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

ONE OF THE coolest and most badass-sounding things a guitarist can do is double a long, complex bass line an octave higher. This was my approach for the song “Dean Town,” which I recorded with Vulfpec

Martin Barre MCNIDDER & GRACE

Praise be! Prog’s most devout figure, Neal Morse, gets the gang back together, dials back the sermonising and reaches for the stars on his band’s sparkling first album in five years.

ON THE SURFACE, guitar trends in 1986 looked downright wild and perverse — a weird parade of shred-happy virtuosos, anthemic power pop heroes, dirtbag metalheads and eccentric alt-rock outsiders. But

ALTHOUGH HE WAS 84 and had been ill for several years, the passing of soul-funk-R&B legend and general jack-of-all-trades Steve Cropper still stings — a lot. Perhaps it’s because Cropper, despite his