I must admit to being a nay sayer of heavy distortion pedals. I’ve tried so many and have been regularly disappointed. So many have fallen short of really sounding like a high gain amp. For the few that had good tone, they’re often so noisy it’s hard to use in live settings. Buzz Alert When […]
Melodic Pentatonic Shape Shifter When you study melody you start to notice some interesting traits. Some of which seem to go against most instincts of guitarists. What happens when you place a guitar in the hands of a guitarist and ask them to lead? There tends to be a steady stream of notes that run […]
Research and Development There is a lot of work put into preparing for a gig. Aside from the obvious learning material and rehearsing, there is sound development. Some gigs you simply just plug a guitar straight into an amp and go. Others require a bit more sonic planning. It’s not un-common for me to spend […]
I’ve been using the Pigtronix Infinity Looper for a couple of months now. I like to get to know gear before I review it. With digital pedals, this can sometimes be a frustrating endeavor. You have to learn the language of the pedal. Often, the menus don’t feel like they were created by a musician. […]
Learning songs is a deceptive skill. Once we start to have some familiarity with a composition, we start to believe we know it better then we really do. Often when we need to recall a tune, we end up with some missing spaces. Have you ever noticed that you can remember every lyric to some songs […]
The Polyphonic Guitarist Are you a monophonic or polyphonic player? As guitarists, we have a tendency to get caught up in speed and single note lines. Ask any guitarist to solo and odds are it will be single note lines played on the high strings. There almost seems to be an installed switch for most […]
For years, the tones of Early Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were a mystery. I’ve played through many of the same guitars and amps. It still didn’t have the same rasp though. Eventually, due to the power of the world wide web (remember when it was called that?), I was able to find more info […]
When I was young and first taking up guitar, I bought a book of guitar chords. This seemed like a logical thing to do. My thought was anytime I saw a chord, I could immediately look it up. I would spend time going through the book everyday. I experimented with all kinds of chords. I […]
Creation audio have released a really interesting new overdrive pedal designed for bass that has some unexpected uses. The adjustments on the pedal are quite simple and very effective (get it?). I like that there are two knobs for gain. One is for overdrive and the other is for distortion. You can use them independently […]
There is a lot of time we’re away from our instruments. Valuable time we wish we could be practicing. Who says we can’t practice when we don’t have our instruments though? I get some of my mot valuable practice time when I don’t have my instrument in my hands. This is partly due to the […]