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Famous guitarists who also play drums

November 14, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

Lots of famous guitar players started out behind a drum kit. Playing multiple instruments is a great way to broaden your horizons when it comes to musicianship – it can make you approach guitar completely differently!

Here are some famous guitarists who are just as good with a pair of sticks as they are with a six-string:

Dave Grohl

Thomson200, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl famously played drums in Nirvana (1990 to 1994). Before that, he provided the drums for punk rock band Scream.

Grohl started playing guitar at age 12, and switched to drums in high school. He said he taught himself how to play drums by listening to Rush and punk rock. “When I got 2112 when I was eight years old, it f—ing changed the direction of my life,” he told RTTNews in 2013. “I heard the drums. It made me want to become a drummer.”

In 1994, after Kurt Cobain’s death and Nirvana’s subsequent dissolution, Grohl recorded a 15-track demo, in which he recorded all of the instruments himself. He briefly played drums for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, although he turned down an offer to join the band permanently. He also played drums with Pearl Jam a couple of time during this time period.

The demo Grohl recorded was eventually remixed and released as The Foo Fighters’ debut album in 1995. He switched to lead vocals and guitar for Foo Fighters, but still plays drums on some Foo Fighter recordings.

Frank Zappa

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Avant-garde musician and artist Frank Zappa’s first instrument was the drums. He learned the basics of drums in a summer school course at the age of 12, where the students practiced on wooden planks rather than kits. He joined his first band in high school as a drummer.

Chris Cornell

Shayne Kaye, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Legendary Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell took piano and guitar lessons as a kid, but started his professional career with Soundgarden on drums. The band had another drummer come in a year after their inception to allow Cornell to focus on vocals and rhythm guitar.

Danielle Haim

Kim Metso, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

One-third of the pop-rock band Haim, Danielle Haim is both a talented guitar player and a drummer. She plays drums for Haim (which is made up of Danielle and her sisters Este and Alana Haim) in the studio and for some songs during live performances.

Wolfgang Van Halen

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Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang Van Halen has gotten plenty of attention for his guitar playing, but he got his start behind a kit. “It was the only thing my dad actually sat down to teach me. He sat me down at a table with a couple of magazines,” WVH told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2023. “He had me play eighth notes with my right hand, or quarter notes, I guess.”

Famous musicians and their famous mentors

November 6, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

For young artists trying to make it in the music industry, having a famous musician show them the ropes and help put them in the right places can be a huge advantage. Many successful musicians have “paid it forward” by taking new artists under their wing.

Here are a few well-known examples of mentorship in the music industry:

Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton

Parton is actually Miley Cyrus’s godmother – the country superstar got close to the “Party in the U.S.A” singer’s father, Billy Rae Cyrus, in the 1990s. She has also acted as a mentor to Cyrus since her Disney channel days on “Hannah Montana”, appearing as “Aunt Dolly”. Parton provided guidance for Cyrus as she broke out as a solo artist, and the two have collaborated on multiple projects, including NBC’s “Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party in 2023, and a collaboration on Parton’s 2023 album Rockstar.

Trent Reznor and David Bowie

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor toured with David Bowie in the 1990s. Bowie’s music had already been a huge influence on Reznor – especially albums like Scary Monsters. On tour, Bowie joined his protege for performances of “Hurt”, and also gave him advice on dealing with the pressures of fame. “There were a number of times where the two of us were alone, and he said some things that weren’t scolding, but pieces of wisdom that stuck with me: ‘You know, there is a better way here, and it doesn’t have to end in despair or in death, in the bottom,'” Reznor told Exclaim in 2016.

Lizzo and Prince

Many successful artists can call Prince their mentor – including Lizzo. The Purple One took a young Lizzo, who was performing in girl groups at the time, as his protege at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota. The late icon was dedicated to help foster the careers of Black women creatives. “My relationship with Prince was like Charlie and we were the Angels,” she told David Letterman on his Netflix show. “It was kind of like that.”

Qunicy Jones and Ray Charles

Ray Charles was only a couple of years older than a young Quincy Jones – but he was a big inspiration to the young man who would later become a music industry titan. Jones’ first collaboration with Ray Charles happened when he was just 14 and Charles was 16. “He was just an energetic young kid and he really loved music. You could tell that he wanted to learn, he wanted to know, Charles said of the mentorship. “And since I was able to show him some things, that made me happy, that’s what stirred my heart. I could help this kid.” Jones would go on to become a multi-talented musician, producer, and composer – a true music industry legend.

