Ellie Rogers
Since graduating university with a degree in English, Ellie has spent the last decade working in a variety of media, marketing and live events roles. As well as being a regular contributor to Total Guitar, MusicRadar and GuitarWorld.com, she currently heads up the marketing team of a mid-scale venue in the south-west of England. She started dabbling with guitars around the age of seven and has been borderline obsessed ever since. She has a particular fascination with alternate tunings, is forever hunting for the perfect slide for the smaller-handed guitarist, and derives a sadistic pleasure from bothering her drummer mates with a preference for “f**king wonky” time signatures.
Latest articles by Ellie Rogers
![Hot Milk performs onstage during the Lollapalooza Paris Festival - Day Two on July 22, 2023 in Paris, France.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4W3VbVEFAUumu5Bnz968wE-320-80.jpg)
“We’ve always said genre’s a lie since day one”: Meet Hot Milk, the Manchester punk-rockers who love P-90 pickups and EDM in equal measure, and count Dave Grohl among their fans
By Ellie Rogers published
Jim Shaw and Han Mee are tearing up the genre rulebook, and producing some of today's most vital guitar-led music as a result. The Manchester upstarts explain what drives their diverse DADGAD-tuned songcraft, and the advice Dave Grohl gave them when they shared a stadium bill with Foo Fighters
![Greatest Guitar Solos of the 21st Century](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/M7MmtQ9MBD7WkccsdjrF8-320-80.jpg)
The greatest guitar solos of the 21st century... so far
By Jenna Scaramanga published
Featuring every kind of guitar hero – from old-school to cutting‑edge. And not one but two Van Halens…
![Tigercub's Jamie Hall](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/zzDsAv8GtY8BB5bb6nCDqc-320-80.jpg)
Oddball studio experiments, going “full Spinal tap,” and “stinky riffs“: how Tigercub’s Jamie Hall is bringing bonkers guitar to the mainstream
By Ellie Rogers published
Step inside the weird world of Tigercub, where no-name transistor amps, headphones used as microphones and abyssal drop-tuned riffs helped concoct their most recent album, The Perfume of Decay
![James Donovan and Duc Peterman of HMLTD perform at Heaven on October 25, 2022 in London, England.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Yb244gPmgHE2nEnb3LkCzm-320-80.jpg)
Meet HMLTD’s Duc Peterman, the jazz-schooled guitarist who rejects the “macho side of guitar playing” and wants his tones to sound like a giant parasitic worm
By Ellie Rogers published
With a bizarre new concept album, HMLTD are defying the expectations of guitar‑based music by treating the instrument like an orchestra – while embracing some “very stupid ideas”
![Towa Bird](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/YVP6Q6BFEr3YYeSXAzNj5c-320-80.jpg)
Meet Towa Bird, the TikTok star who channels Jimi Hendrix and thinks guitar solos are “arrogant” – but tears up the fretboard anyway
By Ellie Rogers published
One of the guitar world’s most hotly tipped players on her love of unusual electric shapes, the secret to making her leads sound like a conversation, and reappropriating the guitar solo for women everywhere
![Scott Reynolds](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/FMkhAB53Tzn9jRVLwhbzPB-320-80.jpg)
How CLT DRP’s Scott Reynolds is pushing electric guitar tone to new limits via a monster 40kg pedalboard
By Ellie Rogers published
The UK electro-punks throw the rulebook out the window, using bass amps for guitars, and destroying everything with ring mod
![Jakub Zytecki](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EXF7UKzcqNxby2JmfNgqnU-320-80.jpg)
Meet ambient shredder Jakub Zytecki – the trailblazing virtuoso who picks plugins over pedals and plays a Kurt Cobain-inspired 8-string
