Norse Guitar Feeds

Guitar legend Martin Carthy has revealed what his fellow folk guitarist and collaborator Davey Graham said the first time he tried heroin.

In a feature in the new issue of Record Collector, interviewer Rob Hughes points out a photo on the wall of Carthy’s house depicting him and Graham during a recording session in the ‘60s for Nadia Cattouse. Carthy recalls thinking the session went well during, but hearing his takes afterward and being less-than-impressed.

• READ MORE: One of 500 guitars recently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was actually stolen from the Rolling Stones by drug dealers in 1972

“I’ve still got a copy of the recording that we made that day, a version of Port Mahon [1965], written by Sydney Carter,” he explains.

“I thought I’d done a really good job, but when I put the record on, I went: ‘What the fuck is that?!’ It was absolutely terrible. I was playing this solo that was nonsense.”

He goes on: “On the way home from that session, Davey told me that he’d had his first fix the night before: ‘Oh, it was great, I’m going to do it again.’ 

“A week or so later, I saw [blues musician] Alexis Korner at a party near Cecil Sharp House. He shouted across the room to me: You know what the stupid bastard’s gone and done now, don’t you? He’s gone and registered himself.’

“In those days, you could get heroin free from the NHS if you were a registered addict.”

Davey Graham’s addiction to heroin was partly the result of him imitating his jazz hero contemporaries, according to an 2008 obituary by The Telegraph. He once described himself as a “casualty of too much self-indulgence”.

Despite his addiction, Graham’s influence on the guitar world is far-reaching, with many crediting him with inventing DADGAD tuning. DADGAD is popular among folk and fingerstyle guitarists for its open-string harmony, and arguably allows for more successful experimentation the length of the neck.

“I used to play in this place called the Witch’s Cauldron, which was on [London’s] Belsize Lane,” Martin Carthy continues in the Record Collector interview.

“Davey just came down one night, took out his guitar and started to play. He had incredible presence. Then he started to talk about what he was into, the particular kind of chord sequences and substitutions. This was big news for me.

“And he proceeded to show me all this stuff. As I was playing it, he was correcting me and showing me everything he knew. He didn’t keep secrets, he just wanted to share the whole time. He played Anji and laughed about it.

“He was just incredibly adventurous for the time, always way ahead of anything I’d ever done, because he was that imaginative. I just kind of gobbled up all that he gave me. Everybody who played the guitar in that particular circle really looked up to Davey.”

The post “Oh it was great, I’m going to do it again”: Folk guitar legend Martin Carthy reveals what happened the first time Davey Graham used heroin appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When it comes to queen of slide guitar Bonnie Raitt, we’ve got something to talk about. On her rootsy first albums—Bonnie Raitt, Give It Up, and Takin’ My Time—she set a bluesy vibe, but covers like Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” and Del Shannon’s “Runaway” showed she had more to say. By the late ’80s, she was a pop radio superstar.

So if you’re looking for Raitt’s best guitar tracks and records, we can get you started and give you a few deep cuts along the way.

Rocky Mountain Slide Company:
rockymountainslides.com

What would possess someone to fill a station wagon with fragile, heavy, vintage audio gear and drive 3,000 miles for an unrehearsed recording session when you could just as well fly with a laptop, an interface, and a few microphones for a fraction of the effort, time, and space?

The way I see it, if you’re traveling across the U.S. to record in the country’s oldest juke joint with the greatest living practitioner of an esoteric regional tradition, there’s no doing things halfway. I don’t want to preach a kind of analog dogma, but after years of listening to recordings of Jack Owens, Junior Kimbrough, and Fred McDowell on labels like Wolf, Fat Possum, and Arhoolie, I wanted to make every effort to produce my own sessions in the footsteps of David Evans, Bruce Watson, and Alan Lomax, which included using a portable analog setup to capture traditional music in the space where it is authentically made.

