This week I have everything from new signature guitars to legends of rhythm guitar, how to set up your pedals in the best way, and a ton more. Is there anything you picked up during the holiday sales? - A guitar course, piece of gear or something else. Let me know by replying to this email!

I just wrapped up episode 12 of the Chasing Sound Live livestream. I talked about my favorite guitar stories, looked ahead to what 2022 will hold for Chasing Sound, and most importantly, did a lesson on playing power and barre chords. If you're just starting out with guitar, you can check out the replay of the stream here.

Let’s get right into this week’s links!

Signal Chain Theory for beginners, Prequel Guitar, Nickelodeon, Semifinished Body - 405 - The guys over at the 60 cycle hum show talk about a number of topics, but my favorite was their ideas on signal chain theory for beginners. They share lots of great tips on where pedals should be placed and why. Plus they do it all with a metronome clicking along at 95 BPM in their headphones. Speaking of pedal chain, I thought this experimental vid was a lot of fun too.
I Play Your Ridiculous Requests - My kids and I got a kick out of watching Samurai Guitarist take his viewers’ requests and turn them into songs. From tame things like “write me a song to deal with a breakup” to more crazy requests like, “write something like Dire Straits, but composed by Quentin Tarantino”. Awesome concept.
Ibanez Signature Ice Cream? | Yvette Young YY20 - Top notch commercial from Yvette Young and Ibanez to debut her very orange, very sparkly, new signature model - the YY20. It’s even tuned not to standard out of the box. Very on brand. Really looking forward to seeing this guitar in person.
Woodshed ep.81 Hybrid Picking Cheat Code - Andy Wood is one of the most monster players out there when it comes to a variety of stringed instruments. In his latest episode of Woodshed, Andy shows us a “cheat code” for hybrid picking. It’s a cool technique if you’re typically using 3 notes per string scales. I’m always looking to find new ways to increase my speed, and this seems like a cool little hack. Also, don’t forget to check out Andy’s friend/bandmate Ben Eller’s lesson on precision pentatonics, which touches on pentatonics and economy picking.
How To MASTER The Minor Pentatonic - Eric Krasno of Soulive recently did a interesting looking masterclass for Marty Music’s lessons site. Eric talks about everything from technique to funk, jazz, soul and more. A big part of the course is learning the minor pentatonic, which both Krasno and Marty Music discussed on Marty’s YouTube channel recently. If you want to check out another cool guest spot, check out Wilco’s Nels Cline, showing up on Adam Levy’s Guitar Tips series.
The Best Pedals You’ll Ever Play - The Rig Doctor goes over the best pedals of all time. He has a couple of different criteria for the pedals, like being able to work live and in the studio, and how well they work with other pedals. He goes over everything from fuzzes and wahs to modulation effects and a lot more. I loved these recommendations, which run the gamut from inexpensive to a couple of hundred dollars each.
Nile Rodgers On Writing the Hook for “Get Lucky” | Wong Notes Podcast - Been having a blast learning from Cory Wong’s guitar course lately, and was even more excited to see that Cory had the legendary Nile Rodgers on his podcast to talk about writing some classic songs. Here’s a clip where Nile talks about writing the hook for Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”. Go check out the full episode when you get a chance - especially if you’re a rhythm guitar fanatic. Also, Cory just put up his full sessions at Prince’s Paisley Park! Awesome! Go check that out here.
Morse & Petrucci Chromatics - 5 Minute Licks - Awesome lesson from Leon Todd, who shows us a few ideas on how to add chromatic notes like Petrucci and Morse to spice up our scales, mainly pentatonics.
The SRV String Saver Trick - Check out this short tech tip from Thomann Guitars, where they show us how to protect our strings like SRV’s guitar tech did back in the day.
‘Silvera’ by Gojira - Guitar Playthrough w/tabs (Chris Zoupa) - Chris Zoupa is back on YouTube! One of his first videos back is this Gojira playthrough of the song “Silvera”. Grab your guitar, tune down to DGCFAD and get ready for some awesome tapping.
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Jeff Garlin has too many guitars - I’m a big fan of everything Larry David, especially Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was so surprised that Jeff Garlin had this many guitars, and nice ones at that. I need that Tele shirt!
Kim Thayil channeled the loss of Chris Cornell in his solo on the new Mastodon album - Mastodon lost their longtime manager back in 2018, after 14 years with Nick John at the helm. Their latest album, in addition to the heavy riffs that Mastodon is known for, is filled with more sorrowful music than on past albums. Kim Thayil (ex-Soundgarden) shows up on one of the album’s ballads, “Had It AlL”, and with his leads, channeled late Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell. You can check out the full track in Guitar World’s post.
Steve Vai announces new album, Inviolate, reveals tracklisting and release date - In happier news, Steve Vai has announced a new album, ‘Inviolate’, which will be coming out on January 28th. The full tracklisting is up on this post, and the album comes just in time for Vai’s upcoming world tour. The album features cuts that we’ve heard already like Knappsack and Candle Power, and will also feature 7 other songs to round out the album. Just as I was writing this week’s issue, Vai came out with another new song off the album called “Little Pretty”. You can listen to the song here.
What Hendrix Meant To Me – By Some of the World’s Greatest Guitar Players - It’s so cool that Jimi Hendrix still gets the respect he’s due, all these years after his passing. In this post, players like Satch, Paul Gilbert, Joe Bonamassa and more, talk about what Hendrix means to them.
5 pieces of iconic guitar gear that were lost… and are still missing today - The first trainwreck amp, Clapton’s “Beano Burst”, and other gear is still lost to this day. Guitar.com tells the story of some of the most famous missing gear.