25 new guitarists you should hear in 2024
Plus, a 10 minute intro to CAGED
This week’s issue is short, but sweet! Usually I throw in the kitchen sink when sharing awesome, lessons, reviews, and more. This week, we have 8 links, but they’re all awesome! I reviewed 2 leather straps from StrapGraphics, Molly Miller gives us a 10 minute breakdown of CAGED, Billy Howerdel shows us some of his most iconic riffs, and more. Let’s jump right into this week’s issue!
This week’s guitar links!
- StrapGraphics Guitar Straps Review - Nate over at StrapGraphics was super easy to deal with. He sent me two, custom designed, leather guitar straps. One was wider, which I'm going to use for my 7 string, and one was more traditionally sized, which is going on my Tele right away. If you're looking for a strap that'll make you stand out, and is made well (right here in the U.S.), you should check them out. Their strap designer on their site was a lot of fun to play with. Check out my review post for more photos and thoughts on why they're great.
- How the CAGED system opens up your fretboard - Molly Miller is one of my favorite guitar educators, and she's without a doubt one of the leading teachers who talks about CAGED. This 10 minute video from PickUpMusic breaks down CAGED in 10 minutes! CAGED is just one of many ways to learn the fretboard, but I think it's very effective. PickUp’s site has so many great educators. If you want to help out what I do here, you can use my link to their site when signing up.
- Why Little Wing seems IMPOSSIBLE to play - Paul Davids is back with another quirky, well produced video. This time he goes deep on breaking down the intro to Hendrix's “Little Wing” intro. I'm a sucker for these types of videos - I wish there was a service that just showed these types of guitar videos 24/7. 🙂
- Riff Lords: Billy Howerdel of A Perfect Circle - Growing up, I was such a huge fan of A Perfect Circle. Their songs were awesome, and the production of their albums was always huge and atmospheric. It was so cool, all these years later, to see Billy Howerdel of APC break down some of his most iconic riffs. From what I remember, Billy is using one of his Les Pauls, directly into a Fractal Axe FX (which you can see in the background of the video). Which gives me hope for my own guitar tones.
- In The Room With Joe Satriani and Steve Vai - We've been talking a lot about Vai and Satriani lately, because not only are they criss crossing America on tour, they're also coming out with music that features both of them on the same track. Both of them sat down with Rick Beato, for a guitar love-fest. On the same day, Guitar Player had a short interview clip from Vai, where he talks about the most important note he ever played. You can check that out here - I love how he combined both his hands AND feet for this one.
- From Child Prodigy to Guitar Legend: The Eric Gales Interview - Eric Gales is a beast on guitar. He caught up with Marty Schwartz who interviewed him, where the two discuss Eric's early influences, his playing on the road, developing his own style, and "playing his ass off".
- “The future of players and creators, we're thrilled by the creativity and innovation they bring to the scene”: These are the 25 guitar-playing acts Fender thinks you should hear in 2024 - If there's one thing I adore about music, it's finding out how new players are making our small set of notes into something new and exciting. Fender just released their “Fender Next Class of 2024”, which features 25 artists from all around the world, that they think you should listen to. If you head to the post I'm linking to here, you can check out a playlist with one song from each artist, which makes it super easy to get into some great, new music.