By Ellie Rogers published
The Polish wunderkind explains why Polyphia and Plini have reignited his guitar fire and how he channeled John Petrucci on his stellar new album, Remind Me
![Téa Campbell](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/iTQz56LKYms524EQXk56tL-320-80.jpg)
Téa Campbell on how classic skatepunk, Dave Grohl’s Kemper tone and Hannah Montana inspired Meet Me @ The Altar’s explosive debut
By Ellie Rogers published
With a Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One signature in hand and a bunch of pop-culture influences in her head, Campbell has created a sound that's packed with hooks, ear-catching six-string textures, and satisfying dynamic shifts
![Voyager's Simone Dow](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/bvBKb89XgjYu5LeCr6rJQo-320-80.jpg)
Voyager’s Simone Dow on why “prog is perfect for playing at Eurovision” as she brings tech-metal solos to one of the world’s biggest stages
By Ellie Rogers published
Can Aussie rockers Voyager win Europe’s favorite song contest like Lordi and Måneskin before them? “It’s a dream,” says guitarist Simone Dow
![Rory Clewlow](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/feXZDf5jiNznQzbsVc52Va-320-80.jpg)
How a Tom Morello attitude and madcap Kemper experimentation shaped Enter Shikari’s genre-smashing tech-forward guitar sound
By Ellie Rogers published
As the electro-rock quartet return with new album A Kiss For the Whole World, guitarist Rory Clewlow and frontman/production whiz Rou Reynolds unpack the synth-like guitar tones behind the tunes
![Rodrigo y Gabriela](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/LFUJ582i6bEKD5HFGkRkF-320-80.jpg)
Rodrigo y Gabriela: “It wasn’t until I got the acoustic that I started to shred more. I felt like I could play faster. With the electric, I wasn’t really attracted to it”
By Ellie Rogers published
The Mexican duo’s Rodrigo Sánchez explains how the electric guitar slows him down, and why he and Gabriela Quintero are using backing tracks for the first time as they tour expansive new album In Between Thoughts... A New World
![Lakes' triple-guitar lineup (L-R): Gareth Arthur, Roberto Cappellina and Rob Vacher](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/b3JBoT4fVspAJxdutxXMch-320-80.jpg)
Meet UK ‘glock-rock’ collective Lakes: the triple-guitar band where the drummer writes most of the guitar parts
By Ellie Rogers published
These three intrepid Midwest-by-way-of-Watford emo guitarists bend their sonic approaches around each other – and a glockenspiel – and avoid standard tuning (“the most awkward, horrible tuning imaginable”) at all costs
![Periphery](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Ym76Sr9meHC4LuQoXQ5FmK-320-80.jpg)
Misha Mansoor, Jake Bowen and Mark Holcomb on how they lost sleep and cast aside some of the best riffs they’ve ever written to make Periphery V “as awesome as possible”
By Ellie Rogers published
Periphery V: Djent Is Not a Genre finds progressive metal's most daring trailblazers rediscovering analog, rejecting perfection and producing their most ambitious album to date
![Cory Wong and Jeff Beck](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5WthWNNEYspWEsGeqBPFch-320-80.jpg)
Cory Wong on Jeff Beck: “I’m a diehard Strat guy. There are so many reasons why, but Jeff Beck was on that list of reasons”
By Ellie Rogers published
In his own words, master of Strat funk Cory Wong remembers Jeff Beck and parses his genius approach to the guitar
![Deerhoof](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8nmYoxCyWGSF4S9RxmB2bn-320-80.jpg)
Deerhoof share the story behind some of the zaniest guitar recording methods ever committed to tape: “It sounded like the world was ending!”
