Light Weight Les Paul?

By Andy@Musicademy | October 2, 2008

I’ve been trying to find a decent Les Paul for ages. I’ve owned 3, two 70’s Deluxes with the Mini humbuckers and a 1990 Standard, but really being a Fender guy I’ve always found them way to heavy. So what did I find the other day? A brand new custom shop chambered Gibson Les Paul. […]

Electric Guitar Styles – the U2 Sound

By Andy@Musicademy |

  The U2 sound has always been popular in churches since the Edge’s style leans more towards rhythmic ‘pad’ sounds than a typical lead guitar rock riff. A U2 style sound is great for songs with big dynamic changes and great for filling up space behind very clear melodies in a way that is not […]

Electric Guitar Styles – The Coldplay Sound

By Andy@Musicademy |

Since Coldplay broke onto the scene in 2000 many worship songs have Coldplay-esque guitar parts. I think it’s partly because it suits the style of many modern worship songs well and partly because it doesn’t require an advanced technique to play credibly.

Guitar Trick – Playing in 10ths James Taylor style

By Andy@Musicademy |

I’ve just come back from doing some seminars at the National Worship Leader Conference in Texas. One of the teaching sessions that was really popular was “Cheats, Licks & Tips for Acoustic Guitarists”. So as part of our contemporary guitar styles series, here is this James Taylor style trick. “I was quite surprised that one […]

Hendrix-Style Double Stops

By Andy@Musicademy |

This month we’re going to look at probably my favourite playing style, which is called double stops. Double stops means playing two notes at the same time and was employed to great effect by a certain Mr James Hendrix. Hendrix is known by non musicians for his wailing solos but this style used on gentler […]