So, I brought a Tascam 22-4 reel-to-reel tape machine, several tube preamps, a mixer, and five microphones to produce two albums in two days with 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes at the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Mississippi. They are, essentially, modern field recordings done in the old style, produced in the country’s longest-running blues club—hallowed ground where legends like Skip James, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Howlin’ Wolf all played back in the day. And the feeling of the room, the location itself, is part of not only the sound, but also the atmosphere we caught on tape.

Our approach to recording was simple. Essentially, we followed Jimmy’s ethos of no rehearsals or discussions. (“That’s how the old man does it,” he said.) This was doable because I have been a student of Duck’s for years. When playing with Jimmy, you have to follow each and every note, because he doesn’t adhere to the 12-bar form. It’s truly old school. Fortunately, we also had Grant Smith on calabash, who is a world class musician and an exceptional listener, for our rhythmic anchor.

Ryan Lee Crosby’s Recording Rig

• Tascam 22-4 (tracking)
• Tascam 22-2 (mixdown)
• Teac A-3440 (tape delay)
• Universal Audio LA-610 and SOLO/610 preamps
• Two Akai tube preamps
• Mackie 1604-VLZ Pro mixer
• 3 Shure SM57s
• Sennheiser MD 421
• Shure Beta 91A

• DBX 161 Compressor
• FMR Audio RNC 1773
• Echo Fix spring reverb
• Fender electric 12-string Jazzmaster (vintage neck/modern body)
• Homemade T-stye thinline
• Evil Twin custom tube amp
• Peavey Delta Blues

And so, over two afternoons, we worked for about four hours to produce both the new Jimmy “Duck” Holmes collection Bentonia Blues/Right Now and my own record, At the Blue Front. The method was to do one take per song, aim to get it right the first time, and keep on going. This approach continued into mixing. I recorded and mixed the Holmes album entirely analog, without overdubs. On my album we added shakere (a West African percussion instrument), some harmonica, and a few vocal edits. I chose to do this with a DAW, for the flexibility as well as the fidelity, because although I prefer to stay all-analog whenever possible, I won’t forgo the use of a computer on principle. It’s important to do what’s best for the music and the recording, ultimately.

“I find, as a listener, player and producer, that analog can draw us into the present, into the heart of direct, physical, musical experience.”

I believe there is a lot to learn from working this way. When the tone of the album comes from live performance, then what’s compelling about the work is the spirit, chemistry, and ability of the people behind it. The tracks on these albums aren’t perfect and I wouldn’t want them to be. They are, however, unquestionably human. If I want perfection, I’ll ask AI to do it for me.

This is not my first analog project. Almost every recording I’ve made over the last 20 years has involved a tape machine, to varying degrees. I find there is something so inspiring about having the limited parameters that come with analog, and I relish working in real time, away from the distractions of a computer screen. I find, as a listener, player, and producer, that analog can draw us into the present, into the heart of direct, physical, musical experience. In short, it is all about the playing and the sound.

The editing capabilities of the computer cannot be matched, and they have their place. But I believe that nothing compares to the sound and feeling of people making music in a room together. And nothing captures this quite like tape. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be real. And, besides, isn’t perfection boring?

It’s not every day that Eddie Van Halen comes to your house and shows you how to play Eruption. But this is exactly what happened to Dweezil Zappa – son of Frank Zappa – one fateful day as a 12-year-old.

As he reveals in a new interview with Marshall, Van Halen had just called up his dad and Frank Zappa invited him round. The anticipation was immense for the fledgling guitarist – who was already obsessed with Van Halen – and as soon as the legend walked through the door, Dweezil thought: “OK you’ve got to play Mean Street, you’ve got to play Eruption.”

• READ MORE: One of 500 guitars recently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was actually stolen from the Rolling Stones by drug dealers in 1972
  

Dweezil eventually did get to hear him play those songs, but “as soon as [Van Halen] plugged in” he performed a short lick – and for Zappa’s son this was a profound glimpse into his unique style. Van Halen showed Dweezil that “you can use open strings” and “saw how his fingers moved”.

