Five great iPhone apps for guitar players

The whole world seems to be talking about the new iPhone 3G at the moment. And with good reason: I’ve had one for just over a week now and already I’m wondering how I managed without it.

One of the great features of the new iPhone software, which comes with the iPhone 3G and is available as a free uprgrade for older iPhones, is the ability to install third party applications.

Apple’s App Store is already brimming with fantastic applications. So what, you ask, has this to do with guitars, Kenny? Well, it so happens that quite a few of the new apps are music related and a number of those are aimed at guitar players.

Epiphone BB King Lucille

For as long as I’ve been able to play the guitar, BB King has been my favourite guitar player. There’s something about his style which manages to capture the joy and misery of the blues in one note. And the way he wrings the neck of his beloved Lucille to extract every last ounce of vibrato and sustain from it is sensational.
I’ve been lucky enough to see him live twice. On the first occasion, at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1989, the theatre was absolutely jumping. Everyone was dancing by the end and there was a couple in front of us who looked they were having a particularly good time.

The five best guitar teachers on YouTube

YouTube is a fantastic resource for guitar lessons. Not only are there dozens of highly-skilled guitar players demonstrating chords, lick, styles and songs. But some of the world’s best, and most well-known guitar players, some of them sadly no longer with us, are right there giving lessons.

So I thought that it would be great to put together a kind of video notebook of some of the best lessons I could find on there and keep it so that when I get some time (ha!) I can watch the videos and learn a few new tricks.

Jimi Hendrix’s Epiphone

Danny has just posted a great piece on The Guitars of Jimi Hendrix, in which he describes how Hendrix played an Epiphone Wilshire . The Wilshire was a Strat-style guitar made between 159 and 1970 and which origianlly features two P-90 pick-ups and a Tune-o-matic bridge and stop tailpiece. In mid-192 the P_90s were replaced with mini-humbuckers.

The anatomy of an Epiphone guitar. Part 1: The Humbucker

The humbucker, or humbucking pick-up, is a feature of most of the electric guitars made by Epiphone and its parent company, Gibson.

The humbucker is a two-coil pick-up with coils of reversed polarity, reverse wound, and connected in series. The name is derived from the fact the design of the pick-up significantly reduces the noise and interference associated with single coil pick-ups used in other guitars, such as Fender’s Stratocaster. In other words, they ‘buck the hum.’

Epiphone Riviera

The Epiphone Riviera is a hollow-body electric guitar, based closely on the Gibson E335 and originally manufactured between 1962 and 1969. It has a maple side and top, one-piece set mahogany neck, and a rosewood fretboard with trapezoidal pearl inlays.

How to read guitar tab

Learning how to read guitar tab is an essential task for anyone new to the guitar. Most guitar players, unlike say violinists or pianists, are self taught and many have never learned how to read music. For guitarists who are able and happy to learn everything they want to play by ear, that’s not a problem. For the rest of us it makes it very difficult to learn new tunes, or it would if it wasn’t for guitar tab.

10 ways to make sure you don’t get scammed buying a guitar on eBay

Following the post last week on the dangers of buying an Epiphone guitar on eBay, I thought it would be a good idea to post a few tips on how to avoid being scammed. There are two key factors involved in fraudulently selling fake guitars on eBay - the copies are often very good (at least until you play the guitar) and the prices are very, very attractive.

The combination of those two elements sucks lots of people into bidding on and buying these guitars only to regret it later. Don’t be fooled, just because these Epiphone guitars look like the real thing doesn’t mean they sound or play like a real Epiphone. They don’t. They’re poorly and cheaply made, the wiring is usually dreadful and the finish slapdash.

Epiphone Byrdland

The Epiphone Byrdland, part of Epiphone’s Elitist range of guitars, is a stunningly beautiful archtop hollow-body electric guitar that was born to play Jazz.

Originally designed and built by Gibson in 1955, the Epiphone Byrdland takes its name its two designers, jazz guitarists, Billy Bird and Hank Garland.

The current incarnation of the Byrdland has a single Venetian cutaway, the same as the original Gibson Byrdland. Gibson modified the cutaway between 1961 and 1968, using the deeper and more rounded Florentine cutaway.

The 10 best songs ever played on an Epiphone guitar

Everyone loves a list, so I thought I’d put one together containing what I think are the ten best songs ever played, either live or on record, on an Epiphone guitar. I’m sure there will be much disagreement, so please feel free to argue in the Comments.

Read on for Fretboard’s run-down of the 10 best songs ever played on an Epiphone, and don’t forget to tell us what you think.