Elton John and Lady Gaga

aphrodite-in-nyc, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Sir Elton John has a long list of proteges in the music industry – among them, avant garde pop artist Lady Gaga. Gaga broke through the music industry on her own, but John quickly took her under his wing once she emerged – backing her performance at the 2009 GRAMMY Awards, the first one for Gaga. Gaga is also the godmother of John’s children with David Furnish.

Famous musicians and their favorite candies

October 17, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

As you dig into your favorite candy this Halloween, you might wonder what sweet treats famous musicians prefer! We did some research on what your favorite musicians might be stealing from their trick-or-treaters this year.

Slash – chocolate

The legendary Guns ‘n Roses lead guitarist told Rolling Stone that he keeps it stashed around the house.

John Mayer – Enstrom Candies toffee

The “Gravity” singer/songwriter appears to love the toffee from this Colorado-based candy maker so much, he wrote a song about it in an Instagram story.

David Lee Roth – M&Ms (but not the brown ones)

Van Halen’s tour rider famously included a clause requiring a bowl of M&Ms with all of the brown ones removed in their green rooms. David Lee Roth later explained that it was a strategy to make sure the riders were being read thoroughly by venue management.

Cyndi Lauper – Candy corn

Candy corn gets a bad reputation, but “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” singer Cyndi Lauper doesn’t mind. “It’s really sugary but easy to eat!” she told Us.

ZZ Top – M&Ms and baby Reese’s peanut butter cups

The long-running rock band’s tour rider included a bag of plain M&Ms, a bag of peanut M&Ms, and a bag of baby Reese’s peanut butter cups.

Tim McGraw – candy corn and Reese’s cups

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A post shared by Tim McGraw (@thetimmcgraw)

The country music legend spilled his Halloween favorites in this Instagram video.

Taylor Swift – Squashies

@xorcontent Taylor Swift favourite candies are Squashies #erastourtaylorswift #taylorswiftedit #taylornation #taylorswifterastour #taylorswifttok #taylorswift #taylorsversion ♬ Turning Page (Instrumental) – Sleeping At Last

Swift discovered the British candy “Squashies” – a marshmallow gummy – while living in England. She talks about them in this video.

Iconic songs from Woodstock: Learn to play these classics with Fret Zealot

October 7, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair – better known as Woodstock – was a pivotal moment for music history. The festival, which took place August 15 to 18, 1969 at a dairy farm in upstate New York, hosted 32 musical acts and almost 500,000 festival attendees. The event’s legacy is so vast that in 2017, the festival site became listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

You can recreate a Woodstock of your own with these song lessons – which were performed at the 1969 festival.

Evil Ways – Santana

Carlos Santana’s band was relatively unknown when they performed on Aug. 16 at Woodstock. Their debut album Santana was released the same month, and previously they had only played locally in the San Francisco area.

Proud Mary – CCR

Rockers Creedence Clearwater Revival had a less-than-optimal set at Woodstock. They took the stage at 3 a.m., to a tired crowd who gave the band little energy. Rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty said that “We were ready to rock out, and we waited and waited, and finally it was our turn … there were a half million people asleep. These people were out. It was like a painting of a Dante scene, just bodies from hell, all intertwined and asleep, covered with mud.” Nevertheless, they played their set, which included the hit “Proud Mary”. The set was featured on the album Creedence Clearwater Revival Live at Woodstock.

Pinball Wizard – The Who

I Can’t Explain – The Who

The Who were the second-to-last act scheduled to play on Saturday, Aug. 16. They didn’t end up taking the stage until Sunday morning at 5 a.m., playing their entire Tommy album. Their finale performance happened around 6:05 a.m., as the sun rose over Bethel Woods.

Purple Haze – Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was a major star in 1969 and earned the festival’s final spot. However, Woodstock was plagued by weather and technical delays, causing the musical acts to stretch on until Monday morning. Hendrix opted to keep his spot rather than perform at midnight. As a result, he didn’t play for the entire crowd of half a million people – there were fewer than 200,000 attendees left by the time he performed with his Woodstock band, Gypsy Suns and Rainbows. The performance included his iconic rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner”.

Voodoo Child (slight return) / Stepping Stone – Jimi Hendrix

Foxy Lady – Jimi Hendrix

Hey Joe – Jimi Hendrix

Hendrix rarely performed encores, but at Woodstock, he played his first hit, “”Hey Joe” to close out the festival.

