The big picture

WHEN I AM composing and arranging music, I like to think as an orchestrator. As the guitarist, I try to represent just about everything that’s in the arrangement — the drum syncopations, horn parts, k

THIS MONTH, I’D like to go over the namesake song of my column, “Hard Wired,” which appears on my self-titled 2023 album. I wrote this song with my good friend Tyler Bryant, and it grew out of a jam s

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

AN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL element in blues guitar is the turnaround. It is a basic function of blues music that the turnaround happens at the end of the progression and flips it over back to the beginni

ANOTHER OF THE many Gibson guitars that I love (are there any that I don’t?) is the ES-350. This is a semi-hollow “jazz box” type of guitar, deeper than a ES-335 but still kind of skinny when compared

IF ONLY HALF the rumors about him are true, Ozzy Osbourne should be dead. Yet, after 21 years of twisted public behavior, the man who brought you songs like “Paranoid,” “Bark at the Moon” and “Childre