General Interest

The easiest thing to do when you’ve built the kind of massive online audience that Chris Buck has is to make it your job. The 34-year-old Welsh guitarist has over 400,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and plenty of worse guitar players with smaller followings are doing very well for themselves by leaning into the influencer life… but Buck is built differently in that regard.

• READ MORE: “It’s weird because none of us are joyous… at all” Inhaler are making brighter music in darker times

Instead of tacking into the wind of the Instagram guitarist, Buck has committed fully to making a success of his band, Cardinal Black – a refreshingly old-school approach to ‘making it’ and one that seems to be bearing real fruit on the band’s second album, Midnight At The Valencia.

“To us this record has come to represent the idea of putting 10,000 long hard hours honing your craft as a musician,” states Chris Buck. “All the years being in function bands, hard toil in rough clubs and weddings, playing as a band growing up together musically and personally. These are definite themes both lyrically and musically that really tie the album together along the theme of ‘the journey’ and how we got to this point.”

It’s been quite a journey for Buck and the band – they first formed over a decade ago, then broke up after one EP to pursue other projects, before deciding to come back together during the first lockdown and make a proper go of it. In the years since they’ve built a strong following across the globe, toured with Myles Kennedy, and even played the Royal Albert Hall in support of Peter Frampton.

All the while Buck’s reputation as one of the finest players around has grown and grown – but when it comes to Cardinal Black, he’s more determined than ever to ensure that his guitar work doesn’t overshadow his bandmates.

“I wanted to focus on writing parts to compliment the song” he notes, “Rather than just blazing away on solos – although there’s still plenty of that live! It’s a much more obviously personal record compared to the first one, it’s representative of our lives, becoming parents, losing family members, good and bad times,” notes Chris. “In a band you spend so much time together and have so many shared experiences. It is such a long journey. Adam (drums), Tom (lead vocals) and I have been doing this for 15 years, I know those boys as well as I know my own wife!”

Tone Hound

As anyone who has watched Chris’s popular Friday Fretworks videos on YouTube will be well aware of Chris’s passion for quality vintage guitars, and recording the album at the well-stocked Powerplay Studios in Switzerland allowed him to sample their dizzying array on in-house gear including a ’63 Jazzmaster, ’62 Strat and a ’62 SG Junior, all running into a pair of 60s Fender amps. It was quite a contrast from Cardinal Black’s first album in 2021.

“The first record we recorded on a bit of a shoestring budget with friends loaning us guitars, amps, and decent mics,” Buck recalls. “So it was nice to go into this record and have anything we could ever dream of at our disposal. Vintage drum kits, Moog synths, Mellotrons, Hammond Organs, all recorded through Stevie Nicks’ old Neve desk – dream territory, such an inspiring environment to be in, just so conducive to being creative!”

There was one guitar – with one very famous owner – however, that really stood out in the process.

“On the solo for the track Morning Light and the entirety of the track Your Spark (Blows Me to Pieces) I used a 1956 Les Paul Junior that Powerplay owner and album producer Cyrill Camenzind told me used to belong to Keith Richards,” he reveals. “Apparently, it spent some time up with Sonic Youth before ending up at the Powerplay. It’s a great sounding guitar, a bit idiosyncratic, a couple of setup issues you had to play around, but awesome sounding guitar that sent me on a bit of a Junior hunt for a while!”

Chris won’t have much time for guitar hunting in the coming months, as Cardinal Black are hitting the road across the UK, Europe and USA in support of the album – and he feels vindicated in his decision to embrace band life in the way their audience has grown in barely four years.

“Undoubtedly when we launched you could see the audiences consisted mainly of guitar heads that maybe knew me from YouTube,” Chris states knowingly. “Over time the crowd of people in front of my amps who want to see what guitar pedal I’m pressing at what moments of the set. That’s diluted now, we see a more varied audience demographic, people bringing their wives along or families. Artistically people seem to connect with the songs and the things we say and do.”

