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How to Play Rhythm Guitar in the Pocket

How to Play Rhythm Guitar in the Pocket

No matter what style you play, playing in time could argubaly be the most important skill to have.


Improving time feel is crucial for any guitarist, as it forms the backbone of musical groove and rhythm.An effective method is to practice with drum loops or backing tracks, which can add a more musical context than a metronome. Focus on locking in with the groove and internalizing the pulse. Playing along with recordings of skilled musicians also helps absorb their sense of time and groove. Check out a few tips from Tom Butwin that will undoubtedly get your time together.

The two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.

Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.

Build quirks will turn some users off.

$279

Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io

4.5
4
4
4.5

Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.

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Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.

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Featuring a preamp and Dynamic Expansion circuit for punch and attack, plus switchable amp simulations.

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A thick, varied take on the silicon Fuzz Face that spans punky, sparkling, and full-spectrum heavy.

Dimensional, thick variations on the silicon Fuzz Face voice. Surprisingly responsive to dynamics at most tube amp’s natural clean/dirty divide. Bass control lends range.

Thins out considerably at lower amp volumes.

$185

McGregor Pedals Classic Fuzz
mcgregorpedals.com

4
4.5
5
4

Compared to the dynamic germanium Fuzz Face, silicon versions sometimes come off as brutish. And even though they can be sonorously vicious, if dirty-to-clean range and sensitivity to guitar volume attenuation are top priorities, germanium is probably the way to go. The McGregor Classic Fuzz, however, offers ample reminders about the many ways silicon Fuzz Faces can be beastly, sensitive, and sound supreme.

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