The genius of BRIAN MAY Full style study

With Bohemian Rhapsody pulling in crowds at the movies Jon Bishop examines the multi-faceted and instantly recognisable guitar style of Queen’s melodic master.

Brian May’s playing and sound are unique. Jon Bishop brings you five playing examples, plus acoustic and delay workouts and a full performance piece with backing track.

Welcome to our all-encompassing look at Queen’s incredible guitarist Brian May and his various approaches to electric and acoustic playing. The aim of this lesson is to learn and apply some of the tried and tested concepts used by May during his stellar career.

The Brian May guitar sound is one of the finest and most recognisable in rock history. His many tones are the product of a unique combination of ingenious ingredients, all cooked up by Brian and his father - plus a little help from a wall of Vox AC30s, a Dallas Rangemaster treble booster and a funny little transistor amp put together by bassist John Deacon. Although upgraded and modernised here and there, most of these ingredients have remained pretty much unchanged for the best part of five decades.

Brian’s ‘Red Special’ guitar was a custom one-off build by Brian and father Harold and features a chambered body with oak centreblock and three Burns Tri-Sonic pickups. The wiring is complex and allows each pickup to be turned on individually and the phase of each to be reversed. This provides a myriad of options, each with a sound of its own.

Brian uses a sixpenny coin (minted from 1551-1980 and until 1947 made of solid silver) as a pick. The sixpence is fairly thin and provides a metallic bite. It also has a serrated edge so angling it provides lots of gritty attack.

The treble booster pedal is a handy tool for converting an already slightly overdriven amp into a fully screaming monster. At the time Brian started performing, valve amps weren’t really designed to produce hugely overdriven sounds. The Dallas Rangemaster treble booster was the way that guitarists like Brian, Rory Gallagher and Ritchie Blackmore achieved their sustain and overdrive.

Brian also pioneered a creative approach to using multiple delays. His rig features three Vox AC30 amps. The first amp produces the direct guitar signal; the second has a single delay repeat at around 750ms and the third operates another delay repeat at around 1500ms. If the notes are carefully selected and timed, Brian can use the repeats to obtain his signature harmonised sound live, without the need for lots of studio overdubs.

To get you started we have recorded five licks and tips that focus on a key aspect of May’s approaches. Then there are three awesome performance jam tracks to learn.

The first is a homage to Brian’s acoustic guitar moments. The second is a fun-to-play workout that exploits his signature threedelay, harmonisation technique. To finish up there is an all-in jam track that puts together many of his top tricks into a single piece.

As ever the GT audio contains the finished tracks and a backing track for each, so you can jam along. The notation includes details of all the pickup selections, volume control settings and tone used for each example - the good thing is that with a little thought and a good ear we can get pretty close to Brian’s fingerprint tone with our own gear.

Once you have mastered the technique or approach in question, be sure to apply it to your own compositions.

A TREBLE BOOSTER WAS THE WAY BRIAN, RITCHIE BLACKMORE AND RORY GALLAGHER ACHIEVED SUSTAIN AND OVERDRIVE

ALTHOUGH UPGRADED OR MODERNISED HERE AND THERE MOST OF BRIAN’S GEAR HAS REMAINED UNCHANGED FOR FIVE DECADES