The next thing he immediately picked up on was how Van Halen “had very specific looking hands”. “His hands looked different to other people’s,” Zappa says. “The way his pinkie operated – I was fascinated with seeing it up close.

“But when I saw him play Eruption or Mean Street, I at least knew the area on the neck to start looking for when I wanted to try and figure stuff out. And that opened up the whole world of guitar playing for me.”

This would not be the last time that Zappa would hang out with Van Halen – the two would become lifelong friends with a mutual respect for each other’s playing. Eventually, “in a complete role reversal” it would be Dweezil who would teach Van Halen how to play a Zappa riff he couldn’t wrap his head around.

Earlier this year, Dweezil shared the moment with 100 FM The Pike: “He came to one of my shows back in 2010 and we were playing the song St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Breakfast… After the show, he came up. He said, ‘What’s that ‘pancake song’? What are you playing there?’ And I had to play this really difficult part and show it to him on the guitar.”

The post “He had very specific-looking hands – they looked different to other people’s”: Dweezil Zappa recalls the time Eddie Van Halen visited his family home and taught him guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Back in May, it was revealed that over 500 of the “finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making” had been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including Leo Fender’s first guitar to pre-war Martin acoustics.

But it’s now come about that one of those 500 instruments was a 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul, which was stolen from The Rolling Stones as they recorded their 1972 album, Exile on Main St.

• READ MORE: Metallica lawyers take down US government drone video featuring Enter Sandman

As the story goes, the guitar – which was played by Keith Richards during the band’s 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as well as by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page in its lifetime – was one of nine guitars burgled from Villa Nellcôte, the mansion on the French Riviera where the Stones were recording Exile. 

A saxophone belonging to Bobby Keys and bass belonging to Bill Wyman were also taken.

According to Louder, the robbery was reportedly committed by local drug dealers to whom Keith Richards owed money.

But the 1959 sunburst Les Paul actually belonged to Mick Taylor, according to Taylor’s business manager Marlies Damming. She explains that Taylor bought the guitar from Richards in 1967 prior to joining John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers after the departure of Peter Green.

“There are numerous photos of Mick Taylor playing this Les Paul, as it was his main guitar until it disappeared,” she says. “The interesting thing about these vintage Les Pauls is that they are renowned for their flaming, which is unique, like a fingerprint.”

According to Messy Nessy, Villa Nellcôte provided the Stones privacy from the press as they were recording the album. “But with Richards’ ever-present entourage of hanger-ons and drug dealers, nearly half of the furniture was missing from the house by the time their stay was over,” the publication goes on.

“Villa Nellcôte was such an open house that, one day in September 1971, burglars walked out of the front gate with nine of Richards’s guitars, Bobby Keys saxophone and Bill Wyman’s bass in broad daylight while the occupants were watching television in the living room,” says Stones researcher Jack Vanderwyk.

Now, a source tells pagesix.com that Mick Taylor “never received compensation for the theft and is mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection”.

Guitar.com has reached out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for comment.

The post One of 500 guitars recently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was actually stolen from the Rolling Stones by drug dealers in 1972 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The US government was recently forced to delete a video it had posted on X promoting military drone technology, set to Metallica’s Enter Sandman as a backing track.

The original video – posted on Friday (11 July) – saw Metallica’s 1991 mega-hit playing in the background as defense secretary Pete Hegseth spoke about the drone-building capabilities of the US military.

But Metallica’s lawyers quickly got in touch with the government to have the video taken down, after Enter Sandman was apparently used without permission.

• READ MORE: Black Sabbath are done, but Tony Iommi is making another solo album: “I’m trying to finish what I started”

The video was quickly taken down and re-uploaded otherwise identically, but this time without Enter Sandman.

