With a strong focus on the Australian music scene, Australian Guitar is a rich source of information on playing techniques, styles, the wide range of instruments available and all the technology that guitarists have to consider in the 21st Century.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH PETER WALKER Peter Walker was a founding member of progressive hard rock band Bakery. After six years on the road, Walker migrated to the studio world via Charles Fisher and Trafalgar Studios, where he often worked with people he knew from his touring days. He engineered and produced numerous albums through the ‘70s and ‘80s, covering a wide range of music from rock, pop and country, all the way to film soundtracks and the like. These were heady days, with large budgets and long sessions. Walker was also a resident session guitarist, playing on many tracks and advertising jingles. Much of that work was uncredited, as his specialty was replacing existing parts – or beefing them up – for albums by well-known bands. His work…
Guitarists owe Dweezil Zappa a huge debt of gratitude. Not only is he a great player in his own right, but he’s also leading the charge in keeping the music of his father – the one and only Frank Zappa – alive for new generations. David Roy Williams, in collaboration with Principal Entertainment, will present Dweezil Zappa and The Others Of Intention – celebrating 50 years of Zappa with a series of concerts and exclusive guitar masterclasses in Australia and New Zealand come early 2018. In a pun-filled press release that’s too good to not share, the promoters say, “Freak Out! to some of the most inventive and wildly original music ever committed to tape! Discover Who Are The Brain Police? as Dweezil conducts immaculate explorations and excavations of Frank’s…
CURRENTLY PLAYING WITH Elko Fields: a two-piece scuzz-rock band from Brisbane. I play the role of frontwoman on lead guitar and vocals. USUALLY FOUND PLAYING Heavy rock with a kick of blues. It’s always as loud, low and long as possible. YEARS ON THE FRETBOARD I’d say approximately 23 years, or 8,395 days to be precise. I picked it up around age five. PLAYING STYLE I’m a sucker for concocting semitone bends, drones and a bunch of triads. I fell in love with tuning to C standard and fumbling my way around there a lot. FIRST AXE I grew up dribbling over my Dad’s 1966 Fender Strat. My grandfather bought me a little black Fender Squier at age five, and my parents tried to convince me it was just as…
The Melbourne Guitar Show is in its third year, and every year, it’s bigger and better than the one before it. As Rick Chadwick of CMC Music Australia told us during a visit to his company’s packed booth, “The first year was great, and the second year was a little busier. But this year, it’s been wall-to-wall people the whole time. We keep hearing about the decline of the guitar, but look around you. Does it look like the guitar is in trouble?” By far the most talked-about piece of gear at the show was the USA-made Peavey HP2 guitar. If it looks familiar, that’s because these are being made out of unfinished bodies that had been stockpiled when a certain famous endorser left the company a while back. This…
“For me, if playing one note through a chain of effects is the sound I’m after, I don’t feel any regret about that.” These might seem like strange words for a man routinely praised as the greatest art-rock musician to come out of the UK in a generation, but Steven Wilson has always had a conflicted relationship with progressive rock. He’s consistently pushed the stylistic and emotional boundaries of a genre that’s often ruled by the tastes of ‘70s-obssessed classicists. In simple terms, Wilson’s latest offering, To The Bone, pushes the clock forward one decade to the 1980s. The album’s songs are generally punchy and resplendent, with pop hooks that evoke watershed artists like Kate Bush, Tears For Fears and Talk Talk. But there’s much more depth to his musical…
It begins in the harsh winter of 2016, when the Novocastrian singer-songwriter dropped their second EP, I Just Have A Lot Of Feelings. The four-track beast came at a dark time in Cox’s life: they were wrestling with the grip of a destructive eating disorder, traversing the cracks of broken relationships and battling dire mental health issues. But the release not only served as an outlet of catharsis for Cox – it marked a turning point that would inform the evolution both of their personal life and their artistry. “In releasing [Feelings], I had made myself super vulnerable – those songs were like open wounds in a lot of ways,” they admit. “So having put that out there and having it be so well received made me want to write…
