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The New Guitar-Muse.com
So – as many folks have noticed, and written in to point out to us, we haven’t really done anything on this site since about 2014. There have been a few articles sprinkled around, but we really have been slacking.
The reasons have been many. But we want to come back.
It’s hard to financially support an endeavor like this. We didn’t want to plaster ads all over the site, and there aren’t many good ways for a blog / website to make money on a topic like guitars. We needed to pay writers, hosting, various accounts to handle mailing lists and the like.
It’s already being done well, honestly, for a niche market. Guitar World, Guitar Player are the big boys, so they have everything covered if you want to know what the latest axe from Fender is like, or NAMM coverage, or what good ol Mr. Vai has been up to. While we seem to have a huge and dedicated following, we weren’t big enough to really make a difference for people like Vai when they released an album.
So, like, identity crisis. It crept in slowly over the year of 2014, and after awhile it was foremost on our mind without us really knowing it.
We weren’t making any money, we weren’t having a significant impact on the market – so what were we doing? How were we contributing to the world of guitar itself?
That question took four years to answer, apparently. And we didn’t just disappear. We talked on the phone many times about how to resurrect the ol’ Muse, but we didn’t want to be stale.
In 2018, we’re feeling like being advocates for the art of guitar itself. It’s not really in a downward trend, but we still want to highlight those artists who are using this beautiful instrument to make amazing music. We want kids to pick up guitars as much as they’re picking up electronic instruments.We want all adults to dust those guitars off and start playing them again!
This is why we’re changing the format of Guitar Muse. We’re not going to focus on Virtuosos as much, or gear, or guitar reviews. We’ll be looking for people who want to write those kinds of articles for us so we don’t drop that stuff completely, but we’re going to shift direction now to highlighting artists who use guitar prominently in their music.
You’ll be able to discover new bands who are still slinging six strings on their albums and tours. It doesn’t matter if they’re shredding – it matters that they are keeping the dream alive and using one of the coolest instruments ever created by mankind in their music.
Over time, you’ll see Guitar-Muse highlighting more and more bands, signed and unsigned – who are doing just that.
How is guitar being used on the cutting edge? Who are the new bands featuring the instrument in their music? And who inspired them?
Don’t worry, we’re not leaving the guitar legends behind. They’ll still be very much a part of the site. We’re not leaving all the gear behind. We’re just shifting focus. Because honestly, we want to bring you something you can’t find anywhere else. We’ll still be talking about them, because they’ll likely be the inspiration for the new bands we’ll be talking to.
Let us know how you feel. How can we tweak this site to keep you happiest?
Everything below here is the old “About” page. You can stop reading unless you want a history lesson 😉
Guitar-Muse.com began in 2010 with a simple dream.
To provide the one of the best guitar information sites on the web, and to help other guitar players around the world whether it’s with lessons, tips, news, video, or something to look at while bored, learn about guitars, find the next guitar (featured guitars), etc.
More than that – we’re here to provide you a down to earth guitar website – written by other guitarists, so you’ll feel right at home. We’re not a huge company – more like a tight family, and you’re more than welcome to make yourself at home and become a part of that family! Feel free to check out the forums and come chat with us – there’s a link at the top of the page.
To meet the goals above, we’ve assembled a team of great writers who are really passionate about our favorite instrument.
Meet The Writers
Ronnie Brooks
Ronnie Brooks can be found lurking around Nashville, TN, where he writes magazine articles, Web content, songs, ad copy, jingles (little songs), and the occasional thank-you note.
Like many other Nashvillians, he’s also been known to play guitar—on well over 1,500 recordings and countless live dates. You’ve probably heard his voice on TV/radio as one of the Budweiser Frogs (“Weis!”). A chronic name-dropper, his songs have been recorded by Kid Rock, Joe Perry and Molly Hatchet; he’s played bass for Chuck Berry, produced Dolly Parton, performed on several Super Bowl ads, and seen the Beatles play live. He also has a dog, Milton.
There’s more, but he’s not saying anything else until somebody buys him a drink.
Scott Collins
Having received his undergraduate degree in composition from the Berklee College of Music and a graduate degree in guitar performance from CalArts, Scott Collins is a guitarist who specializes in real-time visual scoring and has accompanied a number of silent films. He performs a wide range of improvised western and non-western music on fretted and fretless instruments, is a featured baglama (Turkish lute) performer on the Sony PlayStation God of War 2 video game and a soloist on the track “Come Alive” from the RedLynx Trials Evolution game.
In addition to numerous live performances, he has toured in both the U.S. and Germany, performed in world and U.S. premiers of different works and co-composed and performed the thematically improvised score for the About Productions stage adaptation of Norman Klein’s “Bleeding Through” with Vinny Golia.
