware suffers from almost deal-breaking issues: it’s thin and scratchy, until an explosion of bass-heavy proximate noise eats up all the headroom and smears the recording with nasty distortion. PHONING IT IN The Shure MV88, then, has the potential to be a game-changer for anyone who’s ever had a serious reason to record audio with their iPhone. It will certainly find a home with podcasters and content creators on the move, but can also be a handy asset for musicians of all stripes. Let’s have a look at the…

GHOST Prequelle SPINEFARM / CAROLINE In the past decade, semi-anonymous doom troupe Ghost have harnessed a lethal combination of pop hooks and heavy metal pageantry to become one of Sweden’s biggest musical exports. Now that the excitement of discovering who’s under the masks has been cast aside – the long-rumoured Tobias Forge was exposed as the frontman in a lawsuit in 2017 – the focus is back on the music with album #4, Prequelle. Here, Ghost reach new heights of ridiculousness. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s bad – it’s just very, very silly. And that’s really where the charm lies. It’s a little bit like the WWE – you’re either in or you’re out. The fist-in-the-air ‘70s hard rock bop of “Dance Macabre” and its outrageous fret-burning guitar solos stand…

If you find yourself playing scales and licks in the same position all the time, using quick slides between frets is a great way to develop a more linear style of soloing – as opposed to just going up and down in ‘boxes’. For this column, I’d like to show you a few shred-style licks to demonstrate this idea. EXERCISE #1 This is a lick in the key of E minor, which begins with a descending sequence of ‘fours’ on the first string. Using the E natural minor scale, the first three notes are played with fingers four, two and one (frets 19, 17, and 15 respectively). However, the last note of the pattern is achieved by sliding your first finger down a fret (from 15 to 14, in this…

In less than 20 years, Markbass has become the premiere, got-to-have-it amp/cab builder for bass professionals and amateurs alike, pushing aside more established brands and continuing to refine the line with innovative ideas and no-nonsense products. The range is quite diverse, but the recurring theme is great tone, simple controls and amazing portability. To say that they are lightweight is like saying Paul McCartney has written some nice tunes. You can easily pick up a 410 cab with one hand and an 800-watt, full-function bass head will fit into the pocket of your gig bag. Likewise, their guitar lines (under the DV Mark banner) are lightweight, full of features and toneful, with monsters like Frank Gambale finding “the sound” within the simple control layout of a standard DV Mark amp.…

WHEN: THURSDAY, 29TH MARCH — MONDAY, 2ND APRIL WHERE: TYAGARAH TEA TREE FARM, BYRON BAY This year marked the 29th annual Byron Bay Bluesfest. 29 years is a long time, but there’s no secret formula here. Bluesfest has consistently had one of the most varied lineups of any festival ever held in the country. It’s about much more than the latest triple j pop act or cashing in on the nostalgia card. Their strength lies in an ability to put together something for just about everyone, showcasing top-notch quality. This is evident in the wide range of ages of its patronage, from kids through to grandparents. Big name acts are what sell tickets, but Bluesfest always manages to balance out the headliners with new and varied acts from around the…

Australia’s longest-running Led Zeppelin tribute is back after a yearlong hiatus, and it’s going to be worth the wait. Whole Lotta Love is packed with world class musicians performing Led Zeppelin classics with augmented instrumentation and an appreciation for the music-as-a-living-thing nature of Zep’s music. Founded by guitarist Joseph Calderazzo, it’s not an in-costume, “Imagine you were there” type tribute show. The band includes a string section to evoke the mystique and expansiveness of Zeppelin’s sound on songs like “Stairway To Heaven”, “Kashmir”, “Black Dog”, “Battle of Evermore” and “Immigrant Song”, to name just a few. “This is the 16th year I’ve done this show,” Calderazzo says. “It’s an annual event, not a tribute band that goes and plays in the pubs. It’s very strictly an annual event, and we…

Few bands have mastered the comeback album as nobly as Underoath. Erase Me – their first full offering in eight years, following an acclaimed comeback in 2015 (during which they swore off its possibility) – kicks off with a swift left hook to the eardrums in “It Has To Start Somewhere”, blaring howls and thundering guitars pelting at our undeserving faces the Underoath we knew and loved as teens. But it doesn’t take long for the ex-Christian hardcore warriors to show a new, more experimental side of their musical cataclysm. Bright, lingering guitars fill the soundscape on “Wake Me”, paving way for Spencer Chamberlain’s emphatic clean vocals to shine like jewels. Crunchy synth-bass floods “Sink With You”, a neogothic ode to the mosh pit. It’s a journey through hell and…

Getting a great drum sound is often one of the most challenging, yet rewarding processes in the studio. It often requires mastering a whole range of skills, combined with acquiring and setting up a bucketload of equipment. But not always! This is a two-part article that discusses attaining different types of drum sounds by looking at various methods used throughout the years and across a range of genres. The fundamental ingredients are obviously a good drummer, a good kit, and a nice room to put them in. Needless to say, there’s a thousand variables, and not all factors will necessarily be under your control. You’ll need to work with what you have, and there will usually be some compromise involved. As well as this – and this is the focus…

