Build the vehicle

AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT of playing music is being aware of “where” you’re playing in the beat and how it relates to the groove being laid down by the rhythm section. This concept can be broken up into th

THIS MONTH, I’D like to talk about the paramount importance of the right, or pick, hand — how it’s the keeper of time and the thing that gives us the groove while we play. I’ll demonstrate some exampl

Amid the mayhem of his European tour, Joe takes time out to give us a guided tour around his 2025 live gear, delivers the lowdown on some of his more storied guitars, and tells us why his mighty multi-amp rig has to run at breaking point in order to make the earth move and those riffs resonate…

A BIG PART of blues is playing over a “shuffle” groove — a triplet-driven swing-eighths feel with a backbeat (accents on beats 2 and 4) — at various tempos. There are many great shuffle-based tunes. A

SEEMINGLY OUT OF nowhere, the Darkness swooped out of Suffolk, England, and onto the international music scene in 2003 with their high-voltage debut, Permission to Land. At a time when hipster bands i

IN MY PREVIOUS “Blues You Can Use” columns, I focused on what I consider to be essential rhythm guitar and accompanying single-note patterns that exemplify Chicago-style blues guitar, as heard in the