October 2020

Guitar Player

Guitar Player magazine helps you play better and sound better

Guitar Player1 min read
Guitar Player
guitarplayer.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Christopher Scapelliti, chris.scapelliti@futurenet.com SENIOR EDITOR Art Thompson, arthur.thompson@futurenet.com ART EDITOR Rosie Webber, rosie.webber@futurenet.com PRODUCTION EDITOR Jem Roberts, jem.roberts@futurenet
Guitar Player2 min read
SRV’s Flood
WHO KNOWS WHAT guitar music might be today if Stevie Ray Vaughan hadn’t come along in 1983. When SRV and Double Trouble released Texas Flood that year, radio was dominated by synth-pop and hair-metal acts. It seemed unlikely that an electric blues al
Guitar Player3 min read
Opening Notes
GP just keeps getting better. I loved the Layla issue [July 2020], and I’ve just finished digging into the making of AC/DC’s Back in Black article [August 2020]. These stories are captivating, and it’s great to get all the details about gear, includi
Guitar Player1 min readTechnology & Engineering
How to Contact Us!
Email: contact@myfavoritemagazines.com Phone: 800-289-9839 Mail: Guitar Player Subscriptions P.O. Box 2029, Langhorne, PA 19047 JACKSON MAXWELL Online and Social Media Managing Editor jackson.maxwell@futurenet.com FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG TWITTER
Guitar Player6 min read
Millennial Marvel
“ROCK AND ROLL is a creation of Black America,” Seattle-based guitarist Ayron Jones says. “Even though it may be less talked about and may be forgotten by some of the newer generations, it’s our sound. Not to keep and hold on to, but it runs through
Guitar Player4 min read
Ragged Glory
WHEN THE FENDER Custom Shop unveiled the first two guitars in its Relic series at the 1995 winter NAMM convention, it pioneered an aesthetic that thoroughly permeated the high-end electric guitar-building world. Today, you almost have to specify that
Guitar Player5 min read
Plays Well With Others
SONIC EXPLORER DAVID TORN has conferred his exotic tones and textures on recordings by David Bowie, k.d. lang, John Legend, Madonna, Tori Amos, David Sylvian and Meshell Ndegeocello, among many others. His loops and compositional skills have been put
Guitar Player4 min read
Padded Sell
SOLID-STATE GUITAR AMPS were touted as “the way forward” when they debuted in the 1960s, but the fad soon fizzled. Still, a few brands earned praise and lasting respect on the basis of either their sounds, appealing looks or both. Kustom Electronics
Guitar Player5 min read
Tiger in His Tank
TOM LIEBER HAS been building fine, handcrafted guitars since 1971, when he began an apprenticeship with Northern California luthier Doug Irwin, who had made several instruments for Jerry Garcia. Those creations included Wolf, the first custom guitar
Guitar Player6 min read
My Career in Five Songs
WHEN ASSESSING ALEX Skolnick’s prodigious body of work as one of the world’s most accomplished and respected guitarists, it almost makes sense to consider retitling this article “My Career in Five Styles,” since his résumé is as expansive as it is im
Guitar Player3 min read
Sisterhood Of The Sirens
TERE ESTRADA IS a guitarist, singer/songwriter, author and sociologist from Mexico City who plays a mixture of blues, rock, jazz and Latin. I reached out to her because of her book Sirens on the Attack: A History of Mexican Rock Women (1956–2000), an
Guitar Player3 min read
Double Your Pleasure
IN SAN FRANCISCO, back in the 1980s, ultra-hip multi-instrumentalist Robin Sylvester hired me to play a drum session for singer, actress and popular KSAN-FM deejay Mimi Chen. I was a bit of what Robin referred to as a “Quippy,” a British expression f
Guitar Player1 min read
Hot Shots
The action-packed photos featured in this article were taken by Tracy Anne Hart, author of the 2020 book Seeing Stevie Ray (Texas A&M University Press). You can purchase Tracy’s archival prints at theheightsgallery.com or on her Instagram profile @th
Guitar Player15 min read
Second Coming
In the summer of 1988, Stevie Ray Vaughan had just completed an intensive tour of Europe when Tom Nolan sat down to talk to him in England for a frank discussion about his roots, overcoming addiction and finding redemption. Nolan was given little tim
Guitar Player2 min read
Strange Days
“The SG Special with P-90s that I started out with was basically the cheapest one in the store. It was from a place called Ace Loans, in Santa Monica, which became a pretty well-known place for guitars, but at that point it was just a hockshop. I kne
