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Chord Tricks on Guitar I once worked for a guy who enjoyed riding his bike around the showroom before we opened our doors for the day. He would weave his way through the guitar stands like it was some sort of demented driving test. It was his shop, so the rest of the staff just egged him on. I never saw him knock one down. One day, just to stir the pot a little, I plugged in a Tele as he was mount …

Paul Reed Smith S2 594 McCarty In the world of electric guitars, PRS is unique in their endless search for tonal and ergonomic perfection. While other guitar builder’s content themselves with simply offering stellar examples of classic designs, PRS has committed to reverse-engineering a vintage style of their own based on the insights gleaned from decades of experimentation. In many ways, th …

For the Self Taught Guitarist If you want to avoid the gatekeepers, you’ll have to learn to make your way through the forest of sound alone. Thankfully, records hang like fruit from the trees, and there is a deep cave where you can examine the reflection of your instrument (just don’t venture too deep, like some sort of sonic narcissus). A small creek, brook, or stream is best for refining inton …

Magic and Mystery of Slide Guitar When folks who are used to fretting attempt slide guitar, it’s like trying to run on ice-skates. You suddenly realize that there are whole oceans between the notes. As western musicians, we tend to base our musical understanding on the 12-tone, chromatic scale, but a guitar is not a piano, and it can cover more hidden ground. Not only can we bend the strings, we …

Six String Shaman People begin playing the guitar for many reasons. Some crave stardom, some the attention of the opposite sex. Some just regard it as a constructive past-time; a way to round out their skill-set, something to do at parties. From my experience as a musician and teacher, however, the ones who excel at the instrument are the ones who truly need it. They need it to focus thei …

Petatonic Boxes I’ve often heard guitarists express frustration at being trapped within the “ pentatonic boxes”. Here they are organized to create an A minor pentatonic scale up the neck:  Folks tend to memorize them each vertically, then horizontally, then diagonally. The most fluid players can find then whenever, wherever, and in any key. After a while, though, the ear starts …

Although it’s impossible to say with complete assurance where “the blues” first developed, a strong case can be made for the Texas Blues Guitarist. In their unfinished tome, “The Blues Come to Texas”, researchers Paul Oliver and Mack McMcormick exhaustively detail the geographic and sociological circumstances that made the Lone Star State the perfect incubation zone for such an artform. It’s …

When you visit Charlotte, make sure you have time for A Morning in The Midwood Guitar Studio Acoustic Guitar Lounge. When Rock & Rollers enter our storefront in the historic Plaza Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina, we have to greet them with a drool bucket. A post-industrial aesthetic of brick walls and exposed piping serves as the perfect backdrop for our diverse inve …

Reverb has been an essential part of the electric guitar and all genres of music since the 1960's.  I’m a sucker for reverb. Always have been. I want to live inside my electric guitar. I always play piano with the sustain pedal depressed. Perhaps this preference has primordial roots, an inheritance from our cave-dwelling ancestors. It’s impossible to say for certain, but I’m …