Tip sheet

What was your first guitar? I was around nine when I saw the Rolling Stones and the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was instantly attracted to George Harrison and Keith Richards’ guitar playing, so

THERE ARE VARYING degrees of guitar hero, but Carlos Santana is a name you’d expect to find near the top of any list. Like Jimi Hendrix, Brian May or Slash, Santana has transcended guitar music and pe

LAST MONTH, WE delved into the all-important topic of developing solid pick-hand timing when strumming. To me, that’s where the groove is: the pick hand is the timekeeper, and I’ve spent a lot of time

AL JARDINE WILL be the first to tell you he didn’t play much guitar for the Beach Boys in the Sixties. Early Beach Boys albums — like Surfin’ Safari (1962) and Surfin’ U.S.A. (1963) — feature plenty o

LAST YEAR, IN the middle of a solo on stage, Ally Venable had a revelation. “I was playing so many shows that it started to become kind of a monotonous blur,” she says. “I noticed I was playing to my

Fender’s Custom Shop had a precarious start in the mid-1980s, but the story of its formative years is full of big ideas, some bizarre instruments, and a queue of famous guitarists