Tim Green

December 22, 2008 by T.J.Jones
Filed under Featured, Guitar Central

Tim’s Telecast

I’m not ashamed to say that I love my Fender Telecaster. It’s a solid relationship now, even though my natural guitar promiscuity has led me astray on various Gibsons, Hofners, Epiphones and Ibanez’s over the years. So what is it that keeps me coming back to this no-frills, simple work-horse of a guitar? For me, it’s all in the tone. The Telecaster has a unique sparkle and full-sounding jangle that I simply haven’t found on any other model of guitar. I guess it has something to do with it’s solid, plank-like body and simple pick-up combination, but it’s how it sounds to my ears – rather than it’s production spec – that interests me. And it’s a tone that keeps me returning time and time again for recording the rhythm parts on my songs. It’s no surprise that the Telecaster is the darling of Nashville and the main guitar in many country players’ armouries. Now, I’m no country player, but it just naturally begs to be played with little country / bluegrass pull-offs and hammer-ons to get the maximum jangle and flavour from the chords you play. But the Telecaster can equally get low down and downright dirty if you want it to. Just look at the trademark greasy licks and riffs of Keith Richards for ample evidence of that. Other players also seem to get very attached to their Telecasters. Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi have been using the same two Teles for (seemingly) their entire career, and Joe Strummer’s mainstay Tele is now almost an icon in it’s own right.

An important distinction I’d like to make is that I’m pretty much a rhythm guitarist, and I can see that the Telecaster might not have the range of tones and bite that a lead player might require (compared to, say, a Stratocaster or Les Paul). But that didn’t stop Jimmy Page playing the studio solos on ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with a Telecaster, or David Gilmour wringing his usual silky, understated brilliance out of one on many of his Pink Floyd and solo recordings.

I also have to say that the Telecaster has great looks.. It’s a simple, clean design that hasn’t changed since it’s first production model in 1950, and hopefully never will. I’m particularly fond of the white, natural purity of the one that I have, and it’s body and natural neck can only get more beautiful with age (unlike me!).

Anyway, enough of my romantic gushing – here’s a little bit more (proper) history for you…

The Fender Telecaster was developed by Leo Fender in Fullerton, California in the 1940s. The hand-built prototype, an anomalous white guitar, had most of the features of what would become the Telecaster. The initial production model appeared in 1950, and was called the Esquire. Fewer than fifty guitars were originally produced under that name, and most were replaced under warranty because of early manufacturing problems. In particular, the Esquire necks had no truss rod and many were replaced due to bent necks. Later in 1950, this single-pickup model was discontinued, and a two-pickup model was renamed the Broadcaster. From this point onwards all Fender necks incorporated truss rods.The Gretsch company, itself a manufacturer of hollow-body electric guitars, claimed that “Broadcaster” violated the trademark for its Broadkaster line of drums, and as a newcomer to the industry, Fender decided to bend and changed the name to Telecaster.

The Telecaster is known for its bright, cutting tone. One of the secrets to the Telecaster’s sound centers on the bridge pickup, which has more windings than the neck pickup and hence has a much higher output, sometimes having twice the inductance of the neck pickup. At the same time, a capacitor is fitted between the slider of the volume control and the output, allowing treble sounds to bleed through while the mid and lower ranges are dampened. A slanting bridge pickup enhances the guitar’s treble tone. The solid body allows the guitar to deliver a clean amplified version of the strings’ tone. This was an improvement on previous electric guitar designs, whose hollow bodies made them prone to unwanted feedback, and which sometimes suffered from a muddy, indistinct sound. These design elements allowed musicians to emulate steel guitar sounds, making it particularly useful in country music. Such emulation can be enhanced by use of a B-Bender (B-string bending device co-introduced by country picker Clarence White), enabling a smooth, precise change of pitch for a single string within a chord.

So here’s to the noble, simple Fender Telecaster….

