A CHIEF CONSIDERATION when playing with a slide is the tuning. Many of our favorite slide players — Elmore James, Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Derek Trucks — play slide almost exclusively in an open t

CRAFTING AN APPEALING guitar solo for a song is always a creative challenge. There are many different approaches one can take: Do I follow the chord changes so that the notes line up perfectly with th

AS I STATED last month, my favorite band line-up is the guitar-bass-drums power trio. With the guitar being the primary chordal and melodic instrument in the ensemble, there are challenges inherent in

FEW GUITARISTS HAVE shaped progressive and avant-garde music as profoundly as Robert Fripp. With King Crimson, Brian Eno, David Bowie and others, Fripp perpetually reinvented the six-stringed wheel wi

IT’S WIDELY KNOWN that Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were tough taskmasters when it came to the studio, particularly in terms of their session guitarists. The most famous example of thei

Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues player – with full audio examples and backing tracks