Performance notes

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

The month’s best guitar music – a hand-picked selection of the finest fretwork on wax

It’s standard to link Brothers In Arms retrospectively – and somewhat haughtily – with helping usher in the CD era and its accompanying baggage: MTV, Sloane Rangers, yuppies and the progression from M

The instrument that featured on the cover of Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms is still very much in use.

I’ve never had a CD player.” From a member of Dire Straits, this sounds like sacrilege. Their fifth album Brothers In Arms was synonymous with the rise of compact discs: one of the first major release

A monthly look at must-hear artists from all corners of the guitar world, from the roots of their sound to the tracks that matter most