Total Guitar magazine

Man of Honour
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Who here buys this mag? I find it far more interesting to read than other guitar mags thats are just bursting with reviews and nothing else. Its kind of like a music mag and a guitar mag in one, hoorah!

So any discussion on the mag in here. What do people think of it? Do you find it useful? If I'm honest I buy it for the read, I hardly ever bother to learn the tabs.

I do find it annoying that they make some silly mistakes sometimes. I swear they have reviewed that maverick f1 at least twice!

One last thing, the bad horsie Vai track they tabbed this month sounds amazing, almost made me want to go impulse buy a JEM for some whammy bar action! However, what was the point of tabbing a song that NEEDED a floyd rose and had some drop D esque tuning that everyone would need to reset up their guitar for, and then not even print what the tuning was!

Anyway, what do you guys think?
 
Man of Honour
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lemonkettaz said:
i used to buy guitarist...

but i got bored
Exactly, I find the more 'serious' magazines a right snore to read. I don't like reading about guitars I'm proberly never going to play... Also I find that other magazines lack the vital humour element.
 
Associate
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It's one of those things I will very occasionally get. With being able to obtain tabs easily on the internet (not so easy now though :( :mad: ) I hardly ever bother. I must just have 4 or 5 issues.

I generally don't get magazines these days, whereas I would've a few years ago, simply because there's already a lot of information on the internet. Like I would be hard pressed to buy books on guitar tuition when there are lots of good free resources online.

I didn't think the humour was that great in Total Guitar.. not enough to warrant buying the magazine frequently, and in any one issue whilst there was bound to be something I found interesting, I had to wade through quite a bit of stuff I couldn't care less about.
 

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Soldato
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when you consider how much a blank CD is. and the quantities they produce them in, i find it disgusting that the price of these magazines never goes down. i refuse to pay ~£5 for something i can find on the net/figure out myself for free.

some of the tutorials are good, but not £5 for three tutorials good.
 
Soldato
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i buy TG most months now, thinking about getting a subcription.

this months is awesome!

Raining blood tabbed, Beast & the harlot tabbed - if it wasnt for the backing tracks etc. i'd get the tabs online. but even then as said its not just the CD content that makes me buy it, its the fact that its not just like every other guitar magazine.

this month has a nice interview with dragonforce and its more like kerrang in that sense.

thumbs up to TG!

also in this months there is the RGT exam grade 3 info part with a few clips from it. it has really opened up my eyes as to how stupidly easy the Trinity College Grade 5 i did was!
instead of jumping in at grade 6 i might pick up the grade 3 or 4 RGT book! just to get to grips with the scales theory stuff.
 
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I buy TG every month, I don't look at the tabs but read it to keep my hand in with the equipment market and just because it's cool to read interviews/opinions of other guitarists.. it inspires me to play :)

As for transcribing Bad Horsie, yes it is in open C tuning and although it's a PITA to have to re-tune you can just drop your low E a tone and use a pitch shifter to drop the overall pitch a tone.

I was sat at work yesterday listening to Alien Love Secrets, I've found my next target to learn - "Tender Surrender" but OMG how hard is the solo :eek:
 
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I've bought the last few issues of TG, but I don't really like it all that much. I just get it when there's something interesting in it and I have a spare fiver. I don't like their writing style either, or the layout, or anything like that. I just plain don't like it. :p
 
Soldato
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Andelusion said:
afaik bad horsie is in open C.

nah, just drop C, open C is CGCGCe.

The main riff is played with a slide but thats about it, just tune it to drop D then drop everything down once more
 
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SidewinderINC said:
i buy TG most months now, thinking about getting a subcription.

this months is awesome!

Raining blood tabbed, Beast & the harlot tabbed - if it wasnt for the backing tracks etc. i'd get the tabs online. but even then as said its not just the CD content that makes me buy it, its the fact that its not just like every other guitar magazine.

this month has a nice interview with dragonforce and its more like kerrang in that sense.

thumbs up to TG!

also in this months there is the RGT exam grade 3 info part with a few clips from it. it has really opened up my eyes as to how stupidly easy the Trinity College Grade 5 i did was!
instead of jumping in at grade 6 i might pick up the grade 3 or 4 RGT book! just to get to grips with the scales theory stuff.


reign in blood?


got this months mag, i mainly buy it to watch paul gilbert vids.

btw sidewinder - they did bat country a couple of mags ago :)
 
Soldato
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album = reign in blood
track = raining blood

:)

damn, musta missed bat country! nevermind, didnt really get it for that, no matter how much i like A7X its a pain to get another guitarist as we're only a 3 piece band at the moment...

the paul gilbert vids are awesome! he's one of my all time favourite guitarists.
 
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SidewinderINC said:
album = reign in blood
track = raining blood

:) (so it is :))

damn, musta missed bat country! nevermind, didnt really get it for that, no matter how much i like A7X its a pain to get another guitarist as we're only a 3 piece band at the moment...

the paul gilbert vids are awesome! he's one of my all time favourite guitarists.


bat country 1 that you missed had him doing "the drill song" -daddy brother lover little boy - twas ace :D
 
Soldato
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riddlermarc said:
As for transcribing Bad Horsie, yes it is in open C tuning and although it's a PITA to have to re-tune you can just drop your low E a tone and use a pitch shifter to drop the overall pitch a tone.

I was sat at work yesterday listening to Alien Love Secrets, I've found my next target to learn - "Tender Surrender" but OMG how hard is the solo :eek:

Ewww it'd sound horrible using a pitch shifter :p

Yeah Tender Surrender, quite a lot of it you can improvise, mainly the long legato parts, but there's some really nice licks in there and the clean jazzy octaves intro is great.
 
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My mates got a sub to it I think so I nick it and read it. Occasionally I see something quite cool that I actually understand but meh
 
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