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On Saturday, July 7th, 2018 I will be co-hosting True Guit, a day-long guitar workshop, with my friend Adam Levy at the Blue Bear School of Music in San Francisco. You can find all the needed details — including cost — at trueguit.com. I’ve been contemplating such a return to teaching for several years. […] Happy 2016! I hope everyone’s holidays were epic, and that you got lots of good stuff. There’s no better way to ring in the new year than to highlight the … um … peculiar culture that somehow got attached to our instrument. You can’t make this shit up. Hard to believe, but […] 
Here’s a fingerpicking idea I’ve been kicking around for a while, though I couldn’t figure out a great way to present it till now. It’s a challenging series of ultra-syncopated variations on traditional Travis picking — a funky fingerstyle challenge. I started down this path while trying to create one of those fake-out song […] 
I’ve long been obsessed with Sam “The Man” Taylor’s epic sax solo on the Chords seminal 1954 rock ’n’ roll hit, “Sh-Boom.” But I never got around to learning, transcribing, and analyzing it till now. I heard it about 100 times while making and editing this video, and it still thrills me on every […] 
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 […] I’m thrilled to bits about a show I’m playing Thursday eve in San Francisco featuring two guitarists of impeccable skill and taste, plus me. Teja Gerken and I are co-hosting a monthly solo guitar night at El Rio, my groovy neighborhood dive.Our guest is the amazing Eric Skye who, among other things, plays […] Are there any particular guitar solos you’re obsessed with lately? Here’s one I can’t stop listening to: Jim Hall’s solo on Sonny Rollins’ 1964 recording of “God Bless the Child.” This may seem like a weird statement, given how much self-indulgent wanking infests this site, but I have a love/hate relationship with guitar […] Any talk box fans out there? Whew. Didn’t think so. I mean, doesn’t everybody hate those godforsaken things? Wasn’t it all downhill after “Tell Me Something Good?” But did you know that the “talking guitar” has a rather exalted history four decades pre-Frampton Comes Alive? Check out this performance by Alvino Rey, the steel guitar […] Monday: Theory and Technique Tuesday: Gear Wednesday: Repairs and DIY Thursday: Biography Friday: Fiction This week we’re talking about our favorite guitar/music books. The plan is simple: I discuss a few titles I’ve found particularly enlightening, useful, or entertaining, and then you jump in and do the same. I’ve organized the days of this week […] Next week at tonefiend we’ll be talking about our favorite guitar/music books. I’ll write about some of the titles I find especially useful, inspiring, or entertaining, and I hope you’ll chime in with some of your recommended reading. Since there’s so much potential material here, I suggest we focus on a different book category […] |
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