Hats off to Carmen Vandenberg of Bones UK, our celebrity Question of the Month respondent.
Guest Picker - Carmen Vandenberg, Bones UK
The cover of Soft, Bones UK’s new album, due in mid-September.
A: My favorite method these days (and to be honest, from when I started playing) is to put on my favorite blues records, listen with my eyes closed, and, at the end, see what my brain compartmentalizes and keeps stored away. Then, I try and play back what I heard and what my fingers or brain decided they liked!
Bone UK’s labelmade, Des Rocks.
Obsession: Right now, I am into anyone trying to create sounds that haven’t been made before—bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Jack White, and our labelmate, Des Rocs! There’s a Colombian band called Diamanté Electrico who I’ve been really into recently. Really anyone who’s trying to create innovative and inspiring sounds.
Reader of the Month - Sam C. Schiff.
Sam spent endless hours trying to learn the solo Leslie West played on “Long Red,” off of The Road Goes Ever On.
A: The best way to learn guitar is to listen to some good guitar playing! Put on a record, hear something tasty, and play on repeat until it comes out of your fingers. For me, it was Leslie West playing “Long Red” on the Mountain album, The Road Goes Ever On. I stayed up all night listening to that track until I could match Leslie’s phrasing. I still can’t, no one can, but I learned a lot!
Smith’s own low-wattage amp build.
Obsession: My latest musical obsession is low-wattage tube amps like the 5-watt Fender Champ heard on the Laylaalbum. Crank it up all the way for great tube distortion and sustain, and it’s still not loud enough to wake up the neighbors!
Gear Editor - Charles Saufley
Charles Saufley takes to gear like a duck to water!
A: Learning by ear and feel is most fun for me. I write and free-form jam more than I learn other people’s licks. When I do want to learn something specific, I’ll poke around on YouTube for a demo or a lesson or watch films of a player I like, and then typically mangle that in my own “special” way that yields something else. But I rarely have patience for tabs or notation.
The Grateful Dead’s 1967 debut album.
Obsession: Distorted and overdriven sounds with very little sustain—Keith Richards’ Between the Buttons tones, for example. Jerry Garcia’s plonky tones on the first Grateful Dead LP are another cool, less-fuzzy version of that texture.
Publisher - Jon Levy
A: I’m a primitive beast: The only way I can learn new music is by ear, so it’s a good thing I find that method enjoyable. I’m entirely illiterate with staff notation. Put sheet music in front of me and I’ll stare at it with twitchy, fearful incomprehension like an ape gaping at the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’m almost as clueless with tab, but I can follow along with chord charts if I’m under duress.
The two-hit wonders behind the early ’70s soft-rock hits, “Fallin’ in Love” and “Don't Pull Your Love.”
Obsession: Revisiting and learning AM-radio pop hits circa 1966–1972. The Grass Roots, Edison Lighthouse, the Association, the Archies, and Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds—nothing is too cheesy for me to dissect and savor. Yes, I admit I have a serious problem.
Anthony Pirog of the Messthetics
A: As I remember it, the first time I fell in love with the guitar was at a Nirvana concert in 1993. I was 13 years old, and my mother took me to American University in Washington, D.C. to see the show. I had been playing for about two years at that point, and remember the guitar was just riveting in the way that it could be played at the dynamic of a whisper or scream with unhinged violence. Thanks for taking me to the show, Mom!
Current obsession: My current musical obsession is improvising off of small atonal melodic fragments that I compose. I was talking with Joe Morris about his book, The Perpetual Frontier, and it led me to this study. I’ll take a small phrase that might be only a measure or two long and move it around to different keys, play chopped up versions of it, or play it in retrograde for about 5 to 10 minutes at a time. This gets me to where I want to be in terms of motivic free improvisation, and the surprising thing is that it’s changing the way that I improvise tonally.
Brett Petrusek - Director of Advertising
Photo by Bud Ingram-Lile
A: I started on bass when I was 8 years old. I couldn’t really reach the first fret. My instructor was teaching me 1950s bass lines from a Mel Bay Music book while I was busy listening to the debut Black Sabbath album. I loved the heavy sounds and giant riffs. Then, after a lesson, I was in the local music store and heard a guy playing the solo from “Whole Lotta Love.” I watched him bend the strings and thought, “Hm…. I’d much rather do that.”
