Last week I spent a whole day at the Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame and frankly I was blown away by the genre cross-overs I saw on display in the various exhibits. Of course as a blues rocker I was quite aware that Southern rockers such as Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers had history […]
The St.Marys Mardi Gras Festival 2017 attracted many folks from South Georgia and Northeast Florida to a day of sun-filled, waterfront partying. Starting out the morning with some health related activities, at 10am the Parade took off and by noon everyone was ready for music and food. As always Jerry Lee’s Music gets involved in […]
After the previous introductions to finger picking and flatpicking techniques, as a beginning string instrument player you need to learn how to strum with proper accents and smoothness, in order to give your playing personality. Our best advice to make quick progress would be to take at least a couple of lessons from master players […]
The guitarists’ quest for tone is never-ending. But it’s more than just what an instrument is made of, but how it’s played and even what the playing “tools” are made of. How you strike the strings is what makes your sound different from the sound of the next player. Last time, we highlighted fingerstyle picking. […]
Have you ever wondered how two people can play the exact same guitar but get different sounds? That’s because there’s a lot more to tone than just the instrument itself. In fact, some players can make a “mediocre” guitar sound amazing because of their technique and musicality, while a beginner can struggle to get much […]
What are the most important parts of an acoustic guitar that contribute to its sound? The strings? The body shape? Certainly these affect the tone, but perhaps the most critical is the tonewood used to build the instrument. By the amount of paint and lacquer slapped on by some manufacturers, it might seem that wood […]
Resonator guitar history From the soul-piercing wail of Delta blues to the homespun sounds of bluegrass masters to the edgy tones of modern Americana, resonator guitars have been lending their distinctive voice to pop for nearly 90 years. Or should we say distinctive “voices.” To savvy players, painting all resonators with the same brush is […]
A properly setup guitar can mean the difference between an OK guitar, and a great guitar. I believe that pretty much any guitar has the potential to be a great guitar, as long as it has been set up correctly. A lot of beginning guitar players who are really struggling to find the motivation to […]
When choosing between solid vs laminate wood acoustic guitars, there are a number of considerations. Almost all acoustic guitars are made of various types of wood. A small number of manufacturers use composite materials, fiberglass, or carbon fiber (either for the back and sides or the entire structure), but since the vast majority of instruments you’ll […]
Previously, we talked about why it’s important to not cheap out on your first guitar, but to make an investment in your guitar-playing future. This can sound like a scary prescription, though, because guitars can range from $50 to tens of thousands… and even into the millions for collectible axes. So how do you find […]