Features archive
September 2021
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86 articles
- September 30
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- The 30 greatest rock guitar albums of 1991
- The best hollowbody electric guitars you can buy today
- Luca Stricagnoli: "I want to leave a mark for the new wave of guitar players. Maybe one day a guitarist says, ‘I play this weird way because of Luca Stricagnoli’"
- LIINES' Zoe McVeigh: “I play a Fender Kurt Cobain Jag-Stang – people come up to me at gigs to take pictures with it!”
- Nick Jonah Davis: “It’s easy to just say, ‘I’m going to be weird,’ and then stick some things on the guitar, but I need the listener’s trust before I get weird”
- September 29
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- 22 of the best guitarist stage names of all time
- Ghost Hounds' Thomas Tull: “There's always a prodigy in town who can pick up the guitar and just play. That was not me – I had to really work at it!”
- Adia Victoria: “The guitar is an outlet for me, a safe space to express a range of emotions that women – especially black women – aren't able to openly exhibit”
- How Todd Mosby's Imrat Guitar lets him combine western harmony with Indian melodies for a thrilling hybrid sound
- September 28
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- The hard-rocking return of Kramer Guitars
- Hoodoo Gurus' Dave Faulkner and Brad Shepherd share the secret to their longevity: "If it sounds real and exciting, we're good to go"
- Boss overdrive pedals: what you need to know about the company's classic drives
- Charles Berthoud: "I don’t want my music to only appeal to people who play bass"
- September 27
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- José González: "For this album, I didn't buy any new gear. I decided if I'm going to put time into something, it would be on rehearsing guitars and refining the songs"
- Guitar whammy bars: what you need to know
- How John Mayer conquered the world
- Katatonia's Anders Nystrom and Roger Ojersson on finding creative rebirth in the electronic textures of City Burials
- Jocelyn Gould: "Jazz is a language – if you don’t hear it, you can’t speak it"
- Mo Foster: "What I had witnessed in real time was the start of the transition from jazz to fusion"
- September 26
- September 24
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- Kurt Cobain's final Guitar World interview: “We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that”
- Bernth: "Maybe blowtorching my guitar was a bit dramatic, but it was a statement about all these articles saying 'guitar music is dead!'"
- Jinjer's Roman Ibramkhalilov: "I almost feel sorry for anyone who comes out to our shows, because we are going to smash them"
- Trevor Bolder: “Bowie played you a song and you had one runthrough and that was it. Ziggy Stardust was recorded in a day“
- Jake Bugg on resisting the urge for a guitar adventure – and why his number one acoustic is made from a kitchen table
- Attention music producers and songwriters: what do you want from streaming platforms?
- September 23
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- "I was shocked by how good Eddie was… no-one had seen anybody playing outside of the box like that": a first-hand account of Van Halen's early backyard shows
- Yngwie Malmsteen: "There are two man-made objects you’re gonna see from space: the Great Wall of China and my wall of Marshalls. My road crew hates me!"
- Black Pumas’ Eric Burton and Adrian Queseda on how two “rhythm players“ found an unintentionally retro sound
- Rivers of Nihil's Brody Uttley: “If you're building a solo, really consider what you're playing over, because it's just as important as what you're playing”
- April Kae: “Bringing my bass playing to social media has challenged me, and I feel like I’m growing“
- I didn’t touch an acoustic guitar during the pandemic. Could a private island retreat with one of the world’s biggest guitar tutors help me reconnect?
- September 22
- September 21
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- Australian Guitar x Bluesfest 2022: Hiatus Kaiyote
- Jaco Pastorius talks Weather Report, playing fast, and why the bass is "the number one instrument in the world" in his first Guitar World interview from 1983
- Dave Keuning: “The second I get a pedal, I write a song with it right then and there, because it’s some fun, new sound that inspires me”
- Rise Against's Zach Blair and Tim McIlrath on their Grateful Dead-inspired guitar interplay and making music with a message
- Download and stream the audio from Total Guitar 350
- September 20
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- Paul Thorn: “Half the songs on this album were recorded on a Gibson Hummingbird with three-year-old strings!”
