John Knowles on choosing a guitar teacher, 2006

"If you’ve bought a guitar and are looking for ways to learn, you think you don’t know anything, but you know why you bought the guitar, you know whose music you admire, you have a dream about what you might be able to do someday. That’s really valuable stuff. So when you go to look for a teacher, see if they’re in fact on the path you’d like to be on. The reason is, the guitar is one word but it is many paths. If you get on the wrong path, the teacher will lead you down it--they know how to do that. The trick is to find out if that person understands your passion, which at the moment is maybe a little fuzzy, but it’s there. Don’t underestimate the value of that."

Outtake from a feature in Guitar Teacher magazine. Find out more about Nashville guitarist John Knowles, longtime collaborator with Chet Atkins, at his site.

Yoko Ono on Lennon and McCartney's songwriting partnership, 2004

“Most people think that John and Paul really wrote the words and the music together. In the beginning probably they did... But by the time I came into the picture [in 1966], John finished most of the songs and went to Paul’s place and said, ‘Well, this is what I wanted. What do you think?’ And vice versa: Paul had songs finished too, and I don’t think there was much to add. I think that Paul respected John and John respected Paul's space.”

From a 25th anniversary tribute to John Lennon, published in Acoustic Guitar. Read the full story here.

Spins: the Duhks, Crooked Still

Seems like every time I turn around I find another cool CD by a young string band making some kind of merger of trad tunes and rock. Nickel Creek (a band I've covered over the years for both NPR and Acoustic Guitar)...the Mammals (whose last CD I reviewed here a few months back)...

And now comes Migrations, from the high-energy Canadian band the Duhks, with strong threads of gospel, plus a seductive CD called Shaken by a Low Sound, from Crooked Still, with nice softspoken vocals from Aoife O'Donovan and fabulous cello playing by Rushad Eggleston (also heard in Darol Anger's Republic of Strings).



It's great to hear both rock energy infused into traditional tunes, and also rock tunes played by musicians with a real feel for tradition.

Acoustic guitar care and feeding

Guitar repair guru Frank Ford's site at www.frets.com (no relation to Frets magazine) is a real labor of love, packed with useful information and step-by-step photos on everything from how to change a string to what happens in a major guitar repair.

For more music links, see my Songwriting Toolbox.

Paul Simon on high-string guitar, 1993

"My guitar parts are usually a combination of guitars: a six-string and a high-string [a guitar with the bottom four strings tuned an octave higher than standard]. The high-string adds just a shimmer on top....

"From Simon and Garfunkel through probably every record I've made, I'm playing high-string. On the Rhythm of the Saints tour, most of the guitar work I did was on the high-string. I've got three guitarists in the band who are incredible, so what am I going to play, you know? I've got to basically put an acoustic, shimmery top on top of Ray Phiri's picking, or Vincent Nguini's fingerstyle picking, and the high-string has the percussive sound of a six-string but it has all the overtones of a 12-string, except there's no midrange--you're only on the upper strings. I use it all the time."

From the book Rock Troubadours.

Readings: Louis Menand on Bob Dylan

I've gotten more than a little weary of all the hyper-intellectual essays on Dylan in various magazines, but what a nice surprise it was to read Louis Menand's great piece in the current New Yorker, which uses Jonathan Cott's Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews as its excuse to muse about the larger significance of Dylan's music. I particularly like Menand's analysis (backed by quotes from Dave Van Ronk) of the Dylan-goes-electric moment and the whole murky idea of authenticity in music. Check it out.