“That’s cool because you realise your music is speaking to people not just the technical proficiency of the guitar player which is nice! It never ceases to amaze me to see how much people get invested in bands, and with Cardinal Black we really try to treat everyone like part of our family.”

Chris Buck’s Five Tips For Better Guitar Solos

Chris is one of the most expressive and melodic guitar players around – while also being able to shred it with the best of them. But how does he manage to keep things tasteful while melting his fair share of faces? Well, these lessons hold him in good stead – and they’re things you can easily incorporate into your own playing, too.

Follow The Vocals

“‘Take cues from the vocal melody’ would be the biggest tip. It gives the listener something to hook onto, especially if it’s the song’s hook. Tom and I end up quoting each other a lot and it’s always a fantastic starting point for a solo.

“It reminds me of a Marcus King quote I once heard, where he said something along the lines of, ‘Your vocal melody ain’t worth a damn if you don’t want to reference it in your guitar solo’.” [Marcus actually said that to Guitar.com! – Ed]

Keep It Simple

“There is no need to overcomplicate things, it doesn’t have to be a display of technical prowess. Especially if the band is primarily about the songs. They just need to be a transition to move the song from this point to the next point.”

Build The Intensity

“To create a good journey for the listener, building in intensity is a big part of trying to be narrative driven in your solo. You can construct it like you would in a story or sentence. Punctuate it and give it emphasis where needed.”

“You wouldn’t speak with the same intensity throughout an entire sentence, you emphasise the parts that have the most impact, that’s the same with soloing.”

Don’t Start At The Top

“Start low, aim high. Even on a very basic level that gives you a framework. Often my favourite parts in a solo are the transition bits before the cool bit, don’t overlook those parts as they set up the cool bit that everyone remembers, but without the setup it wouldn’t be as cool.”

Look For Inspiration Outside Guitar

“I listen to and take a lot of inspiration from singers. I love Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, even Adele. If you listen to the way they approach a note, their phrasing and their unique vibrato, it all adds up to create their distinctive style.”

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If you were to only know about one country guitarist, you’d want to know about Chet Atkins. On this episode, we’re talking about the man people called “Mr. Guitar”—the Country Gentleman himself—and how he developed his style and transformed the way we approach our instrument.

Atkins’ recognizable eloquent sound is full of punchy bass notes, jazzy chords, cascading righthand patterns, and cleanly articulated melodies, and it can be heard all over the history of electric guitar music. How did he create his style? How can you fake it on your own? And was Chet Atkins responsible for the second most popular signature model guitar of all time?

Halestorm announces new album "Everest" and fall tour with Lindsey Stirling and Apocalyptica. Produced by Dave Cobb, the album explores the band's journey with deep lyrics and epic musical detours. "Darkness Always Wins" is the first single impacting Active Rock radio.

Halestorm, the GRAMMY-winning band initially formed by siblings Lzzy and Arejay Hale with guitarist Joe Hottinger and bassist Josh Smith, have announced Everest, their sixth studio album out August 8 on Atlantic Records. Today the band also announced the “nEVEREST Duality tour,” a US/Canada tour this fall with Lindsey Stirling and supported by Apocalyptica. Tickets go on sale this Friday, May 2 at 10 AM local time.

Last week, the band offered a glimpse of Everest with “Darkness Always Wins,” the first song to be revealed from the upcoming collection. The song teases an album, produced by GRAMMY winner Dave Cobb (Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell), that dives deeply, both lyrically and sonically, into the band’s mountainous climb over the last couple decades.

“Our album Everest is a story of our journey as a band, full of beautiful endings and new beginnings,” says Halestorm frontwoman Lzzy Hale. “We weave a tangled web of melancholy, frustration, anger and the vast purgatory of love and love lost. It is a rollercoaster of epic musical detours, great songwriting and completely unhinged twists and turns. Everest is an auditory representation of the 4 pillars of Halestorm. Let us reintroduce ourselves and invite you into our world…if you dare.”

