"A 1992 red electric guitar with mahogany neck, maple top, and diamond shaped pearl inlay on the fingerboard. No serial number. Played by Slash this guitar while recording the track ""Loving the Alien."" on the Velvet Revolver recording the album ""Contraband."""
Foo Fighters mark the 30th anniversary of the band’s classic 1995 debut with the opening salvo of its next chapter: “Today’s Song,” the first taste of new Foo Fighters music since 2023’s universally acclaimed But Here We Are, is now available across digital platforms.
An indelible anthem in the time-honored Foo Fighters tradition, “Today’s Song” bristles with unbridled optimism from its subtle melodic intro through the peaks of its soaring crescendos. With lyrical themes of personal evolution and perseverance in the face of life’s uncertainty and the passage of time, “Today’s Song” is nothing short of a three-minute-fifteen-second epic.
In a note to fans that posted today, Dave Grohl wrote, "Over the years, we’ve had moments of unbridled joy, and moments of devastating heartbreak. Moments of beautiful victory, and moments of painful defeat. We have mended broken bones and broken hearts. But we have followed this road together, with each other, for each other, no matter what. Because in life, you just can’t go it alone.
It should go without saying that without the boundless energy of William Goldsmith, the seasoned wisdom of Franz Stahl, and the thunderous wizardry of Josh Freese, this story would be incomplete, so we extend our heartfelt gratitude for the time, music, and memories that we shared with each of them over the years. Thank you, gentlemen.
And... Taylor. Your name is spoken every day, sometimes with tears, sometimes with a smile, but you are still in everything we do, everywhere we go, forever. The enormity of your beautiful soul is only rivaled by the infinite longing we feel in your absence. We all miss you beyond words. Foo Fighters will forever include Taylor Hawkins in every note that we play, until we do finally reach our destination.”To read or listen to Dave’s full message, go to foofighters.com.
Foo Fighters are Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and Rami Jaffee.
“Today’s Song” artwork by Harper Grohl.
FOO FIGHTERS Live 2025
Oct 2 - Jakarta, ID - Carnaval Ancol Oct 4 - Singapore, SG - F1 Oct 7 - Tokyo, JP - Saitama Super Arena Oct 10 - Osaka, JP - Glion Arena Kobe Nov 14 - Mexico City, MX - Corona Capital
Supercool Pedals has unveiled the tenth pedal in their lineup: the Triniphase – a bold, all-analog phase shifter inspired by the technical legacy and cassette-futurism aesthetic of a golden TV age.
The Triniphase is a thoughtful and calculated approach to a classic and revered modulation effect, offering complex and organic analog phase modulation with a unique and intuitive control scheme.
The Triniphase offers expertly crafted replications of some of the most sought after vintage and modern sweeping phase effects, but what sets the Triniphase apart from its peers are the tactile controls of the RGB buttons that invite users to mix colors and sounds to spawn new and complex pitch and phase modulation adventures.
The Triniphase highlights include:
Unique sounds including classic phase sweeps, rotary-style univibe oscillation, formant-like voice effects, manic vibratos, and more
4-stage and 8-stage phase effects (via RED/DEPTH switch)
RESO knob for aggressive or subtle feedback control of phasing effect
RATE knob for a wide control of phasing effects from subtle sweeps to near self-oscillation
All-analog signal path and control
Eye-catching nostalgic design inspired by the legacy of the Sony Trinitron
True Bypass switching with standard 9v center negative power supply
Designed and assembled in Canada
The Triniphase is the 10th installment in the Supercool pedals lineup with a street price of $219 USD, and is available for purchase with worldwide shipping through www.SupercoolPedals.com as well as in select independent retailers.
Fat envelope and wah sounds are made even wilder with the help of an expansive octave effect that can be used in tandem or independently from the filter.
For those that haven’t delved too deeply into the subject or the sounds, envelope filters can seem a little loaded, stylistically speaking. Used well, they add bounce, joy, or even menace to a guitar or bass. Used wrong, they sound horribly corny. Used unconventionally, though, they can radically reshape guitar tones in surprising ways. Leveraging how they reshape tone with picking dynamics, for instance, is a great way to bust out of a box. They also pair well with distortion, fuzz, delays, modulation, and more (though if you aren’t willing to dig for gold in these combinations the results can confound at first).
