How To Sound Like Brian May

There are lots of articles about this subject which all seem to involve reading loads of info and having a degree in electronics as well as having to spend lots of money.

Brain May Guitar/ Vox AC30 Amp/ Treble Booster/Overdrive/Chorus/Delay

Native Instruments Guitar Rig software is a much easier and affordable way to emulate the sound of Brian May.

AC Box modeled on the Vox AC30. Normal 9; Brilliant 10; Treble 10; Bass 4; Tone Cut 3; Speed 5; Tremolo 0.

You’ll have to make some changes in the cabinet, too. We are going to stay with the 2×12 AC Box model. The mic slider all the way over to “B” and the Dry/Air slider to about 55% Air.

The second amp to be added is also an AC Box with the following settings: Normal 6; Brilliant 10; Treble 6; Bass 4; Tone Cut 2; Speed 4; and Depth 0.

The settings that work best for Brian’s tone are: a 2×12 Custom cabinet, On Axis microphone and a Dynamic 57 mic, you should use Volume 6; Bass 4; Air 5; Pan 5; and Treble 7.

The settings on the Chorus are: Speed -5, Intensity 1 and Width 2.

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How To Successfully Learn A Piece of Music

So there’s you the guitar and 5 pages of sheet music/guitar tablature. You are about to plunge into the guitar tab to learn your favourite guitar piece.

Before the days of guitar tab a guitarist would sit with the record (MP3/CD for those who don’t know what records are) and work out how to play the piece. This meant he/she knew the piece of music inside out.

Guitar tab is instant. Trouble is many students don’t bother listening to the piece and use their memory of the music to work out what to play using the tab.

Always learn the piece of music with the MP3/CD at hand. This will mean when it come to playing with band or backing track your phrasing and timing will be accurate.

This may seem obvious but you’d be surprised the amount of students who ask ‘Am I playing this correctly’ I put the MP3 on and they immediately see their mistake and say ‘I really should get the MP3 to listen too’ !!!!!!!!!!!!

My Mother always used to say before wallpapering ‘It’s all in the preparation’

Do you know the structure of the song?  Intro Verse Verse Chorus etc

Do You Know The Chord Progression? 

If you don’t know the answer to these two vital questions you will be on forever trying memorize sheets of guitar tab/sheet music.

Example: The Chords for Sweet Child of Mine which is an epic song are:

Verse (D Cadd9 G D)x4 Chorus (A C D) x2

The main guitar intro follows that chord progression. Failing to see that will make your task hard.

Learn One Bar of Music at a Time

In the excitement of learning a piece of music you may charge like a bull through the pages of music only to find it sound a bit of a mess. With only patches of it sounding recognizable.

With your Record/MP3/CD at hand song structure worked out and written down. Take one bar at a time.  

Don’t move onto the next bar until you can play the first bar without looking. Very quickly you’ll find you can play the first page without looking at the transcription.

This is the desired result ‘playing without the use of sheet music in front of you’

After all you never watched a rock guitarist playing in front of a music stand with someone turning the pages for him!

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