Guitarists like to spill ink all the time about distortion boxes, classic overdrives, boutique delay pedals, and bucket-brigade modulation effects. It’s understandable why: These attention-grabbing stompboxes lead to dramatic and satisfying changes in sound. Like a great vintage amp or a top-notch guitar, it’s these larger-than-life pedals that help a player define his or her…
I never listened to the Allman Brothers much, which is probably not what you’d expect to hear from somebody who’s about to write 500 or so words about Gregg Allman. But as I reflected on his passing last week, I realized that Gregg and his brother Duane had a much greater impact on my life as…
Compared to most instruments, the modern guitar is a relatively new instrument. While classical instruments like piano, brass, and woodwinds all have hundreds of years of pedagogy behind them, the language of guitar music and how we learn to play is new and constantly changing. Today, we can find chords to any song on the internet…
Words you say never seem To live up to the ones inside your head The lives we make never seem To ever get us anywhere but dead. — Chris Cornell/Soundgarden Chris Cornell left this Earth too soon. Still, judging by the life he led, he seemed like the sort of legendary artist who belonged to…
Once upon a time, remixing a song meant actually redoing the mix. Many vintage consoles (some Neve 80-series, for example) have a button labeled “remix” that changes a few functions on the desk to optimize it for mixing rather than recording. But sometime in the late 20th century, the word “remix” began to take on a new meaning:…
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…
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…
“I got my first real six-string. Bought it at the five and dime. Played it ’til my fingers bled. Was the summer of ’69.” – Bryan Adams Whether you’re thinking about hunkering down and buying your first guitar or looking to upgrade from the $199 Strat pack that your grandma gave you for Christmas to…
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Electric guitars play a big role in nearly every type of music these days, and the amplifier is a huge part of the equation. Guitar amps might seem complicated, but…
Pedals! Despite the wide range of effects they produce, individually, they’re typically pretty straightforward devices. But as soon as you begin to assemble a chain of pedals, complicating factors seem to mount up exponentially. The inconvenient reality is that the more complex the system of pedals, the more helpful it becomes to have some basic…