Tsakalis Phonkify X FINAL VIDEO
The Tsakalis Phonkify X, an evolution of the original Tsakalis Phonkify, is, in part, a great envelope filter for the way it smooths the path to the outer edges of the effect’s potential. It’s got great range, which is enhanced by effective mix, gain, frequency, and Q controls. Using those controls together in the right combinations also makes the Phonkify X sound fat where other envelope filters can sound narrow, thin, and not terribly nuanced. (An internal voltage doubler that increases headroom is another contributing factor.) And with an octave section that can span corpulent and piercing regions of the sound spectrum—and be used independently or with the filter—the Phonkify X is a trove of powerful, odd, and uncommon guitar sounds, and a true provocateur for those in a rut.
Clarity, Body, and Brawn
One of the Phonkify X’s great strengths is the extra mass and air in its range and how easy it is to find it. As far as envelope filters—which can be counterintuitive to many players the first time out—go, the Phonkify X is very forgiving and responsive. The same qualities make it a great pair for radical or merely fattened fuzz and drive tones. Sixties-type germanium fuzzes coax fiery Hendrix- and Ron Ashton-isms that you can also utilize in traditional sweeping wah fashion if you add an expression pedal to the mix. It also sounds amazing upstream from a dark smoky overdrive that can blunt the sharpest filter edges while adding ballast and attitude.The octave effect is great on its own, too, not least because you move between deep octave-down settings and reedy high tones.
The Verdict
The latter can be a bit cloying and full of digital artifacts in some applications, but when the low octave content is used to temper that tendency, or dial it out entirely, you can summon very organic, complex, and rich tones that can be made rumbling and earth shaking with distortion or drive, or reshape the pedal’s filtered tones if you add it back in the mix. (An additional switch also enables you to situate the octave before or after the filter.). Together, these two effects that blend so seamlessly are a formidable combo.
Co-designed with low-end professor and tone connoisseur Ian Martin Allison, the MXR Bass Synth will turn your bass into a filthy funk machine, delivering a range of monophonic synth tones that call back to hits from Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Parliament Funkadelic, and more. This pedal is ready made for intergalactic grooves, capturing vintage analog-style vibes with killer tracking and sustain to serve up thunderous sub-octave, expressive envelope, and lush modulation effects with the flexibility and control that modern players demand.
A full, player-friendly suite of controls allows you to shape not just the aforementioned effects but every other detail of your bass synth tone: blend dry and wet signals, sculpt filter sweeps from rubber-band bounce to syrupy slow-motion, adjust filter cutoff and resonance for extra punch, switch between triangle, sawtooth, or square waveforms, and add harmonically rich oscillators for more complex textures.
Or you can skip straight to the groove with eight presets that Ian crafted, inspired by iconic tracks from Michael Jackson, Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, and more. And for tone chasers who love to dive deep, the Bass Synth offers advanced parameters, stereo capability, and flexible rig integration to take your sound anywhere you want it to go.
Whether you’re replicating pop hits in a cover band, holding down the low end at church, or touring the world, this pedal gives you instant synth bass magic. Get down on the one with the MXR Bass Synth.
“Over the years, I have tended to make synth sounds either with individual pedals or with blocks in a multi-FX unit, and while those sounds can be super cool and get close to legit synth sounds, the MXR Bass Synth gets closer and, in some cases, even totally indistinguishable from an incredible keys rig,” Ian says. “We worked tirelessly to make this thing as perfect as we possibly could—to tweak every single parameter, to get every aspect of how the knobs turned and what effects they controlled just right—and especially the latency and tracking. I wouldn’t relent until we got it perfect. This is perfect.”
MXR Bass Synth highlights:
Intergalactic grooves and vintage analog-style vibes reminiscent of your favorite funk hits
Designed in collaboration with Ian Martin Allison
Thunderous sub-octave, expressive envelope, and lush modulation effects
Killer tracking and sustain
Eight different presets to plug you straight into the groove
Three different waveforms, additional oscillators, tap and expression control, and more
Availability
The MXR Bass Synth is available now at $269.99 street from your favorite retailer.
“There are other worlds (they have not told you of). They wish to speak to you.” —Sun Ra
Middle Eastern or Mediterranean guitar music is an entire musical world with its very own guitar heroes, legendary solos, coveted gear, mysterious deaths, and (of course) some wigs as well. As the ’60s arrived with a fresh wave of guitar madness, musicians worldwide chose the electric guitar as their voice, working it into their region’s musical vocabulary, which was often based on the local folk instruments. Guitarists like Omar Khorshid and Aris San created guitar history as they infused their regional influences with their new love of the electric guitar and brought a new style of playing to life. To me, these two legends are the Middle Eastern equivalents of the Western guitar world’s beloved Jimi and Jimmy.
