5 minute guitar hacks - Volume 2

From using household tools for creepy Korn sounds to helping you improve your fretboard reach, these quick hacks will elevate your playing in no time

It’s time for another edition of our Five Minute Guitar Hacks series where we showcase the most weird and wonderful – and sometimes genuinely useful – guitar hacks, tips and tricks we can find on social media.

We understand life is relentless. It can be tricky to feel like you have the time or energy to pick up a guitar and play sometimes. We hope these hacks will stir something inside you and give the you’re the inspiration, encouragement, and devilishness to want top grab your nearest axe and try something new.

And it only takes five minutes to check out. Let’s get to it.

If you missed Volume 1, check it here.

Peg your riffs!

If you love Korn and don’t currently have any washing out to dry, then this nifty idea from @pashred is well worth a go!

Simply take a wooden clothes peg, attach it to your g string – he has it placed in between his two pickups – and tap it from underneath, in an unpick type motion. It generates this call, almost whammy bar flutter type sound, and really suits a riff with lots of low chugs to act as a dynamic counterpoint.

We have no idea if it works with a plastic peg or not, but we’re eager to find out.

Two-finger DADGAD chords

If you’re familiar to these parts, you’ll know we relentlessly champion DADGAD as the GOAT tuning for modern metal. But if you’re new to the tuning, getting to grips with chords can be a tiresome process. @justinbishopmusic has taken some of the leg work out of it, presenting a few quick fire chords and chord shapes which only require two fingers to play.

One of the best things about DADGAD is how flexible chord shapes can be. Once you’ve found a shape you like, moving it around the fretboard, but keeping any open notes if there are any, can generate some really unique soundscapes which simply wouldn’t be possible in a standard tuning.

Dastardly noise making

This one is less of a hack, more of an eye opener. As we’ve already spoken about, modern metal has a fetish for weird noises that trade off with big heavy, down-tuned chugs – think Gojira and Spiritbox, Mirar.

This guy got the memo and, while his actual guitar playing is incredibly minimal, it shows how much soundscaping you can do with pedals alone. Sure, playing this live is about as practical as glass underwear, but it opens up a whole new realm for riff writing.

Of course, this is the kind of playing that would give a boomer a heart attack, but it's innovative; it's thinking outside the box for new ways of creating riffs, noises, and atmospheres. People have been tweaking their delay pedal controls by hand at the end of gigs for decades, this is just an evolution of that. In the most mad bastard way possibly.

There’s a Whammy DT, a Tallon Electric The Noise pedal on his board, and what looks to be an MXR Carbon Copy delay with the mix cranked to 11.

This is also an excellent advertisement for why MIDI is a powerful tool for live performances.

Reach for the sky

For anyone who knows me, you'll know that I think that Charlie Robbins is one of the most inventive and refreshing guitar players on the scene right now, and here he is with a hack to help make big stretches with more technical playing.

He says it's all about the position of his fretting hand thumb. While he admits that having his thumb coming over the top of the fretboard will help with bends and vibrato, when playing complex patterns and runs, he's found that moving to the back of the neck.

He also admits that he has relatively small hands, but by making this minor adjustment, his reach goes improves by around five frets when starting on the 12th fret. In a lot of instances, your guitar playing can be greatly improved by analysing the minor details. This is a great example of that