Rolling Stone said of “Darkness Always Wins,” "What the song has going for is its catchy, brooding, and dramatic in all the ways we love Halestorm songs to be,” and Revolver noted "The arrangement remains lean even as the amps begin to crank into the red, though ‘Darkness Always Wins’ still sports some exquisite minor-key melodicism, a metal-chunked bridge, loud-as-hell requiem bells and a classically rippin’ rock guitar solo."

“Darkness Always Wins” impacts at Active Rock radio this week, but already debuted as the “Greatest Gainer” at the format with early airplay last week.

The newly announced nEVEREST tour follows an epic run first supporting Iron Maiden in Europe and dates with Volbeat in the US with a one night-only-performance at Black Sabbath’s final show in Birmingham, England. See below for a full list of upcoming dates.

For more information, please visit halestormrocks.com.

Back in 2009, a teenaged Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus signed a pink guitar for charity – and this month it sold for $104,000 at auction.

The Daisy Rock 6270 guitar was signed by the popstars on 7th February 2009, a day before they performed together at the 51st Grammy Awards. 22 bidders tried their luck for the guitar, despite Swift not even performing it onstage at the Grammys.

• READ MORE: The Taylor Swift guitar bought and smashed at a recent auction has sold again – for a higher price than before

On the night, Swift played on a Taylor K65ce Koa 12-String for a performance of Fifteen, taken off of 2008’s Fearless, with Cyrus in tow.

Regardless of the fact the pink acoustic was never played by Swift, it still raked in more than Julien’s Auctions estimated sale price of $96,000. Fans were keen to snap up this piece of music history.

The pink guitar bears the pair’s signatures in black marker, with Cyrus adding a “god bless!” for good measure.

Both artists are well known for their impact on the pop industry, embracing country and rock tones throughout their tracks, and 2009 marked a crucial moment in the artists’ careers.

Swift was 19 at the time, and Fearless would see her earning her very first Grammy for Album of the Year at the 52nd Grammy Awards the following year. In terms of Miley Cyrus, she was just 17 and reaping the success of 2008’s Breakout, offering hits such as 7 Things.

While Cyrus had been a Disney star since a young age, the photo of the pair posing with the pink acoustic was captured before their careers truly sky-rocketed. Little did they know what lay ahead for them – Swift in particular broke touring revenue records with her Eras Tour, earning more than $2 billion across a 149-date tour.

The guitar comes in at Julien’s Auctions second most expensive sale in their current Music Icons collection. Steven Tyler’s Dream On grand piano has proven to be the biggest earner of the bunch so far, selling for a total of $130,000.

The collection has also seen a number of Eddie Van Halen pieces up for grabs, such as a Charvel Art Series electric played onstage by the Van Halen riffer going for $78,000. His Fender custom Frankenstein Stratocaster also sold for $45,500.

For more details, head to Julien’s Auctions.

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Heart guitarist and vocalist Nancy Wilson has confirmed that a man who allegedly stole “two one-of-a-kind” instruments from the band has been arrested.

The alleged perpetrator, 57-year-old Garfield Bennett [per Guitar World], was taken into custody last week, but was not in possession of the two stolen instruments: Wilson’s custom baritone Telecaster with a hand-painted headstock, and a vintage 1966 Gibson EM-50 mandolin played by band member Paul Moak “for over 25 years”.

• READ MORE: “I go, ‘Hey, Steve, how you doing?’ He goes, ‘My f**king lips are killing me!’”: Pat Travers on the hilarious first time he met Steven Tyler
  

Heart discovered these instruments had been stolen on the evening of 30 May, after they had set up at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. Wilson tells Fox 29 News that “somehow, somebody with a hoodie that they caught on CCTV just kinda went and did a drive-by and just nabbed ’em.”

