Happy holidays, dear Flypaper readers and Soundfly students! If you’re anything like me, that is, a chronically dissatisfied gear nerd, this is the time of year when many manufacturers and distributers offer great deals on their products, upon which we must pounce like the bargain-savvy consumers that we are. Heck, it’s our right as Americans! This year,…
Lester William Polsfuss, the given name of guitar-maker Les Paul, was a legend. His technological innovations, as a result of a sheer addiction to tinkering, were vast. They include multi-track recording, overdubbing (which he famously called “sound on sound“), tape delay, reverb, phase effects, and “the log,” more commonly known as the solid-body electric guitar.…
The consensus amongst musicians seems to be unanimous: Led Zeppelin has written and performed some of the most high-intensity rock and roll music ever. Yet beneath the fuzzed out, thunderous madness of Valhalla and Middle Earth typically associated with rock’s golden gods, there is a wealth of musical ingenuity and innovation waiting to be uncovered by…
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…
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our latest free course series, “Alternate Tunings for the Creative Guitarist”! The first installment, new this week, explores the nearly endless creative possibilities of the Open D tuning. If you’ve ever played a guitar, you’re probably familiar with standard tuning. The six strings of the instrument are commonly tuned…
We’ve covered so many bases in this guitar breakdown series, I don’t even know if we can keep calling it baseball! But to round back to home, let’s take a look at two more important factors in the overall sound we hear from our instruments — from all the way back in the accessories department at the music…
Welcome back to Fundamentals of Guitar Anatomy, my four-part series examining the literal ins and outs of your electric guitar. So far, we’ve covered wood types and body styles, and today I’d like to cover all the different kinds of pickups available at your disposal, how they work and how they create different tonal shapes. An…
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…
Welcome back to Fundamentals of Guitar Anatomy, my multi-part series examining the ins and outs of your electric guitar. In the last lecture, we talked about body styles, and that knowledge will help you to grasp this one, as we’re going to be talking about the different types of wood used for guitars and their effect. The…
Trying to get a classic shoegaze tone out of your guitar? Our affordable effects pedal combo will help achieve that shimmering wall of sound.
