Watch You Me At Six's Max Helyer give you a guitar lesson

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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Michael Astley-Brown

Mike has been Editor-in-Chief of GuitarWorld.com since 2019, and an offset fiend and recovering pedal addict for far longer. He has a master's degree in journalism from Cardiff University, and 15 years' experience writing and editing for guitar publications including MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitarist, as well as 20 years of recording and live experience in original and function bands. During his career, he has interviewed the likes of John Frusciante, Chris Cornell, Tom Morello, Matt Bellamy, Kirk Hammett, Jerry Cantrell, Joe Satriani, Tom DeLonge, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, Polyphia, Tosin Abasi, Yvette Young and many more. His writing also appears in the The Cambridge Companion to the Electric Guitar. In his free time, you'll find him making progressive instrumental rock as Maebe.