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Articles by Greg Ruby
Review: The Collings DS1 A Hill Country Is a Different Kind of Dreadnought
A 12-fret dreadnought might not be a guitar you think you need. It's a format that sits outside most players' comfort zones, especially for those accustomed to 14-fret standards. But Collings has a habit of reexamining familiar ideas, and the company's DS1 A HC, a recent addition to the Hill Country series, makes a convincing case for the virtues of the 12-fret dreadnought design.
Essential Tips: How to Prepare and Bring Your Best to Every Performance
Congrats! You got the call for the big gig you’ve been waiting for. You’ve put in the practice and earned this moment. But before you pop the cork on the prosecco, it’s worth having a game plan so you can perform—and feel—your best. Whether you’re a freelancing sideperson, a member of a touring band, or a bandleader, the basic responsibilities are the same: communicate clearly, be a good human, and play your best.
Learn to Strum and Sing Fats Wallers’ Classic “Ain’t Misbehavin’”
Fats Waller was a towering figure in American popular music and one of the most charismatic voices of the Harlem Renaissance. A brilliant pianist, composer, and entertainer, Waller was among the first Black jazz musicians to gain mainstream popularity in the United States. He wrote and co-wrote hundreds of songs—many of which have become fixtures in the Great American Songbook. Chief among them is “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” penned in collaboration with composer Harry Brooks and lyricist Andy Razaf.
How to Create a Solo Using Scale Notes and Chord Shapes
Say you’re sitting in a circle at a jam session, and someone kicks off a nice, simple song with a repetitive progression and just a few chords—easy to strum along with. Then after a few verses and choruses, it’s time for instrumental breaks. Wouldn’t it be cool to take one, improvising a solo for a cycle or two of the chord progression? It would be cool, and you can do it even if you usually stick to rhythm playing. All you need are some straightforward ingredients that are right at your fingertips.
Review: The Iris Guitar Company MS-00 Is a Custom-Made Boutique Flattop with Vintage Flair and High-End Tonewoods
Luthier Adam Buchwald founded Iris Guitar Company in 2018 with a clear vision: to build instruments with custom-shop quality using smart, streamlined construction. Sharing a workshop with its bespoke sibling brands, Circle Strings and Fairbanks Guitars , Iris draws on the same skilled team of builders. It also benefits from direct access to exceptional tonewoods, thanks to Buchwald’s ownership of the guitar-making supply company Allied Lutherie.
Six Ways to Master the Musical Alphabet and Build a Deeper Understanding of Your Fretboard
The joy I felt strumming my first open G chord was liberating. My fingers fell into place, and the sound was big, bold, and powerful. At 12, I was convinced I could play guitar quickly and easily. Soon, I was switching between open chords, leaving behind the formality of seven years of piano lessons—I was a guitarist! Who needed written music or note names?
Take a Guitar Lesson with Margaret Glaspy
Singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy, the cover subject of the September/October 2024 issue of AG, demonstrates a handful of the guitar parts from her latest EP—and her first solo acoustic effort—The Sun Doesn’t Think. The examples in the lesson are excerpted from a longer conversation between Glaspy and Acoustic Guitar, which you can read in its entirety here. The guitar parts on the EP are interesting in that many are deceptively straightforward.
Review: L.R. Baggs’ AEG-1 Is a Stage-Ready Acoustic-Electric with Innovative Construction and a Finely Tuned Pickup System
Amplifying an acoustic guitar can be a daunting task, often complicated by the very qualities that make a guitar sound great acoustically. After tackling this challenge for 50 years with a popular line of acoustic pickups, L.R. Baggs has taken a different approach: designing a guitar from the ground up for amplified performance.
Feel the Swing-Unlock the Secrets to This Essential Rhythmic Technique
In the late 1930s, 16-year-old Barney Kessel met his musical hero, swing guitar legend Charlie Christian. When Kessel asked Christian for advice, Christian said, “The main thing is to concentrate on swing first. Then, if you can make some interesting harmony after you know how to swing, that’s fine. But to begin with, swing alone is enough to get you by.” Evidently, Kessel took Christian’s advice, as he went on to become a jazz guitar legend in his own right. But what did Christian mean by swing?
Review: The Takamine FT340 BS—a Quality Modern Dreadnought Primed for the Stage or Studio | Acoustic Guitar
Back in 1979, Takamine revolutionized the amplification of the acoustic guitar with the introduction of the Palathetic electronics system. Using six separate and individually shielded piezo-electric elements, the pickup and onboard preamp gave acoustic guitarists who needed to plug in greater control of tone, as well as the ability to play at louder volumes with less feedback and improved clarity.
Review: Collings Debuts New Series with the Striking OM1A Hill Country
“It’s just a guitar—simply in its purest form, open and woody,” said Steve Nall, director of manufacturing for Collings Guitars, during a recent phone conversation about the new model he had sent me to review. Officially debuting this fall, the guitar is part of the Hill Country series—the first new line of Collings steel-strings since the Traditional series was introduced in 2016.
Sharpen Your Rhythm Guitar Skills by Learning to Read Rhythmic Notation
Playing in the pocket, or keeping consistent time, is an essential musical skill for all guitarists regardless of style or context. Yet, I have found that a basic understanding of rhythmic notation and its application to strumming can be a challenge to many guitarists. That’s a real shame because of the benefits it can give to your overall musicianship. Notation is simply a code of instructions—once you understand the code, it becomes much easier to know what to do and when to do it.