According to Atlantic City police, Bennett was seen on CCTV cameras around town attempting to sell the instruments on the streets, before being arrested on the Kentucky Avenue beach block, just off the boardwalk.

Police say Bennett was able to sell one of the instruments to an unknown buyer, while it’s not yet known what happened to the other. “I don’t know if both were sold off or not,” Wilson says.

In a post on Instagram, Wilson explains: “These instruments are more than just tools of our trade – they’re extensions of our musical souls. The baritone Tele was made uniquely for me, and Paul’s mandolin has been with him for decades.”

Heart are offering a no-questions-asked reward for any information leading to the safe return of both instruments. “Their value to us is immeasurable,” Nancy writes.

In the caption of the post, Wilson adds: “The outpouring of love and concern has been overwhelming, and we are truly touched by the strength and compassion of this community.” Photos of the instruments are included in the post below for anyone who may know of their whereabouts.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nancy Wilson (@nancywilson)

Elsewhere, Atlantic City police have issued a warning for anyone knowingly in possession of the stolen instruments: “Any individual in possession of these stolen items is urged to contact the Atlantic City Police Department and voluntarily surrender the instrument.

“If not surrendered, and the individual is located in possession of the stolen items, they will be arrested and criminally charged with receiving stolen property.”

Anyone with information about Heart’s missing guitar and mandolin can contact their tour manager, Tony Moon, via email at tonymoon@me.com.

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It’s easy to characterize Chase Bliss' Joel Korte and “Analog” Mike Piera as pedal-designer opposites. Piera’s work is rooted in understanding what makes great vintage circuits special and building improved, refined, better-quality versions. Korte is often a maximalist (many sounds, many knobs, many possibilities) and an envelope-stretching modernist (unorthodox tones, digital control). But the two builders share much in common. Both are gifted designers, and each is tireless—perhaps obsessive—about chasing specific sounds. The intersections in their methodologies are embodied in the Brothers AM, a Chase Bliss/Analog Man collaboration based on the scarce and much-coveted Analog Man King of Tone dual-gain device.

The Brothers AM nails the creamy, clear, and agreeable essence of the KOT—at least what I know of it. Like many of you, I do not own a KOT and rely on the effusive raves from fellow musicians and what I’ve heard live and in the video sphere. But you don’t need a KOT to hear how good the Brothers AM is. It’s an excellent drive pedal by any comparison. The seamlessly integrated dual-circuit design means it moves readily from very subtle to very vicious tones. It’s even more versatile than its inspiration, thanks to the inclusion of an addictive, dynamite 2-position treble booster and DIP switches that expand the pedal’s tone palette and control options.

Rock-Solid Foundation

The original King of Tone pedal was inspired by a modded Marshall BluesBreaker which an Analog Man client bought as a less-compressed, less-midrangey Ibanez TS9 alternative. By the time Piera completed the King of Tone, it didn’t sound much like a BluesBreaker. But it achieved other aims: It sounded natural and open and felt touch responsive. As the KOT evolved it effectively became two drive pedals in one—each of which could be configured as a boost, drive, or distortion. This KOT iteration is the foundation for the Brothers AM.

The many controls on most Chase Bliss pedals induce panic among some players. If you’re among them, Brothers AM won’t do much to calm your nerves—at least at first. In reality, though, the Brothers AM is easy to know. The six knobs are two identical sets of gain, volume, and tone controls for the two circuits. You switch each circuit between boost, OD, and distortion using two dedicated toggles on either side of the 3-position treble booster switch. The DIP switches on the pedal’s crown make it possible to add extra gain, reconfigure the footswitches for momentary bypass, repurpose volume and tone knobs as master volume and presence controls, save and switch between two additional presets, assign expression pedal control, and more.

