Blues headlines

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

LAST MONTH, I talked about how I devised the primary riffs in the title track to my 2023 album Hard Wired, which is played in drop D tuning (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E). I’d now like to share some

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

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

Decorated with accolades from the Grammys to the Academy Of Country Music, the legendary Nashville sessioneer has played on over a thousand records. Here, he shares his go-to gear, why he surrendered to the metronome, and how “letting the emotion escape” is the key to nailing that first take