Latest articles by Ellie Rogers
How CLT DRP’s Scott Reynolds is pushing electric guitar tone to new limits via a monster 40kg pedalboard
The UK electro-punks throw the rulebook out the window, using bass amps for guitars, and destroying everything with ring mod
Meet ambient shredder Jakub Zytecki – the trailblazing virtuoso who picks plugins over pedals and plays a Kurt Cobain-inspired 8-string
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 on how classic skatepunk, Dave Grohl’s Kemper tone and Hannah Montana inspired Meet Me @ The Altar’s explosive debut
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 on why “prog is perfect for playing at Eurovision” as she brings tech-metal solos to one of the world’s biggest stages
Can Aussie rockers Voyager win Europe’s favorite song contest like Lordi and Måneskin before them? “It’s a dream,” says guitarist Simone Dow
How a Tom Morello attitude and madcap Kemper experimentation shaped Enter Shikari’s genre-smashing tech-forward guitar sound
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: “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”
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
Meet UK ‘glock-rock’ collective Lakes: the triple-guitar band where the drummer writes most of the guitar parts
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
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”
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 on Jeff Beck: “I’m a diehard Strat guy. There are so many reasons why, but Jeff Beck was on that list of reasons”
In his own words, master of Strat funk Cory Wong remembers Jeff Beck and parses his genius approach to the guitar
Deerhoof share the story behind some of the zaniest guitar recording methods ever committed to tape: “It sounded like the world was ending!”
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
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”
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 on Jeff Beck: “He was my favorite guitar player – he made the guitar a different instrument”
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
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 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”
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
How Marissa Paternoster made Screaming Females' explosive new album with a $20 Klon clone, Spoon's Telecaster and a fresh perspective on playing
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 “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
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 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”
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’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”
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 on her love of vintage Martin and Gretsch models, using electrics like synths and why she has a guitar called ‘The Mel Gibson’
Singer-songwriter Gabrielle Aplin composed her new album on a vintage Martin, but still has a soft spot for her junk-shop special
Tuk Smith: “I made it a point to put guitar solos in every song. The one sh**ty review I got actually complained about that!”
The former Biters guitarist discusses recording with Joe Perry's old Gibson combo and why the best gear was made in the '60s and '70s
Jared James Nichols: “I’m super-proud of Easy Come, Easy Go... if you listen to that solo, it almost feels like the amp’s about to explode!”
The Les Paul wrangler extraordinaire on why he's a fingerstylist forever, how he strong-armed the gnarly blues-rock sounds on his explosive new album, and what it was like to play through one of Eddie Van Halen's Marshalls
Brutus guitarist Stijn Vanhoegaerden: “I used to make my sound thick – now it’s the opposite”
How Belgian post-hardcore power trio Brutus found a new focus with the help of fresh tunings, a cavalcade of delays and a White Penguin
Jared James Nichols argues tone comes from the fingers – and recalls the time he played through Eddie Van Halen’s own amp as evidence
“It comes down to your hands, the way you hold the guitar, the way you strike the strings. Your touch is everything,” Nichols told Total Guitar
Frank Iero and Travis Stever on the tapping, harmonized solos and gear change-ups that fueled post-hardcore supergroup L.S. Dunes' debut
The My Chemical Romance and Coheed and Cambria guitarists talk their newfound chemistry, favorite Klon clones and an all-new Ernie Ball Music Man design that's still under wraps…
Alter Bridge: “One of the hardest dances to do is to make something heavy and technical and still emotional at the same time”
Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy on making Alter Bridge's heaviest album yet with a PRS Tele-a-like, an impossible number of guitar picks and not one but two Dumble amps
