Upgrade Your Original Guitar or Buy a New Ax? What You Need to Know By Richard Murdocco Is it worth upgrading your first instrument with brand-name tuners, pickups and other items? Or do you ditch it altogether in favor of a newer, shinier model?
Adding Tension to the Minor Jazz-Blues Progression By Jimmy Brown Learn some cool variations of this progression that feature added chord changes and spicier harmony and voice-leading.
Melodic Phrasing and Playing Over Blues Changes By Alex Skolnick Learn some more about melodic phrasing from Testament's Alex Skolnick!
Review: Peavey 6505 Piranha Micro Head By Chris Gill “Want a little head” is not only the punch line to a bad sex joke about Amazonian rain forest tribes;it also is apparently the phrase on a motivational poster in the Peavey amp design laboratory.
Avenged Sevenfold's Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance Talk 'The Stage' By Brad Tolinski “My grandpa always said, getting old ain’t for pussies, and that is soooo true,” says a laughing Synyster Gates, co-guitarist in the hard rock force of nature known as Avenged Sevenfold.
Review: Electro-Harmonix Wailer Wah Pedal By Chris Gill There are so many wonderful wah-wah pedals on the market these days that one is probably prone to ask, “Does the world need yet another wah?”
Review: Gretsch G5422TG Electromatic Guitar By Chris Gill Usually when marketing materials describe a product as “no-nonsense,” the phrase usually means the same thing as “austere,” “stripped-down,” or “plain.”
How to Create Independent Polyrhythms By Mike Dawes Back in my October 2016 column, I detailed some of the concepts I utilize in the song “The Impossible,” from my album What Just Happened.
Blackberry Smoke Push Their Southern Sounds to the Edge of Classic Seventies Metal By Peter Hodgson Blackberry Smoke The Georgia Southern rock outfit’s fifth album reads as an unspoken tribute to those who came before, from musical heroes to family to classic vintage guitars.
How to Play Revocation's “Theater of Horror,” Part 2 By Dave Davidson Last month, I introduced the intro and primary riffs to the song “Theater of Horror,” featured the latest Revocation album, Great Is Our Sin.
Gustavo Santaolalla’s Acoustic Minimalism By Dale Turner Gustavo Santaolalla (pronounced: San-ta-oh-lie-uh) is one of a handful of accomplished guitarists whose career began by playing in rock bands before “stumbling” into a career as a film composer.
![[L-R] Jimi Hendrix, Mick Mars, Kirk Hammett and Angus Young](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/3qjkCcdvMC8ME5A74T4vtQ-1280-80.jpg.webp)