Guitar Player8 min read
Set The Night On Fire
AS A MEMBER of one of rock’s most influential bands, Robby Krieger not only added unique textures and an innovative slide guitar approach to the Doors’ sound — he also wrote or co-wrote many of their most notable tracks, including “Light My Fire,” “T
Guitar Player8 min read
STICKS And TONES
LISTENERS MIGHT APPROACH Cindy Blackman Santana’s new album, Give the Drummer Some (Copperline Music Group), with the expectation that it’s chock full of drum solos and percussion pieces. And they would be very, very wrong. With the exception of one
Guitar Player6 min read
Testify
“Stevie was one of the rare guitarists who was a complete musician. Great guitar playing, excellent singing and great songs — the whole package. I remember when he was playing in Paul Ray and the Cobras many years ago, there would be the wonderful mo
Guitar Player8 min read
7-Tone Interval Mastery
IT’S NOT UNCOMMON for a hotshot high school guitarist to venture off to music college and quickly discover he’s no longer the only player in the room with chops. Speaking from experience, it’s humbling. Pursuant to my wake-up call, I decided not only
Guitar Player10 min read
Renaissance Man
I’VE ALWAYS SEEN the guitar as a tool to make music with, and I was trying to make a tool that worked for everything,” Paul Reed Smith says of the foundational guitars he created decades ago that blazed the trail for PRS Guitars becoming what it is t
Guitar Player8 min read
American Songsmith
JAMES TAYLOR IS one of the most influential acoustic guitar players of all time, period. The iconic tunesmith is the first to admit that his “primitive” fingerstyle may not be fancy, but as he explains in the following interview, he invented his own
Guitar Player3 min read
Gift Rap
It might surprise people that your wife, a drummer, would create such a weighty guitar record. Perhaps, but I can see it quite clearly because of the core principles of who she is. She’s Tony Williams Lifetime, so that’s John McLaughlin. But there’s
Guitar Player5 min read
Slash Chords Crash Course
BACK IN THE ’80s, when I was a teenager struggling to master the endless enigma that is the guitar, I always looked forward to reading Rik Emmett’s “Back to Basics” column in these pages. In addition to being the virtuoso singer and lead guitarist of
Guitar Player3 min read
Path to Finger Freedom
WE RECENTLY ADDRESSED how to work with the thumb and fingers on your way to becoming a fully fledged fingerstylist. But this month we’re going to address a hot topic in the year of the coronavirus: fingernails. Fingernail maintenance is absolutely es
Guitar Player3 min read
Taylor
NAMED FOR THE Southern California guitar shop where Taylor Guitars was founded back in 1974, the American Dream series was created to provide an affordable solid-wood instrument that springs from the Grand Pacific round-shouldered dreadnought platfor
Guitar Player1 min read
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Guitar Player3 min read
Fender
EVEN THOUGH IT took me a minute to recognize the genius of Slipknot, I’m a fan of both their music and production values. Think about it: If you gig in a mask, it not only doesn’t matter how old you are or what you look like, but you can send a subst
Guitar Player3 min read
Tech 21
BASED ON THE PSA-1 rackmount processor introduced in 1993, the new PSA 2.0 is a super-flexible tone machine boasting all-analog circuitry (only the memory and programming sections are digitally controlled) in a sleek brushed-metal enclosure that is s
Guitar Player3 min read
IK Multimedia
DIGITAL AMPLIFIER PLUG-INS have made it possible to get great tube-like guitar tones in home and professional studio environments alike. Given the ease and convenience of IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube offerings and popular software from Universal Audio,
Guitar Player2 min read
Maxon
THIS LATEST ITERATION of the venerable TS-808 — originally made for Ibanez by Maxon — is designed by Susumu Tamura, the man who created the original Tubescreamer back in 1979. The Apex 808 bears the name “Tamura” on its black control plate and is bui
Guitar Player3 min read
“Surrender”
ALTHOUGH “SURRENDER” WAS featured on Cheap Trick’s third album, 1978’s Heaven Tonight, the song actually dates back to the band’s pre-record deal club days. As guitarist Rick Nielsen points out, “We almost recorded it for our debut album, but we did

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