“This afternoon, representatives from X reached out to DoD [Department of Defense] regarding a video posted to our social media page and asked that the video be removed due to a copyright issue with the song Enter Sandman by Metallica,” a spokesperson for the DoD said [via Louder]. “The video has been taken down, corrected, and re-uploaded to our page.”

Metallica’s representatives also confirmed to Rolling Stone that the track had been used without the band’s permission.

Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance @DOGE pic.twitter.com/esaQtswwDb

— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) July 11, 2025

After a string of shows in the US for their ongoing M72 World Tour, Metallica recently paid tribute to their musical heroes Black Sabbath at the band’s monumental farewell show at Birmingham’s Villa Park.

Metallica were one of many metal juggernauts to appear on the day – also including Slayer, Pantera, Mastodon, Lamb of God and others – and all were granted relatively short set times.

Metallica’s set comprised six tracks in total, four of their own – Creeping Death, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Battery and Master of Puppets – and two Sabbath covers: Johnny Blade and Hole in the Sky.

For the latter – which happened to be the band’s opening track – guitarist Kirk Hammett wielded the CEO4, a one-of-a-kind SG guitar made by Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian. The axe is set to be auctioned for charity, and we expect it to command a pretty high sale price given its short history…

View a full list of Metallica’s upcoming tour dates at their official website.

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$699/£749, fractalaudio.com

Back in 2015, partly in response to those players reluctant to give up their tube amps but who wanted access to the vaunted suite of top quality effects available on their flagship product – the hugely popular Axe-Fx 2 – Fractal Audio developed the FX8: a multi-effects pedal that contained all their effects, but none of their amps and cabs.

• READ MORE: Chase Bliss Brothers AM review: “it could easily be the last drive pedal you ever buy”

Prior to this, the only way to access Fractal’s effects alone was to run the Axe-FX 2 through the effects loop of your amp – something that the likes of Steve Vai, Satriani and Mike Keneally were doing at the time – so it made sense to create a standalone product.

The FX8 was another hit for the brand, offering a plethora of all the usual delays, reverbs, modulations and drives in a comfortably compact package – no less than Guthrie Govan was a fan.

But that was a decade ago now, and in the ever-evolving world of high-end DSP effects, that’s an awful long time. Fractal has updated most of its line-up in the intervening 10 years, and now it’s the turn of the FX8, which is being replaced in the lineup by a unit that arrived at the tail end of last year, dubbed the VP4.

Fractal Audio VP4 – what is it?

Like its predecessor, the VP4 is a high-end multi-effects unit that is derived from the flagship Fractal product of the time – in this case that means the Axe-Fx 3. Now, the Axe-Fx 3 is no spring-chicken itself – it’s been around since 2018 – but as with all modern modelling tech, the brand has been regularly supporting the product with new firmware updates, tones and tweaks ever since, so it’s bang up to date in that regard.

As people seem less and less inclined to make use of football pitch-sized pedalboards, it seems that modern manufacturers and users place footprint above a lot of things. So the VP4 is considerably smaller than the FX8 – it’s tiny in comparison really – but that does mean you’re now working with half the number of footswitches.

Just four footswitches here also means that you can only run four effects simultaneously, but as with the FX, you do get the full suite of pre- and post-amp effects including drives, delays, modulators, reverbs, and everything in between.

We also have a myriad of connection possibilities covering buffered analogue bypass, SPDIF digital I/O, MIDI I/O, and USB audio/MIDI capabilities. All the fun of the fair that you’d expect from a premium effects unit here in 2025.

Fractal Audio VP4 – do I place it in my effects loop or in front of the amp?

All the connectivity, plus the various pre- and post-amp effects on offer does present an interesting question out of the door… where does it live?

The easiest option is to run VP4 effects through the front of the amp, but what if you just want your drives up the front and your effects loop is the preferred destination for modulation and echo/reverb pedals?

