Justin Hawkins refuses to use any other guitar tuning than E standard: “If you can’t put your ideas across with that, you’re in trouble”
While there are a myriad of guitar tunings to choose from, E standard generally remains the most popular. And according to The Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins, you shouldn’t need anything else.
While the Darkness also use drop D on some songs – which involves tuning the low E string down a whole tone – many of their biggest tracks, including I Believe in a Thing Called Love and Love Is Only a Feeling – are in E standard.
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In an interview in the new issue of Guitar World, Hawkins explains his love of a “standard-tuning guitar”.
“There’s not a semitone down across the board,” he explains. “If you can’t put your ideas across with that, you’re in trouble anyway, I think.
Hawkins is far from the only guitarist who feels E standard is the superior tuning. Recently, Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith recalled the pushback he received when trying to get his bandmates to experiment with drop D.
“We do songs like Run to the Hills, The Clairvoyant, it’s Drop D,” he said. “I’m the only one in the band who would do it. ‘Come on! Let’s drop the D, move with the times!’ They’re like, ‘Nah.’”
Elsewhere in the new Guitar World interview, Justin Hawkins explains his approach to using the minor pentatonic scale to craft solos.
“There are a lot of moments when it’s pentatonic, but I go for harmonic minor stuff as well,” he says.
“I like a ninth in a solo because I think it forces you to decide whether you’re going to go up or down from there. You can’t just have it suspended in no man’s land. You have to make a choice.
“Pentatonic is a go-to thing when you’re building a solo. But I tend to think of a solo as a collection of phrases that you’ve bastardised and made your own.
“And I’ve got a couple licks that I don’t think anyone else does that sounds like a spider crawling across the fretboard.”
In other news, Justin Hawkins has expressed his opinion that rock music should evolve if it wishes to stay relevant in the modern era.
“Rock is a middle-aged guy in a world full of people who are just generation… whatever the fuck it is now,” he told Kerrang! [Rock] has to wake up and be part of it.
“I’m saying that if [rock as a genre] wants to flourish and be the best again, it has to sort of pull its head out of its arse,” he adds. “[It has to] realise that, yeah, Led Zeppelin existed, The Rolling Stones existed, AC/DC existed, but you have to do that for now. That’s what we are.”
The Darkness released their latest album Dreams on Toast in March this year. Listen below:
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