A little bit about our stars: Omar Khorshid of Cairo, Egypt, took part in monumental recordings, often with Strat in hand. He played with Oum (also known as Umm) Kolthum, one of the most renowned vocalists in Arabic music. His collaborations with Hany Mehanna are pure Middle Eastern psychedelia. He has an extended list of covers of western tunes (including “Popcorn” and The Godfather theme), and his music goes everywhere from soloing along with huge orchestras to trippy tunes with just synths and drum machines. Khorshid’s playing is always spot on, tasteful, and with the melody as the top priority.
Aris San is from Greece, and his life story makes those of Elvis, Hendrix, or Cobain seem mundane by comparison. With an incredible voice and an ability to bring bouzouki chops to the electric guitar, San’s style is second to none. Shifting from various random European guitars, Aris eventually championed the Gibson ES-335 and turned himself into a musical powerhouse with a massive recording catalogue. At one point he even had his own music club in New York (donning the aforementioned wig). After a few encounters with the New York underworld, he returned to Europe and rumors abound.
Let’s dive into some of the techniques and tools that make this music so special. The more you practice and study them, the more you can add to your own music and enrich your style.
Scales of Choice
Here’s one interesting scale out of a vast melodic world of Middle Eastern music. It’s a great place to start as you’ll quickly realize this scale is used everywhere, which is why it has so many names. This scale appears in many a Kirk Hammett solo, as well as in Eastern European klezmer music. It’s the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale and is also called Maqam Hijaz, Ahava Raba, and Phrygian Dominant. Check out Ex. 1 and then listen to Aris San’s “Mish Mash.”
Ex. 1
Ex. 2 is reminiscent of Khorshid’s take on the tune “Habbina Habbina,” written by Farid El Atrash.
Ex. 2
Glissando
The Middle Eastern guitar style features guitarists who can play melodies with a deep vocal quality and a round, lyrical feel to their phrasing. A glissando, or slide, is an expressive tool that is often used in that way. Ex. 3 is similar to what Khorshid played with Oum Kulthum, keeping it classy as he takes his solo with the orchestra.
Ex. 3
Here’s another example (Ex. 4) by Yehudah Keisar, an incredible guitarist from the generation of musicians who followed the rise of Aris San. Keisar made a big contribution to the repertoire.
This is from the hit song “Basbusa” by Shariff, which was produced and played by Keisar.
Ex. 4
The 1980s era of recordings incorporated more drum machines and had a guitar tone consistent with 335’s plugged right into the PA with a short digital delay on them. That gave the player a quick, tight sound that worked perfectly for these melodies.
Right Hand Rhythmic Picking
Percussion and rhythmic elements play a central role in Middle Eastern music. That’s why you would sometimes see Khorshid playing with three percussionists on the bandstand. Here’s one example of that amazing line up:
Check out the rhythmic opening guitar part and how it sits perfectly together along with the percussion, and then try Ex. 5.Another example of tight rhythmic playing is on the opening bars of Aris San’s “Dam Dam,” which you can find in Ex. 6.
Ex. 5
Ex. 6
Harmonizing
Harmonized guitar parts were always a great device to strengthen melodies, long before the days of arena rock or the Eagles. Here’s the traditional Greek song “Afilotimi” in Ex. 7 to showcase that technique. You can play this with another guitarist, multitrack it, or even dare to play both intervals at once.
Ex. 7
Trills and Embellishments
Trills give the music its nuanced accent and dialect. Some are easy to pick up while others are a little trickier. This last piece is by Moshe Ben-Mosh, another pivotal guitarist who recorded and produced many hits with an emphasis on his Yemenite-Jewish roots. Here’s the title track from the Haim Moshe album Ahavat Chayai which was released in 1982.
Our final example, Ex. 8, covers the points we went over about trills. Notice how many of our examples are played across a single string, which echoes the regional folk instruments, such as bouzouki, oud, and baglama. It’s a doozy, but taking the time to learn it slowly and gradually will help to internalize all the techniques listed here. Practice slowly and make sure you dance to the music!
MXR Bass Synth Serves Up Intergalactic Grooves & Vintage Analog-Style Vibes