Features archive

May 2023

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80 articles

May 31
- Snowy White: "It's funny that I used a Strat for Pigs on the Wing. I was so used to my Les Paul – I was surprised I felt as comfortable as I did. I still hated it, but I got through it"
- Meet 'Sunny', a newly uncovered 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard from South Africa
- Flea names the one bassline that he would “go back and fix” from the Red Hot Chili Pepper's 1995 album, One Hot Minute
- Duff McKagan: “I discovered my acoustic guitar as a refuge during Covid. It lessens the panic attacks”
May 30
- How Gibson developed the mini-humbucker, its underrated ‘other’ pickup
- "Bewildering technique that went way beyond any standard root/5th ideas": Listen to John Entwistle’s isolated bass on My Generation
- Zakk Wylde picks his 5 essential Lynyrd Skynyrd tracks
- Larry Carlton: "I believe my Sire line is better than anything Fender's Squier line is producing. These are great guitars, and I believe in them"
May 29
- Samantha Fish: “I play other guitars, but I always go back to the SG because it fights me just enough. I need something to push back a little bit and she does”
May 28
- The legend of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is that James Jamerson was so drunk he played the bass lying down
May 26
- Tina Weymouth: “I know Bono used me to taunt Adam Clayton when U2 were starting out”
- Robert Trujillo: “We have more riffs than we know what to do with. With every handful of riffs we get out of Kirk, there’s another 500 we didn’t hear”
- Download and stream the audio from Total Guitar 372
May 25
- In 1965 Elvis Presley was playing bass guitar, with a little help from Paul McCartney
- 7 ways playing guitar can benefit your mental health
- Meet Xander & the Peace Pirates, the triple-guitar band discovered by an ex-Gibson CEO, featuring Liverpool's answer to Stevie Ray Vaughan
- George Lynch shows us what’s on his pedalboard
May 24
- Download and stream the audio from Guitar Techniques 349
- Primus's Les Claypool names 7 bassists who shaped his sound
- “The phone rings and it's Jaco Pastorius. He says, 'I’m in room 265, come up here and get your lesson!'” Marcus Miller on an encounter with the self-proclaimed ‘greatest bass player in the world’
- Hank Marvin: “Cavatina is such a beautiful tune to play. It was a very good moment for me to nail it in one take”
- Steel Panther’s Satchel: “I really like the sound of single-coil pickups. It makes me play differently and feel like I’m David Gilmour. Or Yngwie!”
- Session guitar legend Michael Landau reveals what it takes to play with the biggest artists of all time and explains why “Strats are the ultimate couch guitar”
May 23
- How Gary Rossington played through the pain to define the quintessential Southern rock sound with Lynyrd Skynyrd
- How ditching pedals and embracing open tunings made H.C. McEntire love the guitar again
- Malina Moye: “The music business makes you question things, so you have to know your worth... Like Eddie Van Halen said, ‘If it sounds right, then it’s right’“
May 22
- Meet ambient shredder Jakub Zytecki – the trailblazing virtuoso who picks plugins over pedals and plays a Kurt Cobain-inspired 8-string
May 21
- The Yes Album: When Chris Squire created one of the most recognizable bass tones in rock
May 19
- Remembering David Lindley: A tribute to one of the greatest slide players and multi-instrumentalists of all time
- Andy Rourke: “If I wasn’t eating or in the bath, I had a bass in my hand. I played it constantly”
- "I thought, 'Wait a minute – we never practiced this…'" Jimi Hendrix bassist Billy Cox remembers Woodstock
May 18
- Vito Bratta names 11 guitarists who shaped his sound
- Quicksand’s Walter Schreifels: “I use the tricks I have to the most effect that I can. And I think that’s the trick of my playing”
- Hermanos Gutiérrez: “It always starts as an individual trip for us. Most of it is non-communicative; it just happens”
- Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo offer their track-by-track guide to Metallica’s super-heavy smash-hit new album, 72 Seasons
- Watch Eddie Van Halen explain how he figured out the two-handed tapping technique behind Eruption – all thanks to a little help from Jimmy Page
May 17
- Slash once partnered with Jimi Hendrix’s bandmates for a stirring tribute cover of Hey Joe in honor of the guitar great
- Weird Al Yankovic guitarist Jim “Kimo” West on his love for Hawaiian music, the serious technique behind unserious parodies, and seeing himself onscreen
- Téa Campbell on how classic skatepunk, Dave Grohl’s Kemper tone and Hannah Montana inspired Meet Me @ The Altar’s explosive debut