The VP4’s various ins and outs allow you to do this courtesy of what’s known as the ‘four cable method’. This – surprise, surprise – uses four cables to connect the VP4 to the front of the amp and its effects. This enables us to run some effects before the amp (generally drives, pitch shifters, and wahs) and others through the amp’s effects loop – most commonly delay and modulation effects.

Unfortunately, this method is notorious for generating ground loop noise, which is a nightmare to eliminate. Some manage it using a hum-eliminator, but in my experience this slightly affects the tone in specific frequency ranges. We’ll see if the VP4 is similarly afflicted.

Fractal Audio VP4 – usability

The most important thing with any deep and involved multi-effects unit is the ease of navigation. The unit’s colour screen makes this a pretty straightforward process, but if you prefer to do your preset-sculpting on a desktop editor, the Fractal one is both easy to use, stable and in-depth – though you’ll have to connect it to your laptop via USB-C.

There are 50 presets loaded on board, all named to give some sort of indication of the sonic services they provide i.e. ‘Austin Stevie’. Loading up the default patch gives us four effects or ‘blocks’: a drive, chorus, delay, and reverb. Navigating to the routing menu we can select how we’d like to run each of these effects: ‘pre’ (front of amp) or ‘post’ (effects loop). We select the ‘1 pre’, ‘3 post’ option as we want to run the overdrive in front of the amp and the rest through the effects loop.

Once you’ve set up the preset, you can determine how you want the footswitches to behave. Currently I’m in ‘preset’ mode which means I’m able to use them to select different presets (banks of four pedals). There are a total of 104 presets available in 26 banks, which can be navigated by holding down one of the footswitches. Each preset has its own noise gate, EQ and volume levels, meaning that you can set each differently.

There is also the ‘scenes’ option which allows us four different configurations of each block. For example, in my current Scene A I have a TS808 in the drive block, a small hall in the reverb block, and a tape delay in the delay block.

Switching to Scene B (there’s also C and D) can utilise a different overdrive in the drive block and change to a plate reverb in the reverb block. Each scene can be configured differently and assigned to one of the four footswitches.

My preference, however, is to use the ‘pedal’ view whereby you can engage each effect using the corresponding footswitch.

Fractal Audio VP4 – sounds

To get things started, I set the VP4 up in four-cable mode and upon releasing the amp from standby mode, the first big surprise is, well… silence. As alluded to above, interference and ground loop hum is the bane of this kind of setup, but not so here. I can’t emphasise what a big deal this is for touring and gigging guitarists, and it’s certainly a first for me.

One of the biggest bugbears of multi-effects units is often the drive sounds – going all the way back to the first Line 6 POD, people have always complained that digital recreations don’t get the feel and response of a drive pedal right, and despite huge strides in technology in the last 20-plus years, that perception often holds.

The VP4 clearly wants to change that perception as it’s stocked with emulations of pretty much every classic pedal imaginable, from the Boss DS-1 to modern boutique stunners like the Vemuram Jan Ray.

Now, as something of a drive obsessive, I am fortunate enough to own a great many of these modelled pedals, so why not A/B them to see if this thing really does have the juice in the dirt stakes?

First up is the venerable Boss SD-1 – a bona-fide classic that pairs well with my EL34-powered Suhr Badger – and first impressions are impressive. It’s driving the amp in the same manner of an SD-1 – boosting the mids, smoothing out some of the harsher high-end frequencies and focussing the low end.

Engaging my own SD-1 with the same settings, the VP4 sounds very slightly brighter; however by turning its tone down a touch and adding a tiny fraction more gain the sound is near-identical.

Next up is the DOD Overdrive/Preamp 250, and it’s the same result – the tiniest of adjustments on the VP4 once again leads to a sound that’s almost impossible to differentiate. Another surprise is the notable lack of hiss when engaging the VP4 drive compared to its analogue counterpart.

It really is an impressive feat to accurately model analogue gear, retain its qualities but eliminate or diminish the more extraneous noise that none of us want – and it does it with so many classic pedals here. But enough about overdrives! What are the other effects like?