Learn these songs by The Police with Fret Zealot

October 1, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

The Police emerged into the British new wave scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s, bringing their reggae-infused rock sound to radios everywhere. The trio formed in 1977 in London, with Sting (bass, lead vocals), Andy Summers (guitar) and Stewart Copeland (drums, percussion). The band found huge commercial success, being billed by Rolling Stone as “the first British New Wave act to break through in America on a grand scale, and possibly the biggest band in the world” in 1983.

Concert de “The Police” au Madison Square Garden – New York le 1er Aout 2007

The group disbanded in 1986, but occasionally got back together for single performances before going on a world tour in 2007. Despite having a relatively short career, The Police have won six Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, and an MTV Video Music Award.

You can learn these songs by The Police and Sting with Fret Zealot.

Every Breath You Take

The Police’s signature song, “Every Breath You Take” was recognized in May 2019 as the most played song in radio history by BMI. Sting said that he wrote the song while thinking of “Big Brother” and surveillance while writing the song. “I think the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it’s quite the opposite,” he told BBC 2 Radio.

Message in a Bottle

Andy Summers said that the “Message in a Bottle” guitar riff was originally supposed to be for another song, but during the band’s first American tour, Sting kept fiddling around with it until it became the riff as we know it today. Sting sings “sending out an S.O.S.” 31 times throughout the course of the song.

Roxanne

Sting wrote “Roxanne” while the band was staying in Paris, France – and the song’s name comes from a character in the play Cyrano de Bergerac. An old poster or the play was featured in the foyer of the hotel. While recording the song, Sting sat on a piano keyboard by accident, causing the dissonant chord and laugh you can hear at the start of the track. Sting is even credited for this “contribution” in the liner notes, where he’s listed as providing “butt piano”.

Englishman in New York

On his second studio album, Sting wrote “Englishman in New York” about Quentin Crisp, a British raconteur and gay icon, who moved from London to Manhattan, where Sting met him.

Five need-to-know strum patterns

September 24, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

Working on playing rhythm guitar? Learning a variety of strumming patterns is critical to mastering songs from artists like The Beatles, Weezer, the Police, and more!

Here are five strumming patterns to learn:

“Call the Police”

Strumming upwards requires a different approach than strumming up and down. It’s used in many reggae-infused genres, as seen in songs by The Police.

“The Proud Mary”

A muted string strike on beats two and four adds lots of interest to a simple chord progression! Try it with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit “Proud Mary”.

“The Fast Cowboy”

Want to be like the Man in Black? Try this down, down, up, down, up pattern beloved of country singers like Johnny Cash.

“The Bob Marley”

A syncopated up beat is the hallmark of reggae songs! Use it for traditional reggae songs like “Buffalo Soldier”.

“The Threes Company”

Need to break out of the 4/4 rut? Use this 6/8 strum pattern for songs like “Norwegian Wood”.

Get the detailed instructions for each of these strumming patterns, plus ten more with this course!

How to make your chord changes cleaner

September 24, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

If you’re a new guitar player, one of the challenges you’ll likely face is learning to cleanly transition between chords so that there isn’t any string buzzing or muting.

Quick and clean chord changes will become easier as you build strength and muscle memory in your fretting hand. Here are some tips to help you get clean chord changes every time:

Make sure each string rings clear

Practice chords one string at a time, to make sure every string is ringing clean without any buzzing. This will help you identify any fingers you may need to work on strengthen or any shapes that need practice or modification.

Practice slowly

Use a metronome (there’s a free one in the Fret Zealot app!) and play through the chord changes of a song much slower than you would play it, to make sure that each chord is ringing clean.

Use chord inversions

Some chords will be more difficult to change between. Luckily, there are many different ways to play chords! Experiment with different chord inversions or use barre chords to minimize how much your fingers need to move.

Practice

It might seem obvious – but the more you practice, the easier it will get! Here are some ways you can incorporate practice time into your day – even if you’re really busy.

How to overcome stage fright

September 20, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

It’s a familiar story – you get on stage for a performance, and suddenly, your heart starts racing, your palms start sweating, and you start getting lightheaded – your body goes into panic mode at the thought of performing!

Many musicians – even really famous, successful ones – deal with stage fright. Adele, Ozzy Osbourne, and Eddie Van Halen have opened up about severe anxiety before performances.

See what Billboard Top 20 artist XIMXIA has to say about stage fright:

Luckily, there are a lot of ways to combat stage fright. Here are a few tried and true tips:

PRACTICE

Practice your songs back and forth, so that playing them is second nature. The less you have to think about what you’re playing, the easier it will be. If you have new or improvised songs in your set, put them toward the end, so you can feel more comfortable when it’s time to play them.

