Wake Up Call

In a special Edition of his Guitar World column, Godsmack guitarist Tony Rombola offers a sneak preview of the band's new album and demonstrates how to play its new smash single, "Awake."

I'm really proud of "Awake," guitarist Tony Rombola says of Godsmack's latest album, due for release on Halloween. "With this record, we all tried really hard to take the band to the next level. We haven't changed our style, though; we still do what we do, but this album's a little more musical than the first one." While that is good news for Godsmack fans, Rombola has even better news for guitarists: "We're bringing guitar solos back," he adds.

Since the release of Godsmack in 1998, the band has been on the road virtually non-stop. To record Awake in a timely fashion, the group had to write the bulk of the album while touring. "We've been pretty busy," says Rombola. "Awake was written last year while we were on the road. Sully [Erna, vocals] did the bulk of it, but I helped out on several songs -- 'Going Down,' 'Bad Magic,' ' Trippin' ' and one or two others."

Explains Erna, "I would get to the gigs early and sit in the dressing room with a guitar and a drum machine. I kept writing until I had it together. When I was finished with the music, I'd give the song to the guys and let them tweak it a little, and I'd start working on the lyrics." A model of efficiency, the band even used their pre-gig soundchecks to test out the new material.

As fans of the band well know, the story behind Godsmack's debut CD is a classic rags-to-riches tale. A self-financed self-produced DIY affair, Godsmack landed the Boston quartet a deal with Universal/Republic, which released the disc in its original form with the addition of "Whatever," the album's first single. "We actually had to borrow money to make the record," recalls Rombola. "A friend loaned us something like $2,700, and we banged out all the tunes we had at the time."

Armed with an album's worth of new material, Godsmack headed for the studio in early 2000. The location -- River's Edge Productions -- was no luxury recording facility, but a studio housed in an abandoned warehouse directly above a boxing gym in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

"It was in the middle of crackville," says Erna. "I didn't want to get too comfortable. I wanted to stay in the streets because I felt that it would help keep the hunger inside of me. It wasn't that long ago when we were trying to bum five dollars off someone for a pack of cigarettes and a drink. Recording at River's Edge helped me stay focused on who I am and who we are."

"Compared to the first album, we took our time with this one," says Rombola. "We had the studio locked out for three or four months, and we spent the first two months just rehearsing and finishing up the last few tunes for the record. For pre-production, we recorded the album twice using digital equipment so we could work out the bugs. Once that was done, we did the real thing on tape."

To achieve the monstrous guitar tone on Awake, Rombola stuck to his trusty Gibson Les Paul and Mesa/Boogie Rectifier. "Before this band, I was really into Strats," says the guitarist. "I just love how the cutaways on those guitars fit your body, and they have an awesome tone, too. But with Godsmack, I needed more of a solid, heavy humbucker sound -- you know, a really thick, distorted tone. That's what a Les Paul/Mesa combination is best for." Rombola did manage to squeeze a tiny bit of Strat onto the album: "There's a short guitar solo on 'Spiral' that I played with a strat. One just happened to be hanging around the studio, so I grabbed it and used it for that part. But the rest of the album is all Les Pauls."

Rombola's arsenal of Les Pauls includes two Standards, two Studios and a couple of Customs. He also recently acquired a Gothic Studio model and an eye-catching Gary Moore signature model. "Most of them still have the stock Gibson pickups in them," he says. "But I've got Seymour Duncan Billy Gibbons models [Pearly Gates] in a couple of them, and so does Sully. It's a really good pickup."

As Rombola has explained in past "Primal Instinct" columns, most of Godsmack was recorded using dropped-D tuning (low to high: D A D G B E). The majority of Awake, however, was recorded in what Rombola calls "dropped-C" tuning, which is dropped-D tuning transposed down a whole step (low to high: C G C F A D). Interestingly, "Whatever," the song from Godsmack that was the band's first hit single, was also in dropped-C tuning.

"That tuning really works on the new album," says Rombola, "because Sully sings really strong in that low register." Rombola's strings of choice are GHS Boomers -- .010s when playing in dropped-D and .011s when in dropped-C.

As previously mentioned, Rombola's preferred amp is a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier head, which he uses to drive two Mesa 4x12 cabinets. "I did the first record with Dual Rectifiers, but I bought Triples after that because they have a little more headroom and a little more power. [150 watts versus the Dual Rectifier's 100 -- GW Ed.] I don't have to push them too hard so my tone stays nice and tight. I usually have the volume up around 9 or 10 o'clock, depending on where we're playing, and I never get it up over halfway."

Here Rombola explains how he achieved his monolithic tone on Awake: "I had two Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier stacks set up, and both of them were miked so that they created different sounds. On each take, I was getting a mix of the two differnet tones. Then, I'd do the same thing again on another track. This meant I was doubling myself but ending up with a mixture of four tones instead of two. Then I'd throw down another track using a totally different tone just to fill out the sound even more. I'd use a little Fender Bullet combo or a [Line 6] Pod, and that track would be straight down the middle. I did that on the first record, too."

Although Rombola played the vast majority of guitar work on Awake, Erna contributed some rhythm playing as well and was responsible for the eerie intro on "Spiral." "He wanted to have a spooky opening that sounded like one of those little music boxes," says Rombola. "He started messing around by plucking the open strings above the nut and created a pattern that blends really well with the rhythm of the song's main riff."

Speaking of unusual guitar sounds, how did Tony create the distant sound at the beginning of "Mistakes"? "That was just a Pod with the reverb really cranked up," he says. "We were trying to get a weird sound happening in the background. Then when the guitar comes in on a cranked Triple Rectifier that's totally dry [no reverb -- GW Ed.], it sound huge."