Manifold Monster

One of the Brothers AM’s great strengths is its agreeable nature. It doesn’t seem to give a hoot what guitar or amp you throw in the pool with it. This easygoing personality makes it a great backline-surprise coping tool. Got a Telecaster and an AC15 conspiring to run you through with treble daggers? A dose of the Brothers AM’s soft-clipping OD and a dark tone setting will turn those sharp ends to honey without sapping too much energy. Need to slice through humbucker fog? A dollop of top end and a bump from the treble boost will cut through pea soup. Finding these agreeable baseline tones for a given guitar/amp combination is easy. But what’s most satisfying is shaping, refining, and recombining the Brother AM’s two basic voices into so many completely different identities.

Another great thing about the Brothers AM: You know how a lot of overdrives turn to mud at low amp volume? The Brothers AM sounds and feels great in this role. The range and interactivity between the tone and gain controls enables hot, lively tones and touch-responsive playing dynamics. The Rangemaster-voiced booster shines in this context, too. I got full-bodied, sparkling sounds from a 35-watt Fender Vibrolux whilst leaving room for an unamplified acoustic and voice in the same room. And it's easy to hear how Brothers AM will excel in small or home studios just as readily as it does in big rooms with big, loud amps.

If the Brothers AM has a drawback, it’s the heavily colored compression at the highest gain levels. But if the Brothers AM doesn’t shine brightest at these settings, the relative headroom and kinetic bump at most others underscore how you don’t need maximum gain to make your tone as hot as the hinges of Hades.

The Verdict

The Brothers AM makes almost any guitar or amp feel more alive and muscular, in shades ranging from a hint of heat and mass to fuzzy, fierce, and very loud. Though many stompbox clockers categorize the Brothers as a transparent overdrive, it does possess a compressed coloration throughout its range. It’s less cramped in the midrange than a vintage TS9, just as its creators intended. But if super-oxygenated boost-to-light-overdrive tones are the goal, you still might be better served by a good Klon clone or a preamp pedal that mixes in a clean signal. For anyone else, the Brothers AM is full of delights. It lends extra body and fullness to any tone recipe without stripping away instrument or amp personality. It’s effective in small rooms where you still want big-amp sound, but the visceral way it elevates a louder amp—especially with the thrilling treble booster in the mix—can make a player giddy. The Brothers AM, as suits its name, is like the kid at school that gets along with everyone. It doesn’t matter if you have a Rickenbacker and a Vox, an SG and a Deluxe Reverb, a baritone and a Marshall, or a decrepit old lipstick-pickup Silvertone and a Champ—all of them can sound and feel extra exciting along a spectrum that spans a gentle push and raging roar.

Pat Travers has recalled meeting Aerosmith‘s Steven Tyler when he played at Day on the Green, a gig he describes as the “best show I ever did”.

Day on the Green was a recurring concert in Oakland, California which ran from 1973 to 1999. 1978 saw five separate Day on the Green events, with the third taking place on 23 July, and featuring a stacked lineup of the Pat Travers Band, Aerosmith, Foreigner, Van Halen and AC/DC.

• READ MORE: Didn’t get tickets to Black Sabbath’s final show? You can livestream it – here’s how
  

The event, hosted by promoter Bill Graham, regularly drew crowds of around 65,000, according to Guitar World.

And it was backstage during the event that Travers met the Aerosmith singer for the first time, and the interaction sounded humorous, to say the least.

“That was the first time I met Steven Tyler, and that’s so funny,” he recalls in a new interview with Rick Beato. “Somebody from my record company says, ‘Pat, you got to meet Steven Tyler.’ And I went, ‘Yeah, I’ve just got to meet Steven Tyler.’

“So [the record label] walk me over. He’s sitting in a chair underneath an umbrella with a frozen daiquiri, and he’s got big mirrored aviators and the biggest dive watch I ever saw, and he’s just sitting there, and someone goes, ‘Hey, Steven, this is Pat – Pat, this is Steve.’ And I go, ‘Hey, Steve, how you doing?’”

