
This crash course in country guitar will inject your rock and blues playing with a brand-spankin’ new spark.
The key that unlocks the door to country guitar is hybrid picking—simultaneously or alternately playing notes with both pick and fingers. If you have any experience playing fingerstyle guitar, it’s sure to come in handy here. If not, no worries! Here’s your chance to start. Now, some of the musical examples below can surely be played with a pick only, but the magic is in the snap you get when you pluck the strings with your fingers.
SRV & EVH Bridge the Gap
Let’s ease into hybrid picking with a couple of related examples from the blues and rock world to demonstrate how country techniques can spice up your playing. Inspired by blues legend Albert King, who exclusively played fingerstyle, Stevie Ray Vaughn would unleash stinging notes from his high E string by plucking with his middle finger. First, try playing Ex. 1 with a pick. Then, while holding your pick normally, use the tip of your middle finger to reach under the first string, pulling it away from you, then quickly releasing. This will cause the string to slap against the fret, resulting in a satisfying, biting attack. The final note is picked, but you can try plucking here as well.
Let’s see how it’s done by the man himself, as he sits in with his idol in the following video. Notice how he plucks the first two notes country-style, lending them a sharpness that contrasts so well with the picked notes which follow.
In the music video for Van Halen’s “Finish What Ya Started,” a quasi-country song from 1988’s OU812, Eddie Van Halen dons his cowboy hat (quite literally, as you’ll see in a moment) and masterfully cranks out a classic country-style lick often heard in R&B, blues and rock. It’s one which is dominated by major and minor sixths played on non-adjacent strings. Ex. 2 is along the same lines, and you’ll need to alternately play picked notes on the 3rd string and SRV-style plucked notes on the 1st.
Sure, that sounds okay, but now let’s really countrify it. In Ex. 3, we present the same basic lick, but notice how all of the notes on the 3rd string (except the very first) are now deadened. To achieve this, lightly rest your fret-hand finger on the string at roughly the same locations as in Ex. 2, creating a pitchless, percussive sound, a technique integral to country playing. And be sure to play the 1st-string notes staccato (short) as indicated by the dots above the noteheads. Now you’re beginning to sound like a bona fide country player!
Truck Stops and Double-Stops
Let’s take a gander at country and jazz guitar legend Danny Gatton (once known as “the world’s greatest unknown guitarist”) playing a catchy, hybrid-picked chordal riff.
Ex. 4 takes a similar tack and will have you alternating picked notes and dyads (two-note chords), plucked with your middle and ring fingers. In bars 2 and 4, check out how hybrid picking allows you to continue the groove while simultaneously adding some snappy fills on top.
Let’s continue with that same technique, but with a twist. First, check out British country master Albert Lee playing the main riff to “Bullish Boogie” from his 1986 album Speechless.
Ex. 5 will have you playing a similar type of phrase. After plucking each of the dyads, pull off to the open 3rd string for an added rhythmic bounce—which leads us smack dab into what just might be the most fun you’ll have all day.
Open-String Magic
We’ve just had a small taste of what open strings have to offer. But they’re even more powerful, allowing you to zip up and down the fretboard in dramatic fashion. Brad Paisley is a guru of open strings, as you’ll see here:
Ex. 6 would fit right into Paisley’s wheelhouse. Here, it’s imperative to play the accented notes a little louder. For country pickers, this means to pluck harder with your middle finger, so as to get an even sharper snap. It’s a bit shocking how simply using the open 3rd string as a pivot allows you to shift positions at the speed of light.
Ex. 7 is a similar idea, but this time we’re moving down the fretboard, palm-muting the 5th string to create even more of a contrast between the picked and plucked notes, which are again accented.
Whew! Let’s take a quick break to catch Jerry Donahue of the Hellecasters tearing up the Jerry Reed classic “The Claw.”
Stealing from the Steel-ers
Country pickers love to, shall we say “borrow,” some of pedal steel players’ favorite moves. You likely have already played a host of rock-centric oblique bends—a two-string affair where one note is allowed to ring while the other is bent—allowing you to come close to approximating the sound of a pedal steel. But if you’re new to country guitar, chances are you haven’t encountered anything quite like Ex. 8.
To pull this one off, you’ll need to execute tricky 3rd-string bends with your index finger by pulling the string down towards the floor. Plus you’ll need to do it while fretting the 4th and 5th strings with your pinky and ring finger, respectively. Take a deep breath and go for it.
This last one’s just for extra credit, and it involves countrifying oblique bends with another signature pedal steel move: harp harmonics. First, let’s check out Ex. 9.
To execute these harp harmonics, fret the indicated note as usual. Then you’ll see another number in parentheses located 12 frets above. Next, lightly touch the string with your pick-hand index finger directly over the fret, while holding your pick between your thumb and middle finger. (You can also set down the pick and pluck with your thumb instead.) Finally, strike the string with your pick on the bridge side of your index finger. The result is a shimmering harmonic one octave above the fretted note.
Well, that’s a wrap. If you give yourself some time to experiment with hybrid picking and the fun ideas we covered in this lesson, you’ll invariably hit on some new ones of your own, sure to perk up your rock and blues playing. Finally, Greg Koch, grand master of chicken pickin’ (and pretty much everything else guitar) will fittingly play us out with his unique brand of gristled, country-fried rock.
Lollar Pickups introduces the Deluxe Foil humbucker, a medium-output pickup with a bright, punchy tone and wide frequency range. Featuring a unique retro design and 4-conductor lead wires for versatile wiring options, the Deluxe Foil is a drop-in replacement for Wide Range Humbuckers.
Based on Lollar’s popular single-coil Gold Foil design, the new Deluxe Foil has the same footprint as Lollar’s Regal humbucker - as well as the Fender Wide Range Humbucker – and it’s a drop-in replacement for any guitar routed for Wide Range Humbuckers such as the Telecaster Deluxe/Custom, ’72-style Tele Thinline and Starcaster.
Lollar’s Deluxe Foil is a medium-output humbucker that delivers a bright and punchy tone, with a glassy top end, plenty of shimmer, rich harmonic content, and expressive dynamic touch-sensitivity. Its larger dual-coil design allows the Deluxe Foil to capture a wider frequency range than many other pickup types, giving the pickup a full yet well-balanced voice with plenty of clarity and articulation.
The pickup comes with 4-conductor lead wires, so you can utilize split-coil wiring in addition to humbucker configuration. Its split-coil sound is a true representation of Lollar’s single-coil Gold Foil, giving players a huge variety of inspiring and musical sounds.
The Deluxe Foil’s great tone is mirrored by its evocative retro look: the cover design is based around mirror images of the “L” in the Lollar logo. Since the gold foil pickup design doesn’t require visible polepieces, Lollartook advantage of the opportunity to create a humbucker that looks as memorable as it sounds.
Deluxe Foil humbucker features include:
- 4-conductor lead wire for maximum flexibility in wiring/switching
- Medium output suited to a vast range of music styles
- Average DC resistance: Bridge 11.9k, Neck 10.5k
- Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
- Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF
The Lollar Deluxe Foil is available for bridge and neck positions, in nickel, chrome, or gold cover finishes. Pricing is $225 per pickup ($235 for gold cover option).
For more information visit lollarguitars.com.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
Montauk 110 ReverbThe two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.