Features archive

September 2024

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49 articles

September 16
- How to Get Your Music on Spotify with Distrokid
- “Fender mentioned that for the Tone Master Pro it takes about 3 months to model a channel. With TINA, we've got that down to hours”: How Neural DSP changed the digital guitar gear game with the help of a robot called TINA
- “It’s so difficult. The guitar has got a life of its own and it’s got to move on”: Why Rory Gallagher’s iconic Strat is up for auction now – and the political pressure to keep it in Ireland
- “You have more tone, more sustain and more stability. It’s like the best just got better”: How Eastman realized its vision for the future of the electric guitar with the D’Ambrosio range
- “Why are the single-pickup models of particular interest? Well, they really can sound better”: The Gibson ES-330T might have been the “runt of the litter”, but its unusually positioned P-90 pickup offers a unique experience among Gibson hollowbodies
- “Since the Sphere, we have begun using iso cabinets for the speaker cabinets and the Leslie, leading to all the amps and speakers being off-stage”: Trey Anastasio’s tech, Justin Stabler, reveals all about the Phish frontman’s new live guitar rig
- “Paul was a guitarist who switched to bass because the group needed one, as this song proves”: Did Paul McCartney fumble a note on this classic Beatles bassline?
September 14
- “It was a bit of a number for me to have to dare to tell George Harrison not to play guitar. It was like an insult”: Paul McCartney turned down George Harrison's proposed guitar parts for Hey Jude
- “We grabbed a taxi home, but I left the bass in the trunk. I woke up in the middle of the night and started freaking out”: Viral bass hero Blu DeTiger just gave the Fender Jazz Bass a radical revamp – but she started on a Gretsch she left in a cab
September 13
- Download and stream the audio from Total Guitar 389
- “He taught me that it was OK to play the music you wanted to play. He was my mentor and a surrogate father, too”: Why John Mayall was the godfather of British blues guitar
- “You could sing along to the songs – including the solos. You can really mess a song up by playing the wrong solo. You can put people off”: Phil Collen on Def Leppard x Tom Morello, his love of thick guitar necks – and why Pyromania still blows him away
- “They really should replicate that, because it just has some magic”: Alex Skolnick on Criss Oliva's favorite guitar, “the Gargoyle” – the ESP Superstrat he likens to Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates Les Paul Standard
September 12
- Fender Player 1 vs Player 2: should you upgrade?
- “When I came back into Lynyrd Skynyrd, I knew that Free Bird was going to be my lead. I was the drummer in Muscle Shoals when we cut the original. I watched Allen. I knew the licks”: Rickey Medlocke unpacks his history with Skynyrd – and that guitar solo
September 11
- “When I encounter Kurt Cobain’s Sky Stang I, I'm evaluating it like a tech. Then I'll have a beer and go, ‘Did that just happen?!’” From fixing Lennon’s Framus to giving Prince's Cloud III a CAT scan – it's all in the life of an A-list guitar appraiser
- Acoustic guitars FAQ: from understanding tonewoods to the different sizes available, get to know your acoustic with these common questions answered
- Download and stream the audio from Guitar Techniques 366
- “My band and crew hadn’t worked in three years so we plowed on – eight epidurals later and 180 opium tablets, I made it through the tour”: Blackie Lawless on touring, talking solos with David Gilmour – and that time W.A.S.P. bought 52 Marshall heads
- “It was the pick my playing had been waiting for”: I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect pick – and it didn’t just improve my tone, it made me a better player
- “At a certain point we couldn’t get into 606 anymore. Some band called the Foo Fighters had it booked out for a month”: Scott Ian and Jonathan Donais check in from the studio to explain why the new Anthrax record will “punch people in the face”
September 10
- “I’m sick of people saying Walk On the Wild Side is a classic. I got paid £12, and David Bowie didn’t even show up”: Session bass legend Herbie Flowers on the making of Lou Reed’s 1972 hit – and the hardest session he ever did
- “I remember trying a Telecaster and finding the sliding so complicated, like a mountain between one fret and the other. I hated it. That’s why I stuck with Jazzmasters”: Hinds talk learning guitar on the road, recruiting Beck – and rebuilding the band
- “If there is a Jane’s Addiction in 2025, there will be new music. But you never know if there’s going to be a band at all”: Eric Avery on overcoming JA’s “unthinkable” time without Dave Navarro and his brief stints with Metallica and Smashing Pumpkins
- “I learned the hard way many years ago that daisy chains are not reliable!” Serena Cherry shares her pedalboard secrets and admits she’d feel naked without “big, cavernous reverb”
September 9
- Boss discontinued the Katana:GO mere months after launching it – these are 4 headphone amps you should try instead
- “It’s amazing to see Adrian Belew and Steve Vai playing together. My temptation is to pick up the camera! I have to remind myself to stick to my job playing bass”: For the King Crimson-channeling Beat tour, Tony Levin is a virtuoso among virtuosos
