Watch You Me At Six's Max Helyer give you a guitar lesson
Tone-savvy guitarist teaches you Brand New
While Surrey rock heavyweights You Me At Six were out on tour supporting new album Night People, tonesome guitarist Max Helyer found time to share a lesson on how to play single Brand New, which we're hosting exclusively.
Demonstrating the song's rhythm and lead lines through his full rig, Max also shows off a stunning custom creation from Fender: an H-P90-H Tele Deluxe. Um, can we have one, please?
Talking about the song, Max says, “Brand New was a song that formed fairly quickly. I was playing the verse guitar part in practice and it caught people's ears - maybe the spacing of notes, which allowed vocals to fill the gaps attracted us towards this.
“The pre-chorus and chorus really came from listening to The Who and Bruce Springsteen guitar parts which I was listening to a fair bit whilst writing the record. I wanted something uplifting from the verse that really took the song a different direction, and to still manage to sound like our band.
“Simplicity can sometimes be more effective than being flashy which was the route I went on the solo; it was meant to be something that fitted the sound of the song and didn’t take away from the big vocal hook in the chorus.”
For more info on Max's gear, check out our You Me At Six rig tour.
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Mike is Editor-in-Chief of GuitarWorld.com, in addition to being an offset fiend and recovering pedal addict. He has a master's degree in journalism, and has spent the past decade writing and editing for guitar publications including MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitarist, as well as a decade-and-a-half performing in bands of variable genre (and quality). In his free time, you'll find him making progressive instrumental rock under the nom de plume Maebe.