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

On entering a room containing a piano, what pianist doesn’t turn white at the command, ‘You can play – let’s hear you!’ You thought you were visiting friends, not giving a performance, so of course yo

A STAPLE OF many great country and country rock songs — and, in the hands of Jimmy Page and Albert Lee, rock songs — is the sound of the B-bender. For those unfamiliar, a B-bender is a string-pulling

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

Fondly remembered this month...

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