In this article I provide a detailed review of the Heathers Guitar book, including a song-by-song review of my approach to playing it. Let me start by complimenting the orchestrators: this is the most detailed and accurate guitar book I have ever seen. Just about every note you hear on the cast recording is faithfully transcribed. The parts are interesting and challenging, and the book feels like a guitarist was involved in putting it together.
Since the parts themselves are so well defined, my comments focus on my observations on the songs, details of the electric guitar tones and tunings used, technique tips, departures I made from the score (and why I did so) and errata that I found.
These detailed comments are mainly intended as a resource for guitarists who have the book in front of them and are learning to play it. The casual reader may find the level of detail soporific. See here for general observations on the guitar book, the show itself and details of the equipment I used. I don’t intend this to be an “instruction manual” for the show; rather I hope that sharing my approach to the music will provide pointers and inspiration for other guitarists working out their own approach to the material. I would love to get feedback from anybody who has played Heathers.
Wave Sheet Music
The production I played was one of the last to include the number “Blue”. For this reason my notes do not address “You’re Welcome”, the song which has replaced it. I also don’t discuss the Heather Duke song “Never Shut Up Again”, which was added for the London production at the time I was writing this article. If I ever play Heathers again, I plan to update this article with details of the new songs.
There’s a lot of music in this book! It’s very busy, with few breaks or scenes between musical numbers, so you have to keep focused all the way through. There are a few guitar changes, some of which need to be accomplished fairly quickly, but no super-fast changes. There are several difficult page turns, and I repaginated the score to remove all of these. The book also calls for a lot of different electric guitar sounds, and I discuss my approach to these in detail in the song-by-song review below.
The parts use many interesting and unusual chord voicings and inversions, and a lot of spread chords. There’s a great deal of fast jumping around the fretboard. It’s worth spending time to work out the most “ergonomic” way of playing the book to improve accuracy.
Blue (from Heathers The Musical) Sheet Music For Piano, Soprano, Tenor, Guitar & More Instruments (mixed Ensemble)
After experimenting with various pickup settings, I used Position 4 (Middle and Bridge pickups) on my Anderson Drop Top Classic for the whole show. This setting provided an attack and brightness which suited the material. I used the following basic tones dialed into a Line 6 Helix; all of the other tones used were built using these as a starting point:
: a classic punchy Strat tone. I added a little compression, and adjusted EQ setting to suit particular songs, and reduce resonance from the stage set (the band was on top of the multi-level set).
I based this on a patch I found on the Helix which attempted to replicate the crunchy rhythm guitar on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. I tweaked it, added a little compression and cut mid-range tone slightly.
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: I added an effects block based on the Fulltone OCD overdrive pedal to the clean tone, together with a little compression and an EQ block. The OCD is one of the most versatile overdrive pedals around, and Helix version of it is very good. I used a variety of overdrive settings for different songs, but they were mostly based on this combination. I also used a Tube Screamer-style overdrive block in a few places.
Tones: I used my basic distortion for most of this song. The two other sounds for this number are a clean chorus sound (I added a quiet single-repeat 340ms delay to get a sense of space), and a big chorus/delay/reverb sound for the harmonics in #1a m.6-13, just after the Heathers make their grand entrance.
Tones: I used the basic distortion for the intro section (m.1-7). For the main sound starting at m.8, I used a light overdrive, with a hint of rotary (no chorus), and a very short slapback echo to get that “boomy room” sound. For the reggae section (m.68-73) I used a warbly chorus sound (fast rate and fairly high depth).
Heathers Song By Andy Mckee
Tones: I used the basic distortion sound for the intro section (m.1-9), and the final section of the song. For the rest I used a heavily compressed clean chorus tone, with an EQ block to get the tone just right. Somebody commented that it sounded like “Purple Rain” and I guess that’s not too far from the sound I was looking for.
Technique/changes: I played the number almost exactly as written, with the exceptions noted below. The Allegro furioso run at m.1 is tricky and needs to be clearly articulated. We practiced this as an ensemble many times! I made the following adjustments:
I love this song; its feel, the tightness of the arrangement, and the cool, interesting guitar parts and sounds. It’s one of my favorites to play.
I Say No
Tones: the first half of the song uses acoustic guitar. I EQ’d the guitar to give a reasonably bright tone. The electric comes in halfway through the second verse. I used my basic distortion for verse 2, then switched to a classic Andy Summers-style tone (compression, chorus, flange, 70ms delay) for the second chorus arpeggios (m.63-70). For the big rock-out final chorus (m.71-83), I just added distortion and a slight clean boost to the Andy Summers tone and increased the delay to 400ms, with only one repeat. Finally, for the “Clean” tone at the end, I used a bright clean sound with some chorus.
Tones: the score calls for a “clean with chorus” sound. I used just that, and added some compression and EQ to get the funk sound just right. For the “echo” section at m.81-86, I added more reverb, boosted the reverb to get a “spacy” sound, and added a harmonizer set to 1 octave down, to get a sound similar to the cast recording. For the single note Eb rhythm at m.88-93 I added a 300ms delay to the basic chorus sound.
Technique/changes: once again, I played the number almost exactly as written. There are a few slash marks in this number (a rarity in this book) and I explain what I did for these below.
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This is a big moment for the guitar; it’s also (by far) the hardest piece to play accurately in the whole book. The guitar is exposed throughout, and there’s a lot of “fretboard gymnastics” – jumping repeatedly from one end of the neck to the other. It’s easiest just to memorize this number, because you end up spending most of the time looking at the fretboard in a state of mild panic anyway.
I adjusted the effects changes called for in the score, because some of them didn’t make sense to me, especially when comparing with the cast recording. I used the following:
With barely a pause to congratulate yourself for making it through “Dead Girl Walking”, you’re straight into Veronica’s nightmare, a straightforward piece of underscore. For the opening section (m.1-17) I used an echo to get a “spooky” feel (325ms delay with 84% feedback mixed at 40% wet).
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More underscore. This recycles the reggae section of “Candy Store”, so I used the same warbly chorus sound. The rest of the number uses distortion. I added compression to get the notes to sustain longer, and used volume swells and slow finger vibrato for the “creepy ringing”, where marked.
Tones: the first two-thirds of the song is played on nylon-string guitar; the remainder is on electric. I used a clean sound with light chorus for the first section (m.92-101). This changes suddenly to distortion at the end of m.101, and you have to hit the pedal at just the right moment. I used the basic distortion tone.
Blue was a fun number to play, and another highlight for the guitar. The tone of the auto-wah used for most of the number means the guitar is very prominent, so it’s important to play cleanly and accurately.
Heathers: The Musical / Dead Girl Walking [bass Cover] Chords
Tones: most of the song is just a clean tone, plus an auto-wah. The auto-wah drops out for m.27-32, then it’s back for the rest of the number. I added some compression to even out the level, and rolled off some high end EQ to make the wah tone a little less piercing.
More underscore. I used a volume swell for the distorted harmonic E at m.10 (Heather’s entrance). For the melody line in m.12-15 I re-used the harmonizer sound from “Big Fun”, as it’s the same melody.
This is a very short number, but a pivotal moment in the show. There’s a vamp at m.1, then a sudden, fast jump into m.2, which is tricky to get right. We practiced this cue many times!
The Light In The Piazza
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