A month or two ago MUSIC U.K. received news of a new series of guitar tuition tapes, originated in the U.S.A, and selling under the name 'Hotlicks'. At the time we hadn't had the opportunity to try any of them and so we just reported the story of their launch in the U.K. (see MUSIC U.K.'s June issue, Page 8) and promised that we'd do our best to try some of the tapes and report back our findings. Since then we've managed to obtain samples of several of the courses on offer, and have had the time to evaluate them. Briefly, though, we'll just re-cap on what's on offer.

The man behind the guitar teaching series is Arlen Roth, a leading American session player whose abilities (we've since discovered) seem to have been shamefully overlooked in this country to date. Arlen has worked with a tremendous range of artists in the States and, apart from being one of those players perpetually in demand for sessions, is also a recording artist in his own right and has a regular column in America's Guitar Player magazine.

Currently on offer from the 'Hotlicks' range is a series of tuitional cassettes, each course comprising six one-hour tapes and offering such subjects as Rock Guitar, Lead Guitar, Nashville Guitar, Blues Guitar, Rhythm and Blues Guitar and How To Play Guitar. There is also a course on bass called 'The Complete Bassist' plus a 'jam-along' tape where you fill in the guitar lines. We contacted the importers of the series, Labtek International Ltd., and arranged to borrow several sample tapes from a variety of the courses to see what we made of them. By the time you read this review, many retailers up and down the country will have these tapes in stock, so here are our views on their value.

The tapes we tried were from samples of the ranges, mainly the Blues Guitar course and the Rock Guitar course. The tapes came with tablature notations (to be used with the spoken text on the tapes) but don't worry if such things are double-Dutch to you — we found that the words and the played examples alone were more than enough to follow; you do not have to be able to read or understand musical notation to learn from these tapes - a blessed relief in our opinion!

The tapes comprise a series of spoken commentaries, interspersed with Roth playing exercises which you copy. If you take the Blues course, for example, Arlen talks you through some amazingly useful licks and intros, riffs and solo phrases which, in true Blues style, you gradually begin to learn how to weave together into cohesive Blues solos. In the course of the spoken commentary (again taking the Blues taples as an example) Arlen manages to impart some excellent general advice, such as information about string gauges where, for example, he recommends a 010 gauge as ideal for solos, explaining the flaws with lighter sets when it comes to a decent 'ringing' tone and reliable intonation.

"ARLEN ROTH... HIS ABILITIES SEEM TO HAVE BEEN SHAMEFULLY OVER LOOKED IN THIS COUNTRY..."

More importantly, however, he manages to satisfy that secret craving that all guitarists have - he doesn't just discuss general styles but gets down to specifics. He tells you how Clapton does such-and-such a lick, B.B. King does another and Chuck Berry another. By the time he's finished having you wrap your fingers round the neck, you're definitely beginning to get the idea and can loop and link together the various forms he comes up with into genuine solo ideas which, while admittedly not original in themselves, are a massive stepping-stone for the guitarist who has listened to the 'greats' without ever being able to see how they do whatever it is that they do so well. Where Arlen's tapes score so highly over many other tuition tapes is really in this skill he has of tackling famous players' styles and teaching you how they do what they do.

The ease with which you pick up Roth's licks and riffs is, of course, largely a matter of how adept you are at learning. There will never be a substitute for direct visual tuition (where you sit down with another player and let him show you how to handle a lick) but these tapes must, surely, be the very next best thing.

Roth's style is very casual. When you listen to him on tape it's exactly like he was sitting there in front of you, showing how to play each lick. He even makes mistakes in his dialogue (always corrected, of course) so that it feels tremendously spontaneous and 'live'.

"...TACKLING FAMOUS PLAYERS' STYLES AND TEACHING YOU HOW THEY DO WHAT THEY DO..."

From the sample tapes which we tried, we'd certainly endorse this useful series 100%. Roth is an immensely talented guitarist (he's currently rehearsing a world tour with Simon and Garfunkel, playing lead throughout their set) and we would feel certain that even quite advanced guitarists could learn a great deal from him. For example, if you look at Tape 5 from Arlen's Advanced Lead Guitar Course you're covering such topics as harmonics in lead guitar, 'false harmonics', harmonics combined with fretted notes, plus quite a few other useful tricks.

Because of the ease with which Roth presents these tapes and the guidance contained within them we'd wholeheartedly recommend them to any aspiring player. Maybe if you're already pretty advanced you could skip the early tapes in any of the courses and just concentrate on the advanced lessons. On the other hand, for a younger player, they enable you to pick up an axe, plug in and start to learn all those runs and tricks which you've heard but have never been able to pickup from the original records.

Overall, the Arlen Roth courses we tried were both well presented and jam-packed with information. A course of six tapes at £7.95 each may seem like a large investment but you only need one tape at a time, and by the end of any of the courses you're certain to have mastered a vital area of guitar playing.

Even those of us on the magazine's staff who counted ourselves as being fairly accomplished electric players agreed that they'd learned from these tapes.