- “I’ve done somewhere close to 30,000 fret jobs. Holding a crowning file for that many hours a day will tear you up if you’re not careful”: How fixing thousands of guitars changed the way Tulsa blues cat Seth Lee Jones plays the thing
- “I couldn’t work with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I’d end up being beaten to death”: When we locked horns with Lemmy to talk Motörhead, Marshalls and why he wouldn’t fit in with one of his favorite bands
September 8
- “I wrote that bassline when I was 16. I saw this dude slapping the hell out of a bass at a music store – the tumblers clicked in my head. I took a bus home, picked up my bass, and I was doing it!” Fishbone’s Norwood Fisher names his 10 best basslines
September 7
- “Someone told me you can’t play slap bass on a fretless, but when Prince picked up my bass he slapped the heck out of it!” Esperanza Spalding on jamming with Prince, and her stunning Justin Bieber upset
- “We end up drinking until 5 in the morning. I wake up with the worst hangover of my life, and now I’ve got to play with Metallica”: How a late-night drinking session with Lars Ulrich almost ruined Robert Trujillo’s Metallica audition
September 6
- “I heard some criticism that I didn’t play the parts enough like Criss, but I didn’t want to just go in there and try to be a clone of him”: When Alex Skolnick quit Testament – and was recruited to replace the late Criss Oliva in Tampa metallers Savatage
- “We don’t want to use guitar solos as a crutch. You know – ‘after the bridge, solo!’ When I do play a solo, I want it to stand out”: Following mega-tours with Muse and Royal Blood, sister act The Warning are riff rock’s next big success story
September 5
- “We were trying to put blues riffs on dance beats. We wanted to see what happens if you fuse those two worlds”: Meet Daniel ‘Dafreez’ Johnston, the “blues rave-up” pioneer combining folk fingerstyle and EDM
- “I drank my liver into submission and snorted a mountain of cocaine, and I didn’t die. Now I’m trying to stay away from that stuff so I can still be around. I keep myself really busy with music”: The redemption of High on Fire and Sleep icon Matt Pike
- “It was suggested we try making a Dumble-style clean. They’re so mystical – I’d never played one. You can look at the circuit and still be none the wiser”: The unstoppable rise of Victory Amps – and what comes next
- “We're witnessing history in the same way that the Beatles changed the music industry in the early 1960s”: Gibson reveals Taylor Swift’s go-to guitars during the Eras tour and hopes for a signature model
September 4
- “People are responding because of the realness and vulnerability, instead of that persona of a drunk rockstar”: Koe Wetzel abandoned his party animal image to show who he really is on 9 Lives, and found a new reason to play his beat-up Gibson J-200
- “When I heard Nirvana’s Live at Reading it became less about learning solos than putting the guitar in front of an amp and making it scream”: Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell on playing Rory Gallagher’s Strat and why a spring reverb is the best overdrive
- “Offset guitars can be really clumsy, but that makes me approach them differently. I kept hitting the kill switch mid-solo, thinking, ‘Why is this here?!’” Samantha Fish on how Kurt Cobain turned her onto the Fender Jaguar
September 3
- “Mick Jagger was moving around like a marionette, responding to every squeak coming out of my guitar”: Eric Bazillian on playing with a Rolling Stone, writing Joan Osborne’s One of Us – and helping Cyndi Lauper find a career-defining hit
- “Allan recorded a bunch of takes. He apologized, saying they all sucked… Of course, every note he played was miraculous”: Grammy-nominated virtuoso Alex Masi on why he turned down Stevie Ray Vaughan, his Allan Holdsworth collab and time with Shawn Lane
- “Why wouldn’t you stay in the Sphere and make a lot of money? Because it’s not as much fun. It doesn’t last forever. Look at how many musicians have passed away. What are you going to do with what you have?” Trey Anastasio explains Phish’s joyful rebirth
September 2
- “If we’re able to reach millions of people with this stupid solo, then obviously we’re doing something right”: Corey Feldman discusses his limits as a guitar player, copping David Gilmour’s tone and why his viral guitar solo really is a joke
- “I always wanted to play with my fingers, but now I was forced to”: When his keys player quit, McKinley James had to rethink his playing style to play in a duo – and he did it without turning to pedals, because “none of my heroes did”
- “The main secret behind those classic grunge sounds is that they were loud. You need a high-volume amp…” Enumclaw are on a quest for alt-rock tone nirvana – using other people’s guitars and The Smashing Pumpkins’ fuzz pedal
- “I’m like the power forward on a basketball team – I bring out the best in my teammates”: A pillar of the L.A. session scene, Bob Glaub might be the most famous bass player you’ve never heard of
September 1
- “Prince picked up my bass – but it was tuned to Eb, so he just found one note that worked and he stayed on it the entire song”: Raphael Saadiq on playing with Prince, D'Angelo and the “dead” 1962 Fender that put the vintage in Instant Vintage