- Jackson Browne: "It took me a long time to understand what guitars I preferred – sometimes it’s the beat-up old one that works and the spectacular thing doesn’t"
- Lou Barlow: "Every time we make a record, I hope to find some magic combination that approximates the growl of what we get live. I don’t know if I’ve done that yet"
- How John Mayer came to join Dead & Company
- September 17
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- How the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone conquered the world and inspired a new generation of metal guitar players
- The origins of the Fender Jazzmaster, from surf supremo to alternative hero
- Kiko Loureiro: "I thought the greatest message would be to have Marty Friedman on Open Source, not only because he was the Megadeth guy, but to show that music is not a competition"
- Richard Fortus: "Gretsch were in rehearsals with us, winding pickups on the spot while I was trying them out"
- Thrice reveal how challenging their songwriting and transforming the Fibonacci sequence into a guitar riff shaped bold new album, Horizons/East
- September 16
- September 15
- September 14
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- Australian Guitar x Bluesfest 2022: The Living End
- Slothrust’s Leah Wellbaum: “There's a culture where women haven't been as encouraged to be loud and take up space. Guitar solos are the opposite of that”
- Darrell Freeman: “Playing simpler makes the whole thing feel good – people feel the music better when there’s less going on“
- Your guide to John Mayer's guitar gear, era by era
- September 10
- September 9
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- Spotlight: Ella Williams, a.k.a. Squirrel Flower
- Tom DeLonge: “The secret to playing fast is masturbating. If you don’t masturbate, you can’t play punk rock!”
- Knobs: “The function of pedals has changed – they're collaborative devices that don't have a fixed function. They're instruments in their own right”
- Shame's Josh Finerty and Eddie Green discuss the three-guitar magic behind the London post-punks' exhilarating sound
- September 8
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- Richie Faulkner: “When I joined Judas Priest, my influences were – and still are – on my sleeve. But it soon became about finding my own voice”
- Julia Shapiro: "Writing music isn't something you can easily define. It's this abstract thing that happens between just you and the guitar"
- John Mayer: “We’re all in the same boat. We’re all sitting down with an electric guitar alone in a room, hoping to trip over something that we’ll never forget”
- September 7
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- Australian Guitar x Bluesfest 2022: All Our Exes Live In Texas
- Madi Diaz: "My Harmony Meteor kicks the s**t out of everything. I know I'm gonna be able to hold my own because this guitar, it's just got me"
- Bill Steer: “If you play fingerstyle for half an hour, then use a plectrum, a whole world opens up – you really notice the things you can do with a pick”
- Taran Plouzané, guitarist for Bicurious, names 10 math/post-rock riffs you need to hear
- Dhani Harrison on the incredible story of his father George's All Things Must Pass album
- September 6
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- Derek Trucks on how Tedeschi Trucks Band partnered with Trey Anastasio to perform Derek and the Dominos' Layla in its entirety
- Mark Lettieri: "It’s funny that I have a guitar with so many options, because I like my amps as simple as possible. If there are switches on amps, I freak out!"
- Blu DeTiger: "I would bring my bass to my DJ sets and improvise over disco, house and funk records. People would go crazy"
- September 3
- September 2
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- The Superjesus’ Jason Slack: “I had no real plan from the start, I just wanted to make a guitar”
- Yes, you can play guitar while pregnant: Stephanie Bradley reflects on her journey shredding for two
- Paul Leary: “My 1978 Les Paul Custom was so heavy, I was having to go to massage therapy every week just to work the knots out of my back!”
- September 1
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- Jerry Cantrell: “Sometimes I’d be late for soundcheck and I’d show up to find Eddie Van Halen up there with the band, rockin’ out”
- Davie504: "Slap bass is still the best for making videos on YouTube, because it's very easy to hear, on any kind of speaker"
- Billy Strings: "A lot of times I’ll walk right out and say, 'I’m not going to lie, folks. I’m nervous as f**k right now'"
- Charlie Parr: “My physical setbacks have strengthened my relationship to the guitar… we're still here together”
