Category / General / Guitar / Music
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The pick of the bunch
There’s something indefinably magical about the intricate, chiming sounds of a finger-picked acoustic guitar. It’s something I’d always longed to learn and yearned to do well, but it always seemed too far out of reach – both figuratively and, as far as my permanently tangled sausage-fingers are concerned, literally. I’ll never be in the Tommy…
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Take your pick
Mark Hanson’s ‘The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking’ is one of the guitar tuition books I’ve returned to most often over the years. If you love players like Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Scotty Moore or John Renbourn, Travis picking is a style of playing you’ll really want to add to your guitar skillset. I certainly…
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Britflop
I recently rediscovered a batch of old files from my first PC, dating back to the mid-to-late nineties, crammed full of old music reviews, interviews and oddities. It’s an interesting time capsule of how I felt at the time about music many of us have been living with (sometimes unwillingly) for decades now. FROM…
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An interview with Ivor Cutler
It’s 1997, the tail-end of Britpop, and one of the more idiosyncratic – but enduring – talents to emerge during the first British beat boom has just been signed to Creation Records. But this is no rediscovered mod icon or grizzled rock survivor. This is a 74-year-old Jewish Glaswegian poet, humorist and songwriter more at…
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Get a grip
I’ve used many a capo throughout my guitar-playing escapades, but it’s only relatively recently I’ve found one I love. Thalia Capos don’t come cheap, but you get exactly what you pay for – and more – in terms of both functionality and form. Functionality first: They’re supremely easy to slip on and off the guitar…
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10 minutes that changed my life
If I’ve learned anything in my many years as an enthusiasm-heavy but talent-light guitarist, it is that there are two simple routes to better playing: Lots of practice and a great teacher. After years of aimless three-chord thrashing, luck threw my first great teacher my way – David Mead’s ’10 Minute Guitar Workout’. I found…