Delays and reverbs are our next stop and there’s a huge selection of both with the VP4. The tape delays are particularly rewarding, and I can see it in real-time replacing my new UA Orion tape delay pedal, with the ‘worn tape’ preset proving especially inspiring.

There are over 70 different reverbs with multiple parameters that allow you to dial in preferred pre-delay, decay, mix, etc. There are some hidden delights on board too such as the mysteriously named ‘Recording studio C’, which is a tight shimmery reverb ostensibly based on some very expensive analogue studio gear.

Fractal Audio VP4 – should I buy one?

Although Fractal will forever be synonymous with its incredible digital amp modelling capabilities, those in the know have been equally as desirous of their effects suite. The VP4 represents their most compact and inexpensive method of providing them for use with tube amps.

Onboard are literally thousands of pounds worth of unerringly accurate models of the greatest overdrive pedals ever created, along with studio quality modulation, pitch shifting, compressors and other effects.

The VP4 offers more than that though – it provides this accuracy without the addition of unwanted noise. And I’m not talking of the analogue noise that many of us have affection for – no, it’s the hiss from a drive pedal or the hum from the four-cable method.

While it’s obviously not a cheap thing, it starts to feel generous when you calculate what you’re getting for your money – you could easily sell a handful of pedals and take a dive with this, even if you’re wary of multi-effects in general.

And if you are apprehensive about taking the plunge into a modeller, my advice is simple – try one of these, you won’t be disappointed. It’s the best digital multi-effects unit I’ve ever used.

Fractal VP4 – alternatives

Much like the VP4, Line 6’s HX Effects ($549.99/£499) was designed to usurp your pedal collection and integrate with your favourite amp. Slightly larger than the VP4 but featuring eight footswitches and the ability to run nine effects simultaneously, its 213 different effect models make it vast in scope.

Not quite as guitar-centric is the Eventide H90 ($899/£799) a company who have led the way for decades with studio quality reverb, pitch shifting, and delays. The H90 packages many of these classics in a very petite unit including reverb and delays galore with some superb modulation and industry-defining pitch shift capabilities.

It would be remiss not to mention one of the first manufactures of multi-effects pedals, Boss, who still provide a huge range, one of which is their flagship GT-1000CORE ($659.99/£599) which features the full suite of their famous effects and access to virtual amps and cabs too, allowing up to 24 simultaneous effects blocks.

The post Fractal Audio VP4 Virtual Pedalboard review: “you could sell your pedal collection and replace it with this” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

​One of the reasons I focus on adult students these days rather than kids comes down to one basic fact:  Adults are much more likely to put in productive practice time compared to youngsters. This not always the case, of course. I can cite many examples of kids I’ve taught as young as 7 or 8 who succeeded spectacularly on the guitar but they are by far the exception. In a macro sense it’s really not their fault. The primary learning experience they have is school where the learning process is fairly straightforward, at least in the primary grades. When confronted with a problem or task their results quantifiable; they are either right or wrong. Learning a musical instrument is almost always not…..that! 
You could make an argument that sports teach the value of practice and I totally agree, but there are other factors involved such as speed, agility and the natural tendency for a kid to compare their success to that of others. And these days the vast majority of kids’ experience in sports is in the organized variety. Rather than just having a pick-up game on a sand lot somewhere without the influence of adults who stress the “right” way to play, those sand lot games are great for learning to play in a relaxed manner without the potentially overbearing critique of some authority figure.
 
The huge gray area between failure and success is something many kids have never dealt with, especially with the emergence of “helicopter moms” (and dads!) who are devoted to making their child believe they have succeeded in tasks when that success is the result of those helicopter pilots smoothing the path so much that their child never has the opportunity to fail – and learn from their mistakes. 
 
