Many, many years ago, while perusing the pages of a guitar magazine, there was an article with various pro players offering various tips to improve one’s playing. One that stood out for me was a tip from the great Steve Morse (of the Dixie Dregs and Deep Purple), who had a tip about soloing over changes.
People in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off 8 million dollar offers. I don't want 6 tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet. I don't want to play stadium shows, I don't want to be in the spotlight. I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they're being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung.
Some may think though that this truly isn’t a custom instrument, to which I say poppycock! Some of the most iconic instruments, from Billy Sheehan’s original P-Bass, to Brent Mason’s famous three-pickup Telecaster, were all the result of a player taking an instrument and improving it to suit their needs.
We love our streaming services (the Apple Musics and Spotifys of the world). They’re cheap and convenient ways to access vast libraries of music. For the artists though, cheap and convenient comes at a cost.
As promised at the end of that post, we would dive next into the world of Open D tuning, another favourite among many guitar players. Open D (and its variants of Open C and Open E) have been used by the likes of Derek Trucks, Joey Landreth, Stone Gossard, Neil Young and a plethora of other players.
One of the last times I did a hired-gun gig for a house band, I got a call at around 7:30 a.m. on a Friday in February 2023. It was Shawn Sasyniuk (drummer/multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire and all-around great dude), asking if I was busy the following weekend and if I happened to be available for a couple of days. The guitarist that he originally wanted for a house band at a gig backing up several artists was no longer available to do it and he needed someone to fill the spot.
You can however argue that Tyler Childers is way more “country” than the majority of Country artists on Top 40 radio. Songs from his album Purgatorysound like they belong in the same set as Hank Williams and George Strait, rather than Florida Georgia Line and Jellyroll. To my ears, what Childers is doing is Country Music in its most traditional and identifiable forms.
His sound is not far from the truth. As stated earlier, he would fit in with a lot of older artists and is musically a standout in today’s modern country scene. As he stated in an interview with theGuardian in 2019: “Let’s not just Solo cup and pickup truck it to death. Let’s handle this in a smart way. Nobody is thinking about lyrical content, or how we’re moving people, or what’s going on in the background of their minds.”
In my formative years, my guitar teacher Jean-Marc Guenette gave me a set of strumming exercises to work on. These exercises had me counting a series of 16th notes, strumming on some, not on others, all while keeping a constant down-up motion with my right hand.
In 2019, Bryan amassed a collection of songs written in just a couple of months. He and his friends rented an Airbnb in Florida, threw some mattresses on the walls to create a makeshift studio and recorded what was to be his debut albumDeAnn(named after his late mother). It was also around this time that the YouTube video for the song “Heading South” was uploaded to YouTube.
Nashville session guitarist Ray Edenton is often credited with developing this tuning, looking for a way to get more jangle out of the acoustic guitar while reducing the inherent boomy-ness of the instrument. What he got were the jangly characteristics that are common on a 12-string guitar without the lower octaves adding any low end to the sound.
When I started teaching guitar, I began by using whatever method books the schools and music stores used but found that the exercises were just that, exercises. Good lessons, but nothing that the student wanted to play. Anyone who tries their hand at guitar wants to play songs and riffs and doesn’t care for scales and theory (at least not at first).
Probably one of the most famous songs to make use of a capo, Don Felder originally wrote the song in E minor. While the original version had some weight because of where the chords sat in the guitar’s range, it was out of range for Don Henley’s voice. So, out comes the capo and seven (!) frets later, “Hotel California” took its final shape in the key of B minor.
The majority of our wooden picks have been made of rosewood, though we have also offered picks in other woods such as bubinga, tigerwood and purpleheart. On the Janka Hardness Scale, rosewood is the softest of these offerings, coming in at a rating of 1,960 lbf (pounds-force). This rating allows us to make picks that still have a flex and thickness that compare to a Fender Medium on the thinner side, and a Fender Heavy on the thicker side.
The United States national anthem is a mash-up of two different sources. The lyrics themselves came from the poemDefense of Fort M’Henry, written and published in 1814 by Francis Scott Key. The poem itself contains four stanzas, the first one being the commonly-sung lyrics toThe Star-Spangled Banner. Key’s words reflected what he saw during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, including a large flag flying above the Fort following the U.S. victory. That flag, as well as much of the action he saw, inspired the imagery found in the lyrics.
Born in Greenwich Village in 1968, Hunter grew up in Berkley, California with his mother. It was through her that he got his first taste of music, starting with her collection of old blues records, as well as her work as a repairwoman at Subway Guitar. He started playing guitar at age 13, and at 14 he was taking lessons with Joe Satriani (who was teaching at Subway Guitar at the time). Through all of this, he was listening to a very eclectic mix of music, from the Dead Kennedys to John Coltrane, to Lightning Hopkins.
It is arguable that the subject of our article, the 1977 album Rumours was peak-Fleetwood Mac, earning the band their most tremendous commercial success. Behind the album, a plethora of problems within the ranks, from members breaking up, to exercises in excess. It’s probably a miracle the album came out!
Texas Flood is, for all intents and purposes, a live album. The group played together, running through the best material from their live show and recording songs quickly as a result. Mullen did this to make the most of their limited time, as well as capture the energy that the group had during their live shows. For further proof of this, compare the songs on the album to those on Live at the El Mocambo; it’s almost hard to tell the difference between the two.
From the 1971 album of the same name, this song is probably a great example of love and appreciation between a mother and her child. Dolly sings how her mother stitched her a coat using many colourful rags (including “the love that Momma sewed in every stitch”). The child recognizes the love put into it, appreciates the gift and is quick to defend her coat from the ridicule of the other kids. Try not to shed a tear at the beautiful tale that Dolly sings.
Paul Kossoff was born in 1950 in Hampstead, London. After attending his first concert at age 8 (Tommy Steele at the London Palladium), Kossoff soon received his first guitar and started taking lessons. He was also playing with several local groups by his teen years, having taken to the instrument like a duck to water. At age 15, he gave up on academics and began working on his father David Kossoff’s touring productions (David Kossoff was a popular stage and television actor in the UK).
Luigi D’Andrea got into the pick-making business in 1922, when he decided to make guitar picks out of sheets of celluloid, which was readily available, more durable than tortoise shell, easy to work with, and allowed him to experiment with several different pick shapes. One shape in particular would become known the world over; the 351 guitar pick shape, famously known as the standard “Fender” pick and used by basically every company that produces picks.
Though Slowhand has had a long association with the Stratocaster, it is not the only iconic guitar that he’s had his hands on. During the years leading up to his solo career of the 1970s and beyond, Clapton was seen with several great instruments known for their sound and looks. These helped shape his status as one of the greats and introduced the world to a wide array of tones never heard before.
Music has been a fundamental aspect of human existence since the dawn of time. From the beating of tribal drums to the symphonies of Beethoven, music has been used to express the entire range of human emotions and experiences. Music has been so important throughout history, from the earliest known musical notation on a bone flute dated over 40,000 years ago to the modern-day digital age.
So, what do Keith Richards, Charlie Starr, Robert Johnson, Joni Mitchell, Rich Robinson and Lowell George all have in common? They all play differently, work in different genres, and are even generations apart... The common element is that they’ve tuned their guitars to Open G. This is one of the more common open tunings there are and provides a great starting point for those who want to experiment with something beyond standard tuning. It’s also fun for those who want to try and play slide guitar.
