The Best Guitar Amps for Different Genres, and Why
If you’re new to buying guitar equipment, you may want to start yourself off with an amp that already fits your genre’s sound. Here’s how to choose.
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Why Can’t You Tune Your Guitar?
15 minutes of math and learning about frequency divisions can help you understand for good why your guitar may never fundamentally be in tune.
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5 Pedals Ideal for Playing Blues Guitar
Looking to infuse your guitar playing with the whining, whimpering and screaming tones of your blues heroes? Here’s a tonal menagerie of pedals to help!
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5 Ways to Mic an Acoustic Guitar
Taken from our email newsletter, this article suggests five quick options for miking an acoustic guitar for great tone flexibility.
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Elliott Sharp’s Essential Guide to Being Elliott Sharp
By Elliott Sharp Editor’s note: For many years, I’ve been challenged and inspired by the work of Elliott Sharp, who has etched a place as one of America’s most dynamic modern composers. He’s hard to pin down both musically and literally, since he regularly travels the world for performance, recording, commissions, and likely a bit…
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What to Look for in Your First Guitar Amplifier
If you’re new to guitar amps and not sure what you’re looking for, here are a few guidelines that can help you make the best choice for your needs.
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5 Compositional Elements That Define the Music of Ennio Morricone
You know these iconic sounds of movie Westerns, now dive deeper into the makeup of Ennio Morricone’s signature works via these five compositional elements.
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An Introduction to the Wide World of Alternate 12-String Guitar Tunings
That 12-string guitar is a difficult thing to tune! All those high-tension thin strings can be really difficult to deal with, especially the high G string, so this instrument doesn’t necessarily readily encourage alternate tunings. It is a lot of work, but if you take the time to explore the options for alternate tunings on a 12-string, it can…
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Bang for Your Buck in a Box: A Rainbow of Great Guitar Pedals Under $200
With the explosion of boutique guitar pedal manufacturers in recent years, there’s never been a better time to get that certain sound under your stage toes. But it’s also in the nature of specialty pedals to be, well, specialized. In addition to being less versatile, they also tend to be a bit more expensive. Here…
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The Best Guitar Music in the World Is Coming from Agadez
It was late 2009 when I got my first taste of Agadez. Searching a relatively primitive YouTube for new music to explore for an ethnomusicology class, I came across a four-minute clip that would change my perspective on the electric guitar for years to come. Recorded in 2004 by Sublime Frequencies founder Hisham Mayet, the…
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How to EQ an Acoustic vs. Electric Guitar
If you find yourself dealing with different guitar signals, here’s a primer on how to EQ acoustics versus electrics in your mix.
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How to Create a Shoegaze Guitar Sound with Effects Pedals
Trying to get a classic shoegaze tone out of your guitar? Our affordable effects pedal combo will help achieve that shimmering wall of sound.
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10 Memorable Mid-Song Bass Riffs (And the Techniques Used to Pull Them Off)
Bassists don’t always get the credit they deserve. Here are 10 examples of rock bassists eeking out a moment to let their brilliance shine through.
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9 of the Most Ripping Country Guitarists Who Advanced the Language of Their Instrument
It’s unlikely you’ll find any rip-roaring country instrumentals making waves in these modern times. But in the 1950s and ’60s, fast-picking country guitar players were all over television and influenced guitarists of all genres. Though rooted in blues, jazz, and swing, country guitar is mysteriously singular in many of its techniques and approaches. It’s difficult to…
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How to Learn the Note Names in Every Fret on the Guitar
Don’t waste your time memorizing all of the notes in each fret without understanding how they relate to each other, here’s a few tricks.
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Get the Guitar Sound You Want: Cheat Sheet for EQs, Wahs, and Filter Effects
Now that we’ve covered dynamic– and distortion-based effects, it’s time to start playing with the actual shape of your sound. From subtle EQ tweaks to dramatic filters, this is where we start really delving into reshaping and altering your tone. These effects can be used to add expression and character to your playing, as well…
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How to Play the Guitar Without Looking
Tired of constantly glancing down at the fretboard during your solos? Having trouble singing while you play? Maybe you’re just out to emulate all your favorite blues musicians, like Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell, or Sonny Terry (also blind)… none of whom could even see their guitar, let alone the fretboard! But for…
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14 of the Most Influential Latin American Composers of the 20th Century
Unless you’re a classical guitar student, odds are your music education is sorely lacking in the works and legacies of Latin American classical composers.
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Nothing Compares 2 Prince: The Songs That Blew Our Minds
Prince is gone. Honestly, I’m still tongue-tied. As is the case for most musicians I know, Prince has been an unwavering pillar of my musical life. Maybe the only one, in fact. For my wedding, all my friends recorded themselves singing “Purple Rain,” which my sister- and brother-in-law mashed up with the real song and…
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How to Create Dreamier Guitar Chords
Are you planning to write a romantic love song for a special person in your life, or in love with genres like dream pop, psychedelic rock, or shoegazer music? Or, are you simply getting bored of writing songs with those typical, standard-tuning bar chords on the guitar? Then here are some useful tools for you. If you’re…
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5 Essential Alternate Tunings for Acoustic Guitar
Go beyond your standard stable of chords and explore a whole new world of alternate tunings to make your songs stand out.
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The True Story Behind Japanese ‘Lawsuit’ Guitars
Welcome to 6String Minutes. In this segment, we’ll uncover the truth about Japanese “lawsuit” guitars imported to the United States from the mid-1970s on. Gear hunters and enthusiasts around the world all claim to have seen them, but the true story may shock you.* (* If you happen to be plugged into an ungrounded amplifier and…
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How to Play Sweeping Arpeggios on Guitar
By Claude Johnson “Sweep picking” is a technique where the guitarist plays single notes on consecutive strings with a “sweeping motion” of the pick. While simultaneously using the fret hand to produce a specific series of notes, usually an “arpeggio.” Both hands are essentially performing these motions in unison, to achieve the particular desired effect of…
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Overcoming “The Blues Rut” and Expanding Your Guitar Creativity
There’s a very good reason why the pentatonic scale is so generally pleasing, applicable, and capable of making neck hairs stand on end: It’s something humans have been perfecting for a long time, and can be found in cultures all over the world. As a guitarist, I’ve often wondered whether the guitar was in some ways…
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The Ins and Outs of Recording Your Guitar “Direct In”
Cranky neighbors. A dearth of suitable space to stack amps. A shortage of cash. There are any number of obvious and legitimate reasons for learning to record your electric guitar tracks direct in. When you get this skill down pat, you’ll find the approach delivers a great deal of speed and flexibility without compromising too much on…