Everybody’s heard of the pentatonic scale, but I bet you haven’t heard of the hexatonic scale! To be fair, I am not even sure if it’s really a thing, but when I was 15, I read a song analysis for the Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s “Californication” where the author described the solo as being drawn from the hexatonic scale. Hex is latin for six, so I guess this makes sense. Before getting into the exercises, let’s look at what I have considered to be a plausible and highly useable six-note scale. In a major scale, one of the most important notes is the third one. In the key of C, this would be E. Being such an important note, it’s been widely recognised that the fourth note – in this…

Whether you want to do the cool Steve Vai ‘spin the guitar around your neck’ move, run from one side of the stage to the other like you’re in Def Leppard, ride around on your singer’s neck like Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan (RIP), or if you’re just tired of trippin’ over stuff, a wireless can be a crucial piece of kit. For the longest time, good wireless technology was going to cost you... A lot. Even then, it was prone to radio interference, drop-outs and weird companding artefacts. It took until the maturation of digital technology for wireless to truly become both reliable and affordable. Line 6’s Relay series was the first truly democratic wireless range, and it’s now been overhauled with new models and further-improved technology…

WHEN: MARCH 24TH, 2018 • WHERE: FLEMINGTON RACECOURSE, MELBOURNE Though the UNIFY camping festival has softened the blow considerably, riff addicts Down Under have yearned for a Soundwave gap-filler since its untimely demise in 2015. Enter one of Earth’s most prodigious shred-a-thons: the motherf***ing Download Festival. Though a scaled-down jaunt compared to its UK counterpart, the one-day Australian import kicked off with a downpour and swelter combo that veritably screamed, “Welcome to Melbourne!” The sticky weather didn’t throw punters off their game, though, as punks, metalheads and moshlords all poured into the grounds in giddy and over-caffeinated droves. While they were the last band to grace (or defile) our eardrums, we need to get this out of the way right off the bat: for all the fears of their headline…

For metalheads of a certain vintage, the roaring success of American metal band Stryper in the late ‘80s polarised audiences. Undaunted by detractors, their superb musicianship, determination and steadfast dedication to their Christian beliefs has seen them endure setbacks over the years, including a substantial period of dormancy. Reinvigorated from the positive momentum of reunions, Stryper have been consistently active since around 2005, with frontman, guitarist and chief songwriter Michael Sweet offering some of the band’s most heavy material on subsequent albums. That trend continues with their tenth studio album, God Damn Evil, so we caught up with the talented mastermind of the yellow and black attack. God Damn Evil feels like a natural progression from Fallen, which was quite heavy. I’m very happy with it; it’s shaken the cages.…

British guitarist Mark Gemini Thwaite has established himself as the go-to guy for when you need a player who can do justice to ‘80s goth classics and infuse them with a modern sensibility. His list of credits is impressive: Al Jourgensen’s Revolting Cocks, Gary Numan, The Mission, Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy, Fear Factory frontman Burton C Bell’s Ascension Of The Watchers... Hell, he’s even played with PJ Harvey, Alanis Morissette and Tricky, and even backed Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee to perform a jazz standard at the kickoff of Lee’s Comikaze Expo (also known as the LA Comic Con) in 2012. But Thwaite is much more than a sideman. His own music is steeped in goth tradition, but is somehow fresh and new, existing simultaneously in one specific era and…

Compression. It’s not exactly held in the highest esteem in some circles, but this technique is actually essential for making rock music sound powerful and punchy – to an extent. Joseph Cheek – owner, operator and chief engineer at Island Studios in Adelaide – has sworn by compression for years, and yet lately, he’s started to pull it back in some cases. Turns out, compression applied correctly can make a rock song massive. Put it in the wrong spot, however, and you’ll wind up with a flat track and zero dynamics. You’ve worked with quite a few artists that have strong vocals, powerful guitars and lots of layered tones, twangs and other intricacies. How do you place everything in the mix? For something like that, there often will be lots…

Do you ever find yourself accidentally stumbling upon a cool lick or concept intuitively, then figuring out later what the hell it is you’ve just done? It happens to me all the time. When you think about it, that’s gotta be how music theory started in the first place: “How can we describe this stuff so that we can communicate it to other musicians?” One of the things that’s been happening pretty organically for me lately is breaking up chords for lead guitar parts, but not in the usual Yngwie-style arpeggios of doom. Figure #1 is an example, and it came about because I was messing around with open chord shapes transposed up an octave. A lot of us are really in the habit of playing arpeggios as some combination…

Last issue, we took a look at the dominant, or half-whole tone diminished scale. Diminished scales contain eight notes per octave, unlike the diatonic major and minor scales most commonly used in western music. This octatonic scale is derived from a pattern of half and whole steps, the distance of one or two frets apart on the guitar. Diminished scales can start with a half followed by a whole step, or a whole followed by a half step before arriving at the tonic again. These two octatonic patterns have different applications. The diminished scale is used in jazz to solo over dominant seventh chords and their extensions (for example, b9, #9 and 13). The reason this works is because these chords are often built of minor third intervals, and the…