Fingerboard Stories

These “New” Hendrix and Doors Songs… Were Made by A.I.
“To show the world what’s been lost to this mental health crisis, we’ve used artificial intelligence to create the album the 27 Club never had the chance to. Through this album, we’re encouraging more music industry insiders to get the mental health support they need, so they can continue making the music we all love for years to come.
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Time Corrected Van Halen is the Worst Van Halen
“They’d barely had any studio experience… at that point, we really wanted to get them before they knew what they were doing – just have them come in and play and then get them out. So we spent very little time in pre-production, in fact, we treated the first album like it was a demo.”
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Picks Are Way Older than You Think…
As a quick recap, in the late 19th century, picks made from tortoiseshell (the shell of hawksbill sea turtles to be precise) were the gold standard when it came to assisted strumming. However, this along with the popularity of tortoiseshell in the manufacture of a bunch of other stuff, lead to the near extinction of the hawksbill sea turtle. Once it was placed on the endangered species list in 1973, tortoiseshell picks went the way of the dodo.
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Where Do You Stand on Modeling Amps?
Fortus isn’t wrong about the challenges of achieving certain tonal subtleties when using modelling amps and plugins. But, the truth is, the technology is getting better. I’ve been playing around with a couple of tube amp imitating plugins recently that get surprisingly close to capturing the nuances Fortus is talking about – at least to my luddite ears. And, I don’t doubt that differences between modelling amps and the real thing will be practically imperceptible in the not too distant future.
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Four Iconic Uses of the Wah Pedal

“We were looking for something that would go with [Shaft’s] walk. Isaac told the drummer, ‘Give me some 16th notes.’ I was tuning my guitar, and checking the pedals out. I turned on the wah wah pedal, and was testing it out using a little pattern. [Isaac] said, ‘What are you doing?! Keep playing that! Keep playing that riff! I stayed on the same key the whole time -- all through the whole entire damn structure! Didn’t change anything except the structure of my foot.”

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