By Ellie Rogers published
Mics on electric guitars? Running two guitars into one amp? Solos that sound like “malfunctioning fax machines”? It can only be the work of indie-rock lifers John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez
![The Curse of K.K. Hammond](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ermghtpdWMZNs2jWvjxcyJ-320-80.jpg)
Meet The Curse of K.K. Hammond, the spooky resonator blues connoisseur who prefers modern guitars and gives them names like “Hell’s Belle” and “Swamp Bitch”
By Ellie Rogers published
The Robert Johnson and Skip James enthusiast acknowledges there will be “some lovers of vintage Nationals out there who’ll be horrified”, but she thinks her heavily customized contemporary resonators “just sound better”
![Joanne Shaw Taylor and Jeff Beck](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/XBgxhJS8Sjf29AL5frUQWG-320-80.jpg)
Joanne Shaw Taylor on Jeff Beck: “He was my favorite guitar player – he made the guitar a different instrument”
By Ellie Rogers published
Remembering Jeff Beck in her own words, Joanne Shaw Taylor speaks of a player who took the guitar to the edge and beyond
![The 50 greatest guitar riffs of all time](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/xYD5Y5vKdNioE8oKxuAib9-320-80.jpg)
The 50 greatest guitar riffs of all time
By Amit Sharma last updated
From metal to rock, punk to grunge, these are the best guitar riffs ever recorded, as voted for by you
![Daddy Long Legs' Murat Aktürk](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/mYrVUXDiXCXRb9yCeJrWnL-320-80.jpg)
Daddy Long Legs' Murat Aktürk on his open G anarchy: “I keep all six strings on there, unlike Keith Richards who takes off the low E – I have to work harder”
By Ellie Rogers published
There's something rotten in the Big Apple and it's the hot guitar sound of Daddy Long Legs, offering street-wise rhythm and blues for a new generation of big city punks
![Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females performs at Saturn Birmingham on October 23, 2018 in Birmingham, Alabama.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Netr5L4XXW32zqtrB6Uh8Y-320-80.jpg)
How Marissa Paternoster made Screaming Females' explosive new album with a $20 Klon clone, Spoon's Telecaster and a fresh perspective on playing
By Ellie Rogers published
The alt-rock veterans' leader on recording in the studio that gave birth to Nirvana's In Utero, resisting the urge to over-perform and why nothing beats the G&L she learned to play on
![Justin Lyons and Machine Gun Kelly perform during the 2022 Bonnaroo Music & Arts festival on June 19, 2022 in Manchester, Tennessee.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rEbsu2oyJqvhio2bXfczn3-320-80.jpg)
Justin “GuitarSlayer” Lyons on designing a glow-in-the-dark guitar to bring session players into the limelight and the guitar lesson he learned from Machine Gun Kelly
By Ellie Rogers published
He got his start in K-pop, and now “GuitarSlayer” has worked in just about every genre under the sun – he shares his tips on how to go pro, why he watches videos of Prince, Hendrix and SRV before he hits the stage, and how he divided up guitar parts with Sophie Lloyd in MGK's live band
![Hannah Jagadu](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vfmcz48Fv4HVZ43PWKHTYX-320-80.jpg)
Hannah Jadagu: “If you look like me, sound like me, you can do it, too. Anybody can, so don’t feel intimidated by the guitar world”
By Ellie Rogers published
Signed to Sub Pop, fearlessly DIY, with her full-length debut just announced, Hannah Jadagu is creating lo-fi indie pop with a modest single coil-driven rig and one “really wonky” pedal
![Hammock](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QGbvScdHVin57gr82Pu69P-320-80.jpg)
Hammock’s Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson: “People think they can do ambient music if they just have the right pedalboard, and they can’t. It’s an art form in itself”
By Ellie Rogers published
The two ambient aficionados pick apart the careful, soundscape-sculpting six-string approach that helped them produce their most ambitious album to date, Love in the Void
![Gabrielle Aplin](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rPsbWv96sx6bk8TBJAJFwY-320-80.jpg)
Gabrielle Aplin on her love of vintage Martin and Gretsch models, using electrics like synths and why she has a guitar called ‘The Mel Gibson’
By Ellie Rogers published
Singer-songwriter Gabrielle Aplin composed her new album on a vintage Martin, but still has a soft spot for her junk-shop special
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