In some instances, being less than successful on the guitar in the short term has to do with a kid’s perception of the passage of time. In the beginning, to say to a child – you must press down on sharp objects as hard as you can and yes, that will hurt, but in a month or so you’ll be able to play something that sounds pretty good – is a big, big “ask.” It’s all about faith. Faith that the teacher is asking you to do something that will yield results in spite of very little perceived progress on a day-to-day basis. I have many tricks and suggestions that will shorten the path somewhat but ultimately, I’m talking about the absolute necessity of regular practice. But all of us (adults included!) can find a reason to avoid tasks that really need to be dealt with; look at the paint chipping off my house for a prime example! 
 
Encouraging success and being a cheerleader are big parts of my job and sometimes I literally lose sleep trying to figure out how I can improve the playing experience for certain students who clearly WANT to play well but are very frustrated. But virtually all my adult students over the many decades I’ve been teaching understand that faith thing. When they do see and hear positive results it inspires more practice, which is a gratifying thing to behold. It’s a circle: Productive practice yields more positive results, which makes the student practice even more resulting in even more success, which makes the student want to practice more! What a wonderful circle that is!
 
Right now, I have a student who is one of the best examples of the art of perseverance I’ve ever seen. He is well into his “golden years” (please explain to me just what’s so “golden” about them?!). He’s been with me for about eight months and had limited experience on guitar before he started his lessons, enough to be able to employ mostly correct technique most of the time and a good collection of standard chords. Unfortunately, as with many of us at an advanced age he suffers from hand tremors that make formation of chords and rapid changes a much, much bigger challenge than what I usually see even with older students. But in spite of that I see more and more remarkable progress. I’m in awe of him. His is a perfect example of the benefit of committed practice. And….he’s doing this with a beautiful classical guitar that like most nylon-string classical guitars has a much wider and thicker neck than a typical steel string acoustic guitar, which make his accomplishments all the more admirable. Best of all, he is a truly nice guy and I always look forward to his lesson.
 
As I’ve mentioned before in this space, being able to take pride in even the smallest victories is hugely important. Remember: ALL accomplishments should be celebrated. Finally able to get a decent sound from a barre chord? Give yourself a virtual pat on the back because you deserve it! 
 
Another element that has a definite impact on how a student progresses is their exposure to music throughout their life. If music is part of a person’s regular daily routine, even just playing music on the car radio, you’re learning things on a subliminal level that can be brought out with the help of a good teacher. Having relatives or close friends who play is another huge plus. As I’ve written in this space many times, pretty much my entire family on my dad’s side were professional musicians going back many generations so my exposure to both listening and playing music was a given. 
 
Sometimes I get students with similar backgrounds but that is not usually the case. It takes three or four lessons for me to get a good idea of the direction we should take. The most important aspect at that point is helping the budding guitarist find gratification and pleasure in their playing as soon as possible. I can use just about any form of popular music to demonstrate the nuts and bolts of playing and this is why I give all my new students a sheet I call my “student profile” that I ask them to fill out and return to me at their next lesson. The last question on the profile is: Who are some of your favorite musicians and what is your favorite type of music? This helps me steer them into something they’ll enjoy practicing. All I ask is that they keep an open mind and avoid classifying certain types of music as good or bad. Sure, we all have preferences that determine what we’ll lean toward in terms of style and genre. But I firmly believe a student can learn valuable things from just about any style, things that can be applied to their preferred type of music. It took me decades to have that realization and I so wish my mind was more open in my early stages of learning to play guitar. I’m absolutely certain I’d be twice the player I am today if I’d resisted the trap of deeming some music good and some bad.
 
 
Don’t be afraid to ask yourself just why you want to play the guitar, and ask that question frequently because your answers may very well change as you progress. Be gracious about positive comments from listeners but also do not take criticism too seriously because 99% of the time that criticism is only in jest, even if it doesn’t feel that way when you hear it. In the immortal words of Mr. Dylan: “keep on keepin’ on!”
 
Peace & good music,
Gene