Review: The Martin GPCE Inception Maple Looks to the Future of Tonewoods and Guitar Design
Ever since C.F. Martin & Co. first set up shop in America nearly 200 years ago, its instruments have been the gold standard for acoustic guitars. For a legacy company such as Martin to name a new model Inception, one should consider what this might be the beginning of. With a continuing decline in the availability of traditional hardwoods due to tropical deforestation, the guitar industry faces the existential crisis of how to build high-quality instruments from sustainable woods.
Review: Preston Thompson’s PKT D-EIS Is a Flatpicker’s Dream and More
Back in the 1980s, Hot Rize guitarist Charles Sawtelle gave luthier Preston Thompson permission to access and measure his vast collection of rare prewar guitars, and thus began a collaboration that would bring Thompson great renown and respect in the acoustic guitar world. From his shop in Oregon, Thompson built an international following and gathered a team of artisans who continue to build fine acoustic instruments to his specs even after his passing in 2019.
Expand Your Harmonic Vocabulary Using Django Chord Voicings
Django Reinhardt had an unparalleled technique stemming from the most unfortunate of circumstances. On October 26, 1928, at the age of 18, the young guitarist returned home from a gig. As he entered his caravan, a candle fell over and set the place ablaze. While Reinhardt and his wife escaped, much of his body was badly burned. Against the odds, he recovered, but it took over a year until he began playing the guitar again.
Review: The Córdoba Stage Is a Gig-Ready Nylon-String that Plays Like an Electric Guitar
Córdoba Guitars is synonymous with high-quality, nylon-string classical and flamenco guitars, many of them offered at affordable price points. One of the Southern California company’s latest creations, the Stage model, delivers build quality and innovation in an instrument that could complement the quiver of any versatile guitarist.
How to Use Rest Strokes to Improve Your Flatpicking Technique—and Your Guitar Sound | Acoustic Guitar
The rest stroke—similar to the fingerstyle approach used by classical guitarists—is a plectrum technique in which each downstroke lands on an adjacent string rather than passing over it. This action directs more energy into the sounding string, which can have notable improvements of volume and tone on an acoustic guitar.
Lessons | Acoustic Guitar
About Acoustic Guitar lessons. Learning to play the guitar takes more than just figuring out what fingers go on which frets and which strings to pluck or pick. You need to absorb these mechanics, for sure, but you also need to know how different techniques fit together and how you can put them to use in service of making music with soul and spirit.
Video Lesson: How you can Visualize and Play Chords Up the Neck
From the March/April 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby How do you study to play chords “up the neck” to be able to study to play a chord-melody?
How to Hold Down the Harmony on Guitar in Tricky Chord-Melody Arrangements
Subscribe to Acoustic Guitar on Hey, fellow guitarist! Did you know 99.9% of visitors to this site will scroll past this message without making a contribution? Many plan to pledge later, but then forget. So we're asking you to give just $1 (or whatever you can afford) right now. From the January/February 2022 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby When playing chord-melody style guitar, sometimes you’re not sure which chord to use when the melody isn’t a chord tone or moves too quickly.
Learn Chord-Melody Techniques from Jazz Guitarist Eddie Lang
Subscribe to Acoustic Guitar on From the November/December 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby If you have a good grasp on some some rudimentary chord-melody concepts on acoustic guitar, here’s a way to add to this foundation. In this lesson we will borrow ideas from jazz great Eddie Lang for some new techniques and textures, then apply them to the verse of the old standard “After You’ve Gone.” Try Some Bass Runs Eddie Lang is considered the father of jazz guitar.
Video Lesson: Turn Any Song into a Chord-Melody Solo
Subscribe to Acoustic Guitar on From the July/August 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby THE PROBLEM: You want to create a chord-melody arrangement based on your favorite rendition of a song but don’t know where to begin. THE SOLUTION: Adapt a transcription by using chord-melody voicings for the longer melody notes and thirds or single notes on the quicker passages.
Video Lesson: Learn to Fill the Gaps in Any Chord-Melody Guitar Arrangement
Subscribe to Acoustic Guitar on From the May/June 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby THE PROBLEM You don’t know how to fill the space during a long note or extended rest during a chord-melody arrangement. THE SOLUTION Use tremolo picking on long notes and passing chords over multiple measures of rest.
Video Lesson: How to Visualize and Play Chords Up the Neck
Subscribe to Acoustic Guitar on From the March/April 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby THE PROBLEM: How do you learn to play chords “up the neck” in order to learn to play a chord-melody?
Video Lesson: Chord-Melody Made Easy(ish) on Acoustic Guitar
Subscribe to Acoustic Guitar on From the January/February 2021 issue of Acoustic Guitar | By Greg Ruby THE PROBLEM You want to learn chord-melody-style playing but aren’t quite sure where to begin. THE SOLUTION Invest a little bit of time learning the inversions for a dominant-seventh chord, and the classic jazz standard “Whispering” should fall right under your fingers. EXPLORE THE ROOTS OF CHORD-MELODY From roughly the 1920s through the 1940s, guitarists made their bread in rhythm sections.
5 Zika cases found in Miami Beach
Greg Ruby’s Gems – Event News, by Greg Ruby: Spanning the globe to bring you the latest information on event & meeting planning, trade shows, tourism, venues and sustainability. Please enable Javascript to correctly display the content on Paper.li
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