Tyler responded: “My fucking lips are killing me!” Travers continues: “I liked him, just loved him immediately. I went, ‘That’s my kind.’ He just didn’t get it. I mean, he had chapped lips because it was so dry out there, yeah, but he [had] forgotten that.”

Travers also commends promoter Bill Graham for his work organising Day on the Green, adding: “The backstage area has Astroturf and tables and umbrellas, trailers – and everybody’s hanging out together.”

With Pat Travers known for his raw bluesy sound and tracks like Rock ‘N’ Roll Susie, Heat in the Street and Stevie, he and his band served as a perfect complement for the other hard rock giants on the bill.

In other news, Pat Travers release Statesboro Blues (Live in Baltimore 1982) from his archive back in April. He told Melodic at the time: “It sounds live… I’ve found that people often prefer a rougher sounding live mix, even if they don’t know it. They’re not conscious of it, ‘this one’s too high fidelity’, but when it’s a little trashy, it has more energy and sounds more urgent.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is not supposed to be clean and slick live. It’s got to have an edginess to it, and not be too predictable. There should always be surprises. Especially unintentional ones.”

The post “I go, ‘Hey, Steve, how you doing?’ He goes, ‘My f**king lips are killing me!’”: Pat Travers on the hilarious first time he met Steven Tyler appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you’re one of the many who didn’t manage to nab tickets to Black Sabbath’s final show in the 16 minutes before they sold out, you’ll be pleased to know it will be streamed live, so you can watch from home.

The event, dubbed Back to the Beginning, will see Sabbath’s original lineup – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward – reunite for one final time at Villa Park in their hometown of Birmingham, with support from genre heavyweights including Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Gojira and many more.

• READ MORE: “That was the best thing that ever happened to us”: Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward recalls being “amazed” by hearing Tony Iommi play guitar

And it’s now been revealed that a pay-per-view livestream will be available, produced by Mercury Studios, the same company behind Metallica Saved My Life and One to One: John & Yoko.

Livestream tickets are available now via backtothebeginning.com, priced at £24.99 each. Viewers will not only get access to the livestream itself from 3PM on the day of the event (5 July); they’ll also be able to rewatch the show in its entirety for 48 hours afterwards.

“We had such an overwhelming demand from fans from around the globe, who couldn’t get tickets to the show, and they took to social media, pleading with us to broadcast a livestream of the show. Being this is such a historic event, we just couldn’t let them down,” says Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and manager.

Kelly Sweeney, managing director of Mercury Studios, adds: “Mercury Studios [is] incredibly proud to be involved in capturing this monumental milestone at Villa Park. Back To The Beginning will be an unforgettable experience, and our aim is to deliver this moment to fans worldwide, wherever they are, so they don’t miss out on seeing music history being made.”

In other news, Ozzy Osbourne recently spoke of his struggle to accept how influential he’s been on other musicians over the course of his career, commenting: “I’m very self-critical about people’s adoration.” He also promised that despite his physical ailments, he’ll be giving the show “120%” effort.

Get your tickets to the official Back to the Beginning livestream at backtothebeginning.com.

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Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Johnny Van Zant has opened up about the band’s final performance with original guitarist Gary Rossington, noting how things had felt extra “special” that night.

The show, held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in late 2022, was part of the Southern rock legends’ 50th anniversary celebrations. It would also mark Rossington’s last time onstage with the band before his passing a few months later.

• READ MORE: “I looked crazy. I had this big black fur coat on, high heels, and some makeup. They were like ‘What the f**k?’”: John 5 recalls studio session with Lynyrd Skynyrd

Speaking in a new interview with WHDAFM, Van Zant reflects on the emotions and energy of that night – and the grit Rossington showed just by being there.

“He was very sick the week before that, and then he called me up,” Van Zant recalls [Ultimate Guitar]. “Called me up and said, ‘Hey Bubba, I might have to sit down.’ And I said, ‘Well, hell, I’ll sit down! Whatever we need to do.’ And he came in, stood up, he said, ‘I ain’t sitting down.’ So he was just a war horse. He loved playing that music.”