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Tags: ample evidence, david gilmour, fender telecaster, francis rossi, gibsons, jangle, Jimmy Page, joe strummer, keith richards, les paul, rhythm guitarist, rick parfitt, solo recordings, stairway to heaven, stratocaster, telecasters, Telecastor, teles, work horse

Top 10 Air Guitar Juke Box Tracks

December 6, 2008 by T.J.Jones
Filed under Tony Jones

How To Play Guitar – Blues Style

December 6, 2008 by T.J.Jones
Filed under Featured, Play Guitar Like

5 Comments

Hi All,

This lesson is how to play guitar ‘Blues Style’. Before we start the video lesson of how to play ‘Blues Style’ here is a bit of history of how ‘The Blues’ evovled.

Blues: the Birth and Evolution of a new Era

Blues is a musical genre that began as an African American cathartic form of self-expression in response to generations of adversity in the south of the United States. In reference to the blue devils or ‘down’ spirits like melancholy and grief, the blues style incorporates in its vocals, themes that concentrate on life’s troubles and hindrances.

The origin of folk blues traces back to the African American working class of the Mississippi Delta in the beginning of the 20th century. Its birth was foretold by the slave and field work songs of the time. Songs about oppression and the need for freedom, these ‘hollers’ prefigured the explosion of a genre that would forever impact the music world.

The Delta Blues

After the Emancipation of the African-American people, blues’ expansion began inevitably as folk singers migrated, thus introducing the Delta blues to the rest of the country. Each region then adopted their own localized style, giving rise to various forms and distinctions of the genre. Country blues was the first, earthier, variation to appear as the movement traveled out of the work camps and into the rural zones. The genre continued to evolve as the musicians presented it in bigger cities, giving place to the more polished, refined style of urban blues.

Among leading performers, early recordings of Mammie Smith, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey popularized classic blues, while Son House was one of the early performers of country blues as well as the developer of the bottleneck slide technique.

Despite the genre becoming popular and well established around the late 1920’s, the 1929 depression left many performers out of work, slowing down and forcing its evolution to take place passively. Nonetheless, after World War II, musicians such as Muddy Waters from Chicago and B.B. King from Memphis surfaced to intensify guitar sounds and accentuate on percussion, thus creating a new form called electric blues. Big cities also inspired award winning John Lee Hooker, who revolutionized the Delta blues with a freer, lively, rhythmical form that combined his Mississippi style with the boogie-woogie piano style of New Orleans (‘Boogie Chillen’ 1948). It was in the late 1950’s and early 60’s that, by the hand of folk singer Jimmie Rogers, white listeners became more interested in the trend. Revivalists sought recordings of its performers to search them out, and induced the resurgence of the genre in post-war U.S. A.

The Great Depression

After the appearance of Riley B. King and the electric blues, the movement became a big hit in Britain. In this way, the trend made its way across the world to find new distinctions to the genre. The British ‘beat’ began subsequently and the blues and its derivatives influenced renowned bands such as The Yardbirds or Eric Clapton, also paving the way for the 1964 British Invasion. Blues rock, R&B, Jazz and Bluegrass are just a few of the genres that were impacted by the evolution of this musical style.

Harmonically, blues consists of a dominant 4/4 rhythm; flattened thirds, fifths and sevenths of the related major scale, and a 12-bar structure. The blues scale is roughly a minor pentatonic scale with an added ‘blue’ note. Before settling on the 12 bar progression, blues wasn’t defined in terms of chord structure as there were many blues in 6-bar and 8-bar, even in 16-bar form. The work of Ray Charles on ‘Sweet 16-bars’ or Herbie Hancock on ‘Watermelon Man’ are examples of the latter. By 1930, however, 12-bar form became the standard blues, as well as the use of flatted 3rds and 7ths, crushing and sliding.
Within its text, the genre comprises 3 line stanzas in which the first two lines repeat each other; the third one acting as an affirmation or conclusion of what had previously been sung.

In essence a vocal music form, blues incorporates the African call-and-response tradition where one musical phrase responds to another; primitively a form of democratic participation.
The development of blues has forecasted the beginning of a musical revolution that branched into vast selection of different sounds and new genres. While also becoming the roots and base of many acclaimed guitarists that have emerged since its birth- such as Jimmi Hendrix and Jimmy Page- the blues caused a shift in the music equilibrium that will forever mark the path of its history.