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There’s nothing like some decent old fashioned rock n roll. It’s particularly cold in Dublin this week so I came up with this piece to A. energise myself and B. pay tribute to my guitar god Brian May who was in Dublin this weekend.

Rory Gallagher was a big influence on Brian May. It may sound controversial but in the case of Brian May playing the blues you can hear a kindred approach to phrasing and, in particular, in tone. It was Rory who put Brian onto the idea of pounding the input stages of a Vox AC30 with a treble booster.

In terms of arrangement here it’s all guitars and they are many! This is also the first proper outing for my new James Tyler Variax.

The main riff is the telecaster setting on same going into an emulated Marshall Plexi on the Pod HD. The harmony guitars are my old EMG equipped Epiphone. There are four of them layered on top of each other in a nod to the Queen track “Dead on Time”.

The first change to the IV chord brings in some banjo which really was the hardest part of the whole thing for me to play (other than the bass as usual…). It’s one thing having a guitar that sounds like a banjo but quite another playing it so it sounds like one! This was a nod to the banjo ukelele parts you’d hear in certain Queen tracks.

The first lead guitar is the Variax simulating a Les Paul custom – particularly hilarious since I had the Variax simulating a guitar I have…! It has it’s own tonality – a bit more mid range heavy than mine so it’s nice to have the options.

Finally we have a Rory-esque lead part on the Variax emulated Telecaster.

In terms of amps all the guitars went into the Pod HD’s Plexi model with the higher gain ones benefitting from a Tube Screamer in front,

Hope you enjoy!

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Thomas Brunkard

Author Thomas Brunkard

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