Give yourself grace

At the same time, if you do make a mistake, don’t get down on yourself about it. Even the pros make mistakes! Keep playing the piece and don’t let a wrong note get in your head. It’s unlikely the audience will notice small mistakes anyway.

Visualize your performance

Imagine that you have a perfect gig – what would that look like to you? How would it feel? Conceptualizing a performance will help you make it happen in real life.

Be prepared (to the best of your ability)

Make sure your gear is working and ready to go the night before the gig, make sure you have setlists, capos, and any other gear you might need, and get rest and a good meal before your performance. If you’re feeling stressed about gear, it will only make stage fright worse.

Practice breathing exercises

Practicing mindful breathing before a performance will help you to ground yourself. You can find helpful tutorials on YouTube or Tiktok.

Fake it till you make it

You’ve probably heard that pretending to have a quality actually helps you achieve that quality in real life. If you tell yourself that you’re confident to go on stage, eventually your brain will believe it.

Connect with a friendly face

Do you have a friend or family member in the audience? If you do, lock onto them until the jitters subside. If you’re playing in an unfamiliar place, scope out a friendly face in the audience and imagine that they just said your guitar playing is amazing.

Just keep at it

Eventually, performing will become second nature, and the pre-show anxiety will subside. Just remind yourself why you love playing music, and don’t give up!

Five of the most iconic guitar solos of all time – and the stories behind them

September 17, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

An incredible guitar solo can make a good song unforgettable. Guitar solos embody the emotional climax of a song, whether they’re minutes-long technical shredding or a simple line that sticks in listeners’ minds.

Here are five of the greatest guitar solos of all time, and the stories behind them.

Sweet Child O’Mine – Guns ‘n Roses

The riff for “Sweet Child of Mine” started off as a joke, as GNR guitarist Slash played what he considered a “circus melody” at his bandmates for laughs. Lead vocalist Axl Rose wrote the lyrics to the song the next day.

The solo for “Sweet Child” is built around the Eb minor scale with a few major 7ths thrown in, before getting more aggressive in the second half of the solo as the tension builds.

Learn how to play “Sweet Child O’Mine”.

Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd

A guitar solo that inspired many heckles, “Free Bird”’s guitar solo clocks in at 143 bars, an extra-long solo. Guitarist Allen Collins recorded both guitar parts. “He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad,” Gary Rossington told Guitar World about the recording. “When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again and it was done.”

Learn how to play “Free Bird” with this lesson.

Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page used a “magical guitar” – a telecaster, not his signature Les Paul – to play the solo for “Stairway to Heaven”. He told a magazine in 2021 that he played the same telecaster he used on the band’s first album, which Jeff Beck had given him when he played in The Yardbirds.

His flowing solo on “Stairway” was ad-libbed in the studio during recording. “It’s not a laboured solo, it’s not something that’s worked out, written down and read, it’s more like a stream of consciousness,” Page said.

You can study Page’s signature style with this course.

Hotel California – The Eagles

This “guitar solo” is more of a guitar duet, as Don Felder and Joe Walsh trade licks before doing harmonized licks together. Both guitars are playing arpeggios of every chord, with one guitar playing one note lower down in the chord.

Walsh said in an interview that he and Felder worked out who would play when during the solo, but the solos were not planned. “They were spontaneous playing off of each other,” Walsh said. “We were really good at that, and the rest of the song was kind of planned out, we put those descending lines on because that was the first set of overdubs”.

Eruption – Van Halen

One of the most mind-bending solos of all time, “Eruption” was only meant to be a warm up, not a recorded song. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen said he arrived at the recording studio one day and started practicing his guitar, when the band’s producer heard it and asked him to record it.

“So I took one pass at it and they put it on the record,” Van Halen said. “I didn’t even play it right. There’s a mistake at the top end of it. To this day, whenever I hear it, I always think, ‘Man, I could’ve played it better.”

Learn Eddie Van Halen’s signature style with this course.

Songs for performing CPR

September 17, 2024/by Kaley Lynch

Learning how to perform CPR? You’ve probably heard to pick a song between 100 and 120 bpm for performing chest compressions. In a life-or-death situation like CPR, it’s good to pick a song you’re really familiar with. If you know the song on guitar, it can help commit it to memory.

Here are some songs recommended for CPR chest compressions by First Response Training International.

Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees