Player archive

January 2024

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18 articles

January 28
- "I’ve taught Travis picking at least 500 times but whenever I’ve asked a student, 'Do you know who Merle Travis is?' I’ve never heard, 'Yes!'" A deep dive into Walkin’ the Strings, an album whose influence is everywhere in our guitar lives
January 26
- "It’s not what you play, it’s what you don’t." Paul Rodgers – the singer's singer who played with the guitar player's guitar players – on what he learned from the likes of Paul Kossoff, Mick Ralphs and Jimmy Page
January 25
- “I don’t see myself as having a particular sound. I’m more of a music creator, and guitars are my tools. I just try to be prepared for any job”: The career of Lyle Workman, sideman, session guy and soundtrack composer in five songs
January 24
- “It’s tempting to look for more overdrive, distortion or feedback, but the volume control is what it’s all about. Just listen to Jeff Beck!”: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Zal Cleminson on tone, Marshalls, and what he learned from his late bandleader
January 23
- “I had a huge pedalboard at one point. You have 15 pedals, and your tone sucks... Joe Walsh and Hendrix, they didn’t use a bunch of pedals”: Schooled in jazz and classical guitar, with a punk spirit, Mary Timony's skilled fretwork is as unique as ever
January 22
- “When you show up to a set thinking you’re gonna hear acoustic blues and you hear tapping on an overdriven resonator, it might make you stop and listen”: Buffalo Nichols on breaking with blues tradition, and charting his own resonator-led path
January 21
- “Make the worst-sounding chord you can imagine…” Alter Bridge supremo Mark Tremonti’s top five tips for guitarists
January 20
- “I was on the toilet with my acoustic guitar and I just started playing the riff. I thought, 'Wow, that’s either something or it’s just a bunch of irrelevant notes'. The next day, the riff came back…" How Trevor Rabin wrote Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart
January 17
- "Sometimes, when I play through a huge stack, I’m like, ‘Holy sh*t – the power!’ That's all great, but it tempts me into taking the easy way out instead of trying to find the perfect part”: Marnie Stern on tapping, modding, and finding your own voice
January 14
- “It's about the band. There’s a kind of confession in it…” How the fear, hope and sadness of a love affair mixed with secret band tensions helped Justin Hayward write the Moody Blues’ The Story in Your Eyes
January 13
- “The weakness that guitar players often have is they’re good at noodling but not necessarily at making a hook that sticks to your ribs”: How heartland rocker Dave Hause made his new album Drive It Like It’s Stolen
January 12
- "Bird just grinned. He’d never heard a guitar played like that!" He saw T-Bone Walker, worked with Charlie Parker and uses a drawer-knob instead of a pick: Chicago jazz supremo George Freeman, 96, looks back over an epic career
- “When you’re young and struggling, you overplay to get noticed. I’ve shredded my way to success. Maybe now is a good time to just go, 'Is this serving the song?'” Joe Bonamassa has reached the next level
January 8
- “I never practice, so my technique is not great, but I also don’t go down a lot of ultra-rehearsed alleyways. I can still find things that are surprising to me. That may not happen if I practiced every day”: An archive interview with Andy Partridge of XTC
- Pushing Telecaster playing to innovative new heights, Roy Buchanan’s Second Album is a guitar masterclass as groundbreaking and timeless as its predecessor
January 6
- ”There’s 12 notes on a guitar and Steve Vai and Zakk Wylde sound like they have more. How do you do that?” Blues prodigy Kenny Wayne Shepherd on his new solo album Dirt on My Diamonds, Vol. 1, and why unpredictability is so important
January 5
- “I want my solos to be melodic — but not a ‘pretty’ melodic, an aggressive one…’‘ Grammy award nominee Christone “Kingfish” Ingram’s top five tips for guitarists
January 4
- "Waiting for the Bus and Jesus Just Left Chicago? In essence, it’s a blues suite in 4/4 and 6/8 time..." The career of Billy Gibbons, blues guitar supremo, in five songs