As a presenter, Scott has performed and co-lead workshops on improvisation as part of the Imaginary Borders / Imaginarias Fronteras project at the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexicali, Mexico and performed/lead a workshop on “Structured Improvisation in Film Accompaniment” as part of the Cha’ak’ab Paaxil Festival at the Edificio de Artes Visuales – Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán in Mérida, Mexico.
An active educator, author and performer, Scott is the author of “The GuitArchitect’s Guide To:” series and is currently working on additional books in the series. Additionally, two of Scott’s music business/personal development books, “An Indie Musician Wake Up Call” and “Selling It Versus Selling Out”, were released in 2012 on the Kindle platform.
More information about Scott Collins and his publications.
Tim Monaghan
Tim Monaghan is the Editor in Chief of this site.
Tim has been playing guitar & bass since he was 12 years old and has been in Jazz, funk, rock & metal bands. Influences include Jeff Beck, Stanley Clarke, Doug Stegmeyer, Baden Powell, Steve Vai, and pretty much anyone else who has a unique style that expresses their individuality.
One of Tim’s many hobbies is building, tweaking, and repairing basses and guitars.
Adam Jazairi
Adam Jazairi is a writer, art historian, director, and literary critic, and I guess he sorta likes guitars, too.
Though he’s always been madly in love with music, Adam first fell head over heels for guitars when he heard Kevin Shields’ mastery of the instrument on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. Since then, he has become a shameless gearhead with an incurable case of GAS (that’s “Gear Acquisition Syndrome,” for those of you who have been fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with this horrible illness).
Lee Ranaldo, Kevin Shields, John Cale, and Michio Kurihara represent some selections from Adam’s infinite list of favorite guitarists. His heart has room for three true loves: his Tele, his JC-120, and his pedalboard.
Oscar Jordan
Oscar Jordan grew up on the mean streets of Chicago amidst the snow, the concrete, and the blues. Becoming obsessed with the guitar, he took his lumps playing at local blues jams in venues such as Kingston Mines where he was educated sitting at the feet of virtuosos.
With a passion for 70’s acoustic singer-songwriters, blues, 80’s metal, 70’s funk, fusion, Gypsy Jazz, and blues based jazz, Oscar took private lessons and honed his craft in the woodshed. After moving to Los Angeles he won a scholarship to the National Guitar Workshop, and began forming early incarnations of his band The Mighty Sons Of Hercules.
His first album Mister Bad Luck was critically acclaimed and led to the highly successful blues-rock masterpiece Eclectic Soul. Living Blues Magazine called it:
“A heartfelt ode to the redemptive power of music… A 70’s style meld of rock-tinged funk and neo-psychedelic organ/fretboard interplay, with dollops of pop romanticism… Irony-rich… Harmony-rich… Jubilantly danceable… Inventive lyric juxtapositions… Tough enough for street cred and sufficiently boho-literate to please the hipsters.”
In addition to a successful acting career, Oscar began teaching guitar and was featured in the guitar instructional video, I Am The Blues Lead Guitarist. He was also runner-up in the Blues Idol Songwriting Competition and later co-starred with Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro in a well-publicized Citibank commercial featuring the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp.
In addition to becoming a guitar educator, Oscar has been a contributing writer to Vintage Guitar Magazine and Music Connection Magazine since 2001. His knowledge of music, history, and iconic guitarists, was a perfect fit for the challenge of interviewing some of the most talented musicians in the world.
Oscar has written for Mojo Magazine, was a contributing writer to Premier Guitar Magazine from 2006 to 2012, produced Oscar Jordan’s Guitar Shop for cable, and is the producer/host of his own radio guitar talk called Oscar’s Guitar Shop on LaTalkRadio.com. He currently lives in Sherman Oaks, California teaching guitar, working as a sideman, performing original music, acting, and playing authentic 70’s funk.
https://www.facebook.com/oscarsguitarshop
Doug Knight
Doug started the guitar at age 9 in 1957 at the insistence of his mother. In high school, Doug and some his friends started their first band and enjoyed modest success until finally opening for the Yardbirds in Detroit in 1968. Uncle Sam ended the dream for a while as Doug spent 9 years in the Navy, still dragging his Gibson Hummingbird and Rickenbacker around the world on an aircraft carrier. Somewhere in there, he acquired a Les Paul Black Beauty, a house in Florida, a wife and a couple of baby boys so making a living was the first priority. Music went to the back burner in favor of the steady paycheck.
He started writing and dreamed of a career as a fiction writer, while progressing to the point of being able to teach creative writing online, when the internet wasn’t even a gleam in someone’s eye. The late ’70’s and the ’80’s being what they were, things didn’t work out well and Doug sold all but 3 of his guitar collection, got divorced and moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1990. For nine years, he played alone while working as a carpenter in one of the blues, and BBQ, capitals of the country.