Rombola admits to being a "total wah addict," something he makes abundantly clear on Awake "I love the extra control it gives me over my tone for certain riffs and especially for leads. I used a standard Dunlop Crybaby on everything except 'Trippin',' where I used an all-chrome Crybaby Custom." How he acquired the Crybaby Custom is a story in itself. "When my standard Crybaby died, I called Dunlop to get a new one," says Rombola. "In addition to the Crybaby, they threw in a Crybaby Custom. It has all sorts of frequency notches that let you tweak the tone, stereo outputs and even a control that sets the wah from low to high. Dunlop didn't include a manual, so I just put a battery in the unit, plugged it in like a regular wah and started using it. I must've plugged into the wrong output, though, because it sounded almost like a phase and a wah combined. I recorded the solo on 'Trippin'' like that. Everyone liked it because it was so different, so we kept it."

Rombola put several other stomp boxes to good use on Awake, particularly during the verse of "Going Down." "That's a Dunlop Rotovibe, cranked up to match the speed of the song," he explains. "Then, to get that weird 'wee-er-er-er' sound as I slide off the chord, I hit a Dunlop Tremlo pedal. The disonant-sounding chord I use for that part [FIGURE 1] is one I learned from listening to Joe Satriani; I used to learn a lot of his stuff by listening to his records. Actually, he puts a lower note in at the 12th fret on the A string [shown in parentheses in FIGURE 1], but I just play the top three notes. It's a cool-sounding chord, but don't ask me what it's called."

Another dissonant and highly effective three-note chord crops up in the verse of "Trippin'," where Tony arpeggiates the shape shown in FIGURE 2. "That's another one where the notes don't want to go together," he observes. "To make it sound even more eerie, I used a phase shifter of some sort on it; I can't remember which one. We had four different phasers in the studio, and we were just bouncing around between all of them trying to find the best sound for the part."

The Secrets to Playing "Awake"

"The song starts off with three chords that are really simple to play," says Rombola as he strums the intro on his newly acquired Gary Moore signature Les Paul. "The first chord is just an open D shape with the high E string ringing open, so it's suspended. [FIGURE 3] The open high E string adds air and makes it sound brighter without sounding happy like a regular D major; we rarely play major chords because we don't write happy sounding music. I use a few different forms of D suspended chords because they sound bigger than a regular D shape," he continues, demonstrating the voicing shown in FIGURE 4. "I got this one from Eddie Van Halen. Eddie always used to play those suspended chords, and they made his rhythm parts sound so big, especially with distortion.

"For the second chord in the 'Awake' intro, you barre the bottom three low strings at the 1st fret on the D and G strings [FIGURE 5], giving you another suspended chord in 'dropped-C tuning.' I take my pinkie off after the first strum, though, so the third chord is just a one-finger power chord." [FIGURE 6]

At 0:09, a second guitar enters, playing an octave pattern that compliments the Dsus2 - Ebsus2 - Eb5 motif perfectly. "Yeah, there's a strummed octave shape on the A and G strings [FIGURE 7] going on there too," Rombola explains. "It starts at the 5th fret [D] then goes to the 1st fret [Bb] before sliding up to the 6th fret [Eb]. It's a real simple part and follows the chord changes, but it fills out the groove nicely. Live, Sully plays the chords [see FIGURE 8, Gtr. 1 part] and I play the octaves [see Gtr. 2 part]. The chorus is exactly the same as the intro, too."

The next riff is a heavily muted, syncopated pattern, that can, for the most part, be played with one hand, since the chord involved is the "look ma, no hands" open D5 power chord shape shown in FIGURE 9. "I play this one using all downstrokes," says Rombola. "In addition to totally muting the strings with my picking hand, I also use my left hand to make sure the strings stop ringing during the 'holes' [rests] in the riff. I finish it with a pretty sloppy harmonic where I hit the D and G strings together at the 5th fret. [On the recording, the G string rings open -- GW Ed.]

"After that," continues Rombola, "I kinda 'wup' up the bottom string and slam straight into the next riff. [FIGURE 10] "I'm using the same three-string, open-D5 chord [as in Figure 9], except I'm not muting it anymore and I'm using the octaves on the A and G strings, sliding from 5th to the 6th fret and then from the 5th to the 8th. Then just before the verse, I hit a diminished chord at the 8th position on the A, D and G strings. [FIGURE 11] The verse [FIGURE 12] is so simple that anyone who can't play it had better just put the guitar away and forget about it! You're basically just hitting the three low strings open and stopping them from ringing between each hit with the left hand [indicated by 'L.H. mute' above FIGURE 12 -- GW Ed.].

"After the second chorus, which is a double chorus, we go into a fast staccato riff, which we also come back to at the end of the song. Sully wnated me to play it with downstrokes, but it's too fast and long, so I used down-up picking instead. It starts with the pattern being played on just the open low string [FIGURE 13], and then I mute the strings with my picking hand and chug out the same rhythmic pattern on the bottom two strings. [FIGURE 14] It's actually pretty tough using down-up picking and keeping that rhythm going, especially when doing it on both strings."

In keeping with his claim of bringing back the guitar solo, Rombola steps on his trusty Crybaby wah and starts wailing at 3:44 into the son (see meas. 36 in this month's transcription). "I start off by doing a simple little melody on the G string, which Iplay twice before the lead really gets going [at 4:01]. After the first time through the meolody [see meas. 39], I hit a little diminished chord at the 6th fret on the D string and the 7th fret on the G string. [FIGURE 15] Then, at the end of the repeat [meas.40], I do the same thing, but higher, by playing the chord using the 7th fret on the G-string with the 9th fret on the B string. [Figure 16] After that I pretty much play a 'regular' solo that's in the 10th fret area and basically sticks to the D minor blues box we all know. [FIGURE 17]