Features archive
July 2023
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90 articles
- July 31
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- “Paul was tuning his guitar at one point, and I said ‘What key is that in?’, added a bassline and that became a song”: The good luck and creative chaos behind Mr Big’s Lean In To It
- “Marty Friedman taught me to pick phrases that help tell the story. Resist the temptation to use your songs to show off your fastest licks”: Nita Strauss on how she stepped up her game for The Call of the Void
- 9 times Nuno Bettencourt proved to be guitar's M.V.P.
- “Instead of the toy store, I wanted to go to the guitar store and play all the expensive guitars”: Steve Lukather shares his biggest gear hits and misses
- “I knew exactly what I wanted to do in every respect”: How Jimmy Page built Led Zeppelin from the ashes of the Yardbirds
- July 29
- July 28
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- Introducing nu-disco shred, a fresh genre of guitar playing that combines ’70s pop and ’80s soloing – and where dancing while you two-hand tap is an absolute must
- 10 live mistakes every guitarist makes
- “I feel like every song has a tapping lick at some point!”: Wolfgang Van Halen on embracing solos – and his dad’s iconic gear – for the boundary-pushing Mammoth II
- One of the strangest guitar mods of all time? How Leon Wilkeson adapted his Gibson Thunderbird following the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash in ‘77
- July 27
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- "I grew up listening to Megadeth, Metallica and White Zombie. A good riff will always grab my attention": How metal-raised blues dynamo Eric Johanson is taking a heavy approach to a classic genre
- “Ritchie Blackmore’s phrasing is so cool – he just played with so much fire”: Pete Thorn and James Cole on how they replicate iconic solos and tones in The Classic Rock Show
- “Mick came in with his Les Paul, plugged in to my amp and fiddled with the controls. All of a sudden there it was, the full Ziggy Stardust tone”: The post-Bowie career of Mick Ronson, rock ’n’ roll’s most quietly spoken guitar hero
- July 26
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- Boost pedals: the history of the stompbox that supercharged the sound of rock ’n’ roll – and how to make the most of one on your pedalboard
- “We’ve been talking about it for a decade – our artists want ‘that’ sound in their arsenal”: How Myles Kennedy and Paul Reed Smith reinvented a classic
- Eric Clapton and Van Halen covered his songs, and he led Jimmy Page's favorite American band: Watch overlooked guitar genius Lowell George demonstrate his slide technique on German TV
- When TM Stevens met James Brown: “I said, ‘One day I'm going to play with you!’ He said, ‘Don't do it! Stay in school!’”
- July 25
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- Download and stream the audio from Guitar Techniques 351
- “Everyone else had walls of Marshalls, but Rory just turned up, put a Vox AC30 on two folded-out chairs and let rip”: Rory Gallagher – the gear behind the legend
- "There was something about that picture of Marilyn that resonated with how I feel when I’m trying to get something right on the bass": Why Gail Ann Dorsey named her bass after Marilyn Monroe
- "That otherworldliness comes from very tight rhythm playing": Kevin Shields on hiding music inside his new Fender pedal, his Jazzmaster setup secrets and what guitarists overlook about his technique
- They're one of Yvette Young's favorite bands and influenced a generation of math-rock guitarists – now cheap guitar enthusiasts Enemies are back because their music "never seemed to die"
- July 24
- July 23
- July 21
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- “There’s not much swagger in that band.” For Glenn Hughes, joining Deep Purple wasn’t the clear-cut choice that you’d think
- “He’s the funkiest dude in the shredder family tree”: The world’s greatest guitarists explain why Nuno Bettencourt isn’t your typical guitar hero
- Is the concept of British vs American speaker voicings out of date?
- “A lot of Sugar Hill records were clichéd bass riffs that DJs would spin in the clubs”: How a bassline by art-rockers Liquid Liquid became one of the biggest hip-hop anthems of all time
- Meet the daredevil guitarist taking on Vito Bratta's hair-raising White Lion solos – and winning his hero's approval
- July 20
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- How should you learn guitar scales – and why should you bother?
- How Sunny War went from shredding Slayer to honing her standout acoustic style: “Guitar can be a new thing forever if you let yourself be experimental all the time”
- “Whenever we’d drop that bass riff, places would become unhinged”: Listen to Tim Commerford’s isolated bassline on Killing In The Name by Rage Against The Machine
- “If you’ve never heard this record but you can appreciate shredder music, oh my God it’s going to f**k you up”: Mutoid Man’s Stephen Brodsky reveals 10 guitarists who shaped his sound
- July 19
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- Meet John Matos, the death-metal guitarist whose brutal viral video riffs have cracked up guitar heroes and comedians alike
- John Lennon: “Willie Weeks was supposed to do it, but he was doing a George Harrison session”: In August 1980 John Lennon could have called just about any bass player on Earth. He went with Tony Levin
- Mike Spreitzer on why he's “letting notes actually sustain” on DevilDriver's latest, and what keeps him coming back to his custom ESP Vs – even if he can't play them sitting down
- The history of the Fender ‘Tweed’ Bassman – the tube amp for bass players that became a guitar classic
- July 18
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- “Jimmy Page and Jim Sullivan were getting a lot of work, but I was always getting plenty of calls – and that increased after I did the Jack Bruce sessions”: The confessions of session pro Chris Spedding
- "I don't even own a Strat! I used my Dean Thoroughbred, a far cry from what David Gilmour used": How ex-Megadeth guitarist Chris Poland ended up covering Pink Floyd
- 3 ways to shred like Nuno Bettencourt
- July 17
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- “What you don’t play is as important as what you do play. You need the space, as it makes the small things that you do seem bigger”: 5 questions with McKinley James
- “Without tone, there really isn’t anything”: How to nail Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar sound on a budget
- The greatest guitar solos of the 21st century... so far
- Introducing the “up-and-down” fingerstyle approach – a new guitar technique designed to get you playing faster than ever
- "I'm finally getting up there with Eric Johnson… and the amp goes to s**t!" Orianthi on her A-list collaborations and the guitarists who shaped her sound
- Greg Howe: “I realized that I wasn't going to push pure technique any further than Paul Gilbert or Jason Becker. So, I thought, 'OK, what am I going to do after that?'”
- July 16
- July 15
- July 14
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- “When I’m off the road, I have this love affair with ragtime guitar”: 7 questions with Wishbone Ash’s Andy Powell
- Larkin Poe’s Rebecca Lovell reveals what’s on her pedalboard – and the cab sim she swears by
- “He loves you guys. He doesn’t like anybody, but he loves you guys”: Joe Perry on the time he met Kurt Cobain – and Aerosmith’s unlikely influence on Nirvana
- Paul Simon: “People have tried to cop that bass solo, but it’s physically impossible” – how engineer Roy Halee created the iconic bass break on Call Me Al
- July 13
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- “I still have the strings I used on that session in a Ziploc bag”: How Muzz Skillings took the rock world by storm on Cult of Personality
- Rik Emmett: “If I wrote a pop tune, the guys wanted to make it heavy. I’d put more power chords in and Townshend it up. For a while, it worked”
- Meet the ‘Greenburst’ ES-335 – a 1968 model so rare even Gibson couldn’t identify the finish
- “I remember thinking, ‘What would Paul McCartney do?’” How Justin Smolian channeled his inner Beatle with Dirty Honey
- July 12
- July 11
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- “I’ve always had a knack for emulating sounds or creating new ones”: Adrian Belew on the weird, wonderful and utterly unique tones behind his new solo album, Elevator
- The Lovin’ Spoonful's Zal Yanovsky is one of the Sixties' most overlooked guitarists – here's how he fearlessly blended genres to forge the 'Americana' guitar sound
- Nuno Bettencourt shares his top tips for playing better guitar solos: “I always see the solo as its own song”
- Chris Duarte: “I sound much better when I practice every day. The guitar gives you back what you put into it – it’s that simple”
- Keith Richards: “They haven't really improved the electric guitar since Les Paul and Leo Fender put their touch to it. Everything else is trying to sound like them”
- Which Positive Grid Spark amp is right for you?
- July 10
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- "You are hot tonight, young man": when Gary Moore (and Greeny) played The Thrill Is Gone with B.B. King
- “I’ve put my life back together, but it’s all a growing process. If you stop growing, what good is it musically?” Stevie Ray Vaughan's In Step, and the new beginning that should have been
- Island of Love’s Karim Newble and Linus Munch: “When we started rehearsing we didn’t even have a fuzz pedal. We are still borrowing amps every single show”
- July 9
- July 8
- July 7
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- Bruce Kulick looks back on the time he rocked out with Michael Bolton and ended up in a Rodney Dangerfield movie
- Corook: “My dad used to say, ‘If you practiced guitar as much as you practice Guitar Hero, you’d be pretty good.’ I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll do that then!’”
- “I wrote Black Dog on a train. There was a Muddy Waters song with a riff that never ended...” How John Paul Jones wrote Led Zeppelin's Black Dog
- What is reamping? Here's everything you need to know
- July 6
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- 7 questions with Loverboy's Paul Dean: First songs, embarrassing stage moments, and why the Neural DSP Quad Cortex is a game-changer
- How Indian slide maestro Debashish Bhattacharya made the 24-stringed chaturangui come alive on The Sound of the Soul
- “It felt like going fully digital would force me to think in new ways”: Guthrie Govan on his tech revolution and why he wrote a song about a rockhopper penguin
- “Like James Jamerson, Tommy Cogbill was a take-charge guy in the studio”: Inside the recording of Son of a Preacher Man
- Jeff Beck said Stevie Ray Vaughan “was the closest thing to Hendrix when it came to playing the blues”: watch the two guitar heroes duke it out on Goin' Down
- Fretted vs. fretless bass: What’s the difference?
- July 5
- July 4
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- Zakk Wylde: “It’s not just about Dime’s chops – it’s about what he created. That’s his legacy – and it’s way, way bigger than just being a great lead player”
- Nuno Bettencourt on why Instagram players make his jaw drop, how Eddie Van Halen inspired Extreme's new album – and why he apologized to Brian May for one of its leads
- Mick Mars' 10 best Mötley Crüe guitar solos
- July 3
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- “There were just ideas pouring out of him… then he got on that helicopter and took off”: The legacy of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and what could have been
- With panic-inducing chords and down-tuned Jim Root Strats, Jesus Piece are on a mission to shake up metalcore and write riffs that disturb you
- The story of Aria Guitars: the unsung brand that has served metal shredders and jazz virtuosos alike for over 60 years
- July 2
- July 1