Doug finally settled in Bend, Oregon in 1999, met the 2nd love of his live, married the only girl after his mother to understand his love for the guitar, and proceeded to travel the country in an RV. In a little summertime RV resort in southwestern Colorado, Doug’s wife signed him up for a jam session and he has been playing live ever since. Lots of acoustic and electric blues, Doug’s favorite genre. His influences include Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Joe Bonamassa, Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jimi Hendrix.
Doug has been present at The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Yardbirds, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Cream, Hendrix, EVERYBODY Motown, The Turtles, The Four Seasons, Tom Jones, Buddy Miles Express, Electric Flag… and many more concerts when a great contact high could be had just by being in the building… hey, it was the ’60’s!
Now, our “Man on the Street” reporter, with his “What’s New in Music Stores?” series, resides in Coos Bay, OR. You can find him on Friday nights at The Small Events Center at OrCoast Music in Coos Bay.
Adam Pietrykowski
Beginning his journey like many others with a cheap guitar and a creative itch, guitarist/composer Adam Pietrykowski is a multi-faceted musician with experience in many areas of media.
Adam has played with a wide variety of acts in Canada and parts of the US. He is the recipient of various awards (First place in the 2012 Montreal Guitar Grand Prix, Best Guitarist in the Canadian finals of Emergenza, finalist in the Fender sponsored Bluesman Competition). Adam wrote music for the film Twisted Seduction, premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2010. He has studied under many top tier musicians – including Tony Romandini and Joe Stump. Though originally from a small town in rural Quebec (you’ve never heard of it); he is currently based on the island of Montreal.
Kyle Smitchens
Kyle Smitchens surfaced from the threshold of the unknown to fight crime by nightfall while assuming the guise of the mild mannered Guitar-Muse Managing Editor by day. When he’s not righting wrongs and saving the world from certain doom he can be found working on Guitar-Muse to the point where he doesn’t even have time to play the instrument he writes about.
He began playing bass when he was about 17 and a year later started with the guitar which won him over. An appreciator of all kinds of music Kyle has a preference for artists that push the boundaries and change the way people look at music. His biggest influences include Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Steve Vai, Therion, and Jon Levasseur of Cryptopsy.
On the occasional bout of spare time Kyle loves to write about himself in the third person as a means to express his infatuation with words. He habitually forces words to say things they might not otherwise wish to say as he views them as his clay and his sentences the sculptures.
Jonas Tamas
His critically acclaimed 2009 debut instrumental guitar album, with the profound title “Sharp Guitars From A Flat Planet” contains over 64 minutes of guitar-driven instrumental music. It is a very diverse album, with songs ranging from progressive metal, through neoclassical shred to bluesy riffage, pure hard rock to mellow moments with piano and acoustic guitars.
The music industry has quickly noticed his talent, and therefore the second instrumental guitar album of Jonas Tamas, which has been released in September 2011 is being digitally distributed worldwide by guitar legend Steve Vai’s own label Digital Nations. This new album, entitled “Timeless Hour” features world class guest musicians Andy James, Brett Garsed, Troy Stetina, Mattias IA Eklundh, Sergey Boykov, Marcel Coenen, Thorsten Koehne, Mats Haugen and Mischa Mang.
Nicholas Tozier
Nicholas Tozier is a book hoarder and songbird from the woods of Maine.
In 2012 he made a small cameo in Songwriting Without Boundaries by Berklee professor Pat Pattison, and was named one of CDBaby’s top 10 Songwriting Resources to follow on Twitter.
Dave Willard
Born and raised in New Jersey, as a young, budding guitarist, Dave cut his teeth playing Metallica riffs and Nirvana songs. By high school his influences had grown and he was already writing, recording and performing with original bands. After discovering a love for the recording studio as well as the guitar, Dave went on to study classical guitar and sound engineering in college.
After college, Dave worked for a little while mixing commercials and writing jingles at an ad agency until striking out on his own as a freelance audio engineer, gigging musician and guitar teacher.
Teaching is something Dave gravitated towards early on as a fulfilling way to share his passion for his instrument. He’s worked with a number of private music schools over the years, including several at the School of Rock.
Today, Dave maintains a healthy roster of private guitar students and can be found playing in cover bands around the NJ club scene. Oh and when he can, he likes to writing informative articles for Guitar-Muse.
Paul Wolfle
Paul Wolfle is a freelance web writer whose work spans diverse themes in music. Covering concerts, arena events, musical equipment and artists, Wolfle has attended many historic rock shows in the metropolitan New York area. He owns a vast collection of sheet music and is an eBook short story author.
As a vintage and contemporary music enthusiast, guitars dominate Paul’s life. He plays slide in open tunings on a National Steel Tricone resonator and electric blues, in standard tuning, on an assortment of other instruments including his white Fender Stratocaster.
More info
If you would like to join the Guitar-Muse team of writers, Contact Us.
Our Logo comes from Justin Floyd from Notify Design, you can contact him here.
Also in the works is a fantastic charity that will help put guitars in the hands of children from lower income families – stay tuned for more on that!