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James Horner, one of the most successful film composers in Hollywood history, died yesterday after crashing his single-engine plane near Santa Barbara, California. He was 61. It’s hard to pinpoint the highlight of Horner’s career — he scored such mega-hits as Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, Avatar, Braveheart, and many other films. But I can […] 
For a while I’ve been playing this loop-based cover of Foster the People’s “Pumped-Up Kicks” at solo gigs and with my duo band, Mental 99. At risk of sounding like a pompous dick, I’ve annotated the performance, highlighting techniques I’ve found useful for making loop-based performances livelier and less predictable. I’ve covered some of […] As if I weren’t already blowing enough money on arcane strings, I’ve got a new obsession: Thomastik-Infeld Plectrum series acoustic strings (which sell for $24 in the U.S.). If you hang out here much, you’ve heard me bitch incessantly about acoustic strings. I hate the way most modern strings are all hyped treble […] 
Psst…this week I embark on a grueling two-city solo guitar tour. I’m playing my first ever L.A. solo show next Tuesday, the 12th, with one of my favorite players on the planet: the brilliant Mark Goldenberg. I’d previously know his pop work, but only became aware of his amazing solo playing last year when […] 
I’ve been breathlessly awaiting one of these since I saw this. It’s Korg’s Miku Stomp, a spinoff from the company’s Vocaloid voice synthesizer. It tracks your pitch as you play and responds with a synthetic voice that forms various syllables and phrases. There’s some cheating here: The effect’s latency is quite severe, so I […] Premier Guitar just posted my latest Recording Guitarist column. The subject: Capturing the haunting reverbs of Southwestern ruins via impulse-response reverbs. Many years ago I marveled at the eerie reflections within the stone-walled ball court at Wupatki, an hour north of Flagstaff, Arizona. On this visit, I attempted to clone the tone. I did […] I recently reviewed the gorgeous little Veillette Avante Gryphon for Premier Guitar and liked it so much that I bought one. This was my first opportunity to record it in my studio. The Avante Gryphon is a relatively low-cost version of Woodstock luthier Joe Veillette’s Gryphon, an 18.5″-scale 12-string designed to be tuned a minor […] 
Marvin Gore, 1940 If my blog and video posts have seemed fewer and less fun in recent months, it’s not your imagination. I’ve been shuttling between San Francisco and my childhood home in the LA suburbs, spending as much time as possible with my dad in the wake of a back-to-back broken hip […] Hey, smart people — let me get your take on this. I’ve been playing with a new tone control idea that’s so simple, I can’t believe no one’s done it before. (Chances are someone has.) Here’s the idea: Conventional electric guitar tone controls employ a single pot and single capacitor connected to ground. As you […] Here are the new U.S. Department of Transportation rules on flying with musical instruments. Sounds like carriers are required to check instruments. The key passage, per the DOT site: The rule requires that each U.S. carrier subject to this regulation allow a passenger to carry into the cabin and stow a small musical instrument, […] |
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