Summer festival season will be here before you know it. Hopefully we will be virus-free by then and you can enjoy the outdoors in the company of like-minded music fans. Either way, you can count on Guitar Moderne to supply virtual festivals like this to enjoy in the air-conditioned, Portapotty and germ-free comfort of your home.
We start the proceedings with this amazing Terje Rypdal trio concert from a decade ago that I seem to have missed, with Miroslav Vitous triggering orchestral samples.
No fancy playing or video, just a comprehensive and clear look at an amazing new looper from Chase Bliss and Knobs. And I do mean comprehensive. This thing is full of enough bells and whistles for two or three pedals.
If you are into modern guitar, you need to try processing your signal through this amazing app. I have featured it before and here, but the genius creator Chris Carlson (a recovering guitarist himself) has updated it with some fantastic new features. Jakob Haq’s comprehensive and entertaining report on the new version is a must watch, as well as a great introduction.
NAMM 2020 is next week. I will try and get my report up sooner this year. If you are looking for a distillation of some of the most interesting gear for the modern guitarist to come out of 2019, this is a good place to start. Nick Reinhart, and Juan Alderete always have their fingers on the pulse of what is forward thinking and cool.
Despite an increasing number of great recordings coming over my transom, three guitarists, Anthony Pirog, David Torn, and Mike Baggetta, dominated this year’s picks with two records each. In addition to being brilliant players who have produced stellar examples of their work on these albums, all the guitarists featured here are out in the trenches preforming live on a regular basis. In no particular order.