Current obsession: Gibson Explorers (I’ve always been a Les Paul guy). I love the stripped-down simplicity. They hang great for me and have been inspiring new riffs and songs, plus they provide a new opportunity to change pickups and go down the rabbit hole and make them my own. I love wrenching on guitars.
Naomi Ruckus Rose - Graphic Designer
A: Dad would play goofy songs on his guitar when my sisters and I were little, and I just thought there was some kind of magical happiness that came from an acoustic guitar. Mom took me thrifting when I was 6 and I found a kid-sized guitar. I was hooked instantly.
Current obsession: ROCKS! I write a LOT of smart-ass songs (the rage flows easily, okay?). Now I’m spending more time soaking in nature and chilling the “f” out, and it’s altered the way I write. Taking rocks home lets me feel connected with nature without actually having to be in it. Namaste, punks.
Wojtek Drewniak - Reader of the Month
A: Hearing the SWAT Kats theme as a kid. I knew I loved it from this very moment and I remember it perfectly: A 6- or 7-year-old kid sitting on the carpet in front of the TV with his jaw dropped in delight. From then on, I started paying attention to the sound of the distorted guitar. After a few years, I decided that I wanted to create these noises myself.
Current obsession: Given that I love music of almost all genres, I was delighted to discover [Japanese electronicore band] Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas a few years ago. These people know no boundaries in music and I love it. Not everyone has to, but everyone should respect their musical courage. “Acceleration” is an absolute banger!
Julie Slick
A: Remarkable sensory experiences are like time travel, and for that reason I hold a very special place in my heart for Massive Attack’s Heligoland. I first heard its single “Paradise Circus” at Andrea Pellegrini’s mastering studio outside of Florence, Italy, during my first year as a nomad. I fell in love instantly.
Current obsession: Emma Ruth Rundle. I met her during one of those nomad years on an excursion to L.A. We became friends before I’d even listened to her music, which is probably a good thing because I totally would have fan-girled out over her incredible art, which is inspiring, impassioned, and pure.
Photo by Allan Wan
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
A: Frightened Rabbit blew the doors off of indie rock for me. Their most popular work is folksy, anthemic indie rock, but the imagination in composition, and especially in Grant Hutchison’s percussion and timing, really made me reconsider what a great song could consist of, and how far outside the lines you could color while still producing a sing-along, dance-along alternative-rock record. I’d love to experience that realization of possibility again.
Current obsession: I’ve been learning about the labor organizing efforts of music workers through the past century, in particular the massive AFM strikes of the 1940s, when musicians fought back against labels hoarding the profits from the latest technology: recordings. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Connor Wade - Digital Experience Manager
A: I wish I could experience Annie DiRusso’s music again for the first time. After a chance introduction scrolling TikTok, her grungy indie-pop tracks have consumed my life. Songs like “Don’t Swerve” helped me through the pandemic, and I’m excited to see what this Nashville-based songwriter does next.
Current obsession: I’ve been digging up some of my favorite songs from Arctic Monkeys after hearing about a friend’s recent experience seeing them live. This obsession is very nostalgia-fueled, as their first full-length came out during my high school years, but it’s been inspiring to realize how much they unconsciously influenced my playing.
Dan Hanson - Reader of the Month
A: Mountain. Leslie West’s guitar sound reverberates with me to this day! A Les Paul Jr. with a P-90 pickup through a Sunn PA amplifier! His fat tone, sustain, and vibrato were shockingly perfect! His delicate volume-swell ‘violin’ sections in his solo “Dream Sequence” were indeed dreamlike!
Photo by Frank Schwichtenberg
Current obsession: The 1962 duet album Undercurrent with Jim Hall (guitar) and pianist Bill Evans: I’m not a jazz-musician by any stretch...but their instinctive, intricate musical conversations gently force you to just listen and absorb the beauty of the music and not think about how they’re doing it.