“And I knew that night was special. I was having a great time. Things were awesome. Sometimes you get to a gig, and you’re kind of like, ‘Oh well, okay, it’s just another gig.’ But then you get there and you feel that presence, y’know? And that was one of those nights.”

The singer also looks back fondly on a nostalgic moment he shared with the band backstage before the show began: “It was funny because myself, [Rickey] Medlocke, my brother Donnie, and Gary all shared a little dressing room in the back, and we were stepping over each other’s luggage and [sharing] past stories, you know, things that we can’t talk about, that only us guys were talking about,” he says.

“And somebody brought us a cold pizza, and we’re like, ‘Yeah man, we’re starving!’ So we’re in there, we’re eating pizza. And we started laughing. We said, ‘You know what? This is kind of like the old days in the clubs.’”

Now, that night lives on in Celebrating 50 Years – Live at the Ryman Auditorium, a concert album and DVD set due out later this month. The release features Skynyrd revisiting its classic catalogue with the help of guest artists including Marcus King, Jelly Roll, Donnie Van Zant, Jon Osborne, and Shinedown’s Brent Smith.

Van Zant says that he’s grateful the performance was documented – not just for the fans, but as a personal tribute to Rossington’s legacy.

“Little did we know that was going to be Gary’s last performance. I’m so proud that we actually videotaped this and had it on film,” he says. “And we got a great documentary for your listeners and our fans that we put together. It’s pretty much a tribute to Gary, and it’s just all of us talking about him, talking about the night.”

The post “He came in, stood up, and said, ‘I ain’t sitting down”: Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman recalls guitarist Gary Rossington’s final performance appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

With the explosion of online tutorials, social media shredders and AI-assisted everything, it’s never been easier to pick up an instrument – or look like you’ve mastered one.

While Level 42 bassist Mark King argues that the “standard of musicianship amongst young musicians is higher now than it’s ever been” thanks to the internet, metal icon Lita Ford says that there’s more to becoming a real musician than just mastering guitar tabs off YouTube.

• READ MORE: “Is there soul in it? Is there a purpose to it other than just being flashy?”: Alex Lifeson on social media guitarists and solos

In a recent chat with The Horror Nerd, the former Runaways guitarist was asked what advice she would give a young, up-and-coming musician hoping to break into the industry today. Her answer? Ditch the online tutorials and start jamming with real people instead.

“Well, it’s a hard piece of advice, because it’s really more than just a piece,” Ford explains [via Blabbermouth]. “Things are so different now in 2025, and the digital world has kind of taken over everything. And I didn’t come from that world.”

According to Ford, there’s no replacement for learning the old-school way.

“So it’s good to be a little bit of a street gutter rat and get out there and jam with people and go to some nightclubs and listen to your favourite musicians and learn as much as you can from them instead of Googling it or watching it on YouTube or whatever,” she says.

“‘Oh, I can Google the guitar chords to my favorite song.’ But that doesn’t mean you know how to play it. It comes from the heart and soul, and those kinds of things don’t teach you a lot of that,” Ford adds. “So it’s good to just be a street rat and a gutter rat and get out there and get down and dirty and sweat and play guitar and play drums and sing your ass off. It helps.”

For Ford, the digital world might offer convenience, but it can’t beat the hard-earned lessons of playing live, grinding through mistakes, and finding your voice in front of real people.

“There’s a lot of things that have changed over the world, through the decades, but that’s how I learned,” says the guitarist. “And if I had to give anybody a piece of advice – and it’s a hard way, it’s not the easy way, but it is the way, when you learn how to feel and everything, the music in your heart and soul. That’s what does it for me.”

Ford is far from alone in thinking so. Artists like Lenny Kravitz have emphasised the importance of “feel, dynamics and emotion” over technique, while Pete Townshend has pointed out what many Instagram guitarists are missing: real-world playing experience with their peers.

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