Guitars That Yell Like Goats That Yell Like Humans

This is the sound you’ve been searching for!

If you like reading about internet memes that have just passed their sell-by date, tonefiend is the place to be!

Witness this brief video on triggering goat sound via guitar, created in a fit of desperation when a planned DIY post was delayed divine inspiration. […]

MIDI Guitar Meltdown

Okay, I promise: tonefiend is not going to become an all-digital blog. I’ve got two new DIY analog pedal projects in the pipe, plus a piece on that delightfully retro technology, the book.

But while there’s more to life than MIDI, for the last few months my particular life has been all MIDI, all the […]

The MacGuyver Flanger & Other Goodies

My pal Jeff Cross from Apple sent me a brief email:

please tell me you’ve seen these…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSsl1h8RhqU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT7bsX2qNWQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC170m-Hcyg

No, I had not. And they’re soooo good. All three are from YouTube user MotorGoblin. I don’t know anything about him, beyond the fact that he’s […]

My Half-Assed Musikmesse 2013 Report

While responsible guitar journalists like my ol’ pal Art Thompson from Guitar Player and the fine young fellows from Premier Guitar scoured Musikmesse 2013 tirelessly and systematically, I did the opposite, randomly stumbling through the vast exhibition halls in a jet-lagged daze between my performances, aiming my iPhone at anything vaguely cool or weird.

The […]

Heard Compressorhead Yet?

Prolly the best artist demo I’ve heard at Frankfurt (partly because it has no goddamned soloing).

This is real. They were playing out in the plaza at Musikmesse. I tried to shoot my own footage, but it was just too crowded. (Though I did score a thrilling video of the back of Craig […]

The View from Here

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed a recurring pattern: I attend some interesting event and promise to report on it, only to get subverted by work, crowds, jabbering with old acquaintances, and jetlag. True to form, I’ve spend the first two days either demoing TriplePlay, or staggering […]

Grüße aus Musikmesse

It’s wet. Will it be wild?

Howdy from Frankfurt, where I arrived this afternoon to attend Musikmesse. United Airlines was its usual scuzzy self, though a nice flight attendant found a place for me to stow my guitar. And my pedalboard seems to have arrived in fine shape, even though I had to […]

Fishman TriplePlay Demo:
Now with More Nasty!

For the first Fishman TriplePlay demo I posted last month, I featured pretty, naturalistic acoustic sounds. This time around I went for something a little less polite.

I’ve been having a blast — albeit a humbling blast — trying to play real-time drum parts from the guitar. I still suck if it’s much more […]

Tommy Lamb, 20 Years Later

Rockfinger’s Tommy Lamb graced the cover of Guitar Now! in 1977.

Yet another sad anniversary: Believe it or not, it’s 20 years to the day since Tommy Lamb perished in a brawl at Indiana’s Plainfield Correctional Facility.

Unlike so many rock-and-roll deaths, Tommy’s demise never seemed to inspire a renewed interest in his […]