May 16
- Chris Holmes: “I’m overlooked, sure. When I was in W.A.S.P., I was never allowed to do any interviews with guitar magazines. Blackie Lawless wouldn’t let me”
- Mike Watt: “I think for every 7-string bass they should make a 1-string!”
- Daniele Gottardo: “I remember thinking Yngwie Malmsteen’s playing was amazing, and I wondered if the scalloped neck was his secret”
May 15
- Up close and personal with Mel Bay’s very own 1958 Gibson ES-335
- Two people, 13 instruments, countless happy accidents and a Hawaiian Gretsch: Inside The Blackheart Orchestra’s horizon-chasing sound
May 14
- Paul Simon's Graceland: Fretless bass playing would never be the same again
May 12
- Listen to Paul McCartney’s isolated bass on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
- George Benson on the time he met Jimi Hendrix, how Peter Frampton changed the course of his career and what Paul McCartney made of his Beatles tribute
- Meet the Hell Kitty – the evil twin of the Squier Hello Kitty Strat hell-bent on destroying the meme guitar
- The guitar gear secrets behind James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s tones on 72 Seasons
May 11
- Larry Graham on when you really need to use a 5-string bass
- 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
- How a Tom Morello attitude and madcap Kemper experimentation shaped Enter Shikari’s genre-smashing tech-forward guitar sound
- How a Slash superfan ended up trading guitars with his hero… three times: “I was wondering if it was real life or if I’d died”
May 10
- 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”
- Ally Venable on Les Pauls: “They’re not just one-trick ponies – if you experiment with the controls, you can get a lot of different tones out of them”
May 9
- Jeff Berlin: “Look at Jaco Pastorius: clearly a genius, but misunderstood”
- How Kareem 'Big K.O.' Denis and Darryl 'DMC' McDaniels are bringing hard rock guitar back to hip-hop
- Yvette Young: “I’m really optimistic about the future of guitar. It’s being used in a creative way and people don’t know all the cool sounds you can get from it”
May 8
- Tony Levin: “D’Angelo’s Voodoo made me want to go back to school as a bassist”
- Crown Lands’ doubleneck devotee Kevin Comeau on his fearless guitar/bass multitasking, recording with Alex Lifeson’s acoustic and why Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream is a tonal benchmark
- Rival Sons’ Scott Holiday on his greatest gear hits and misses: “You can basically install a pair of EMG active pickups into a cardboard box and get the same sound”
May 7
- The Lowlist: Primus' Sailing The Seas Of Cheese – a weird mix of twisted basslines, warped lyrics and general weirdness
May 6
- “Reggae carries that heavy message of roots, culture, and reality. So the bass has to be heavy and the drums have to be steady”: An interview with Aston “Family Man” Barrett
May 5
- The 5 Nirvana basslines you need to hear
- John Primer: "When I played with Muddy Waters, he set my amp tone up for me. I use the same settings he gave me back in the mid-'70s"
- Metallica’s Kirk Hammett: “With 72 Seasons, I improvised 20, 30 solos, gave them all to Lars and Greg Fidelman, and went, ‘You guys edit them!’”
May 4
- Lee Sklar: “If the drummer doesn’t swing – let him serve French fries in McDonald’s"
- Mike Dirnt: “Even Flea told me he wanted to play a P-Bass live”
- In praise of the EBow, one of the most under-appreciated yet influential guitar tools of all time
- Eric Bibb: “I find the most effective songs, the ones that resonate most with the people who hear my music, are songs that come fairly quickly”
May 3
- The British Invasion that failed: why Slade, Status Quo, the Sweet and Dr. Feelgood never conquered the USA
- Obituary’s Trevor Peres and Ken Andrews take you inside the Florida death metal legends’ caveman sound
- Dirty Honey’s John Notto on Les Pauls: “There’s such a great sound and great look that you put up with their charmingly difficult attributes”
May 2
- Pat Finnerty: “I knew millions of people were gonna get What Makes This Song Stink ’cause millions watch Rick Beato, and maybe 10% know how ridiculous this man is”
- Gabriel Akhmad Marin: “I don’t play many chords. I’m more of a melodic single-note player, and the fretless guitar is a great instrument for that”
- How Billy Sheehan learned to slap
- Paul Gilbert names 12 guitarists who shaped his sound
- 8 Hollywood actors who are also bass players
May 1
- Huey Lewis and the News’ Chris Hayes: “Am I an unappreciated guitar hero? Probably. But that’s OK”
- 10 last-gasp hair metal guitar albums that arrived before the grunge armageddon