Check Out the New Lessons on Gibson.com!

Though Gibson.com has long been home to some of the best guitar lessons on the Net, we're kicking it up a few notches more with the help of six skilled instructors from Guitartricks.com, a popular guitar lessons site.

Gibson.com will now feature one new lesson per week from one of the following esteemed guitar instructors: Bobby Howe, Hanspeter Kruesi, Ben Lindholm, Lisa McCormick, Christopher Schlegel, and Kevin "Schmange" Taylor.

Helpful, entertaining, and absolutely free, the lessons will inform players from all walks of life—from beginning to advanced, from jazz to metal.

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Legendary Rigs: Rock and Roll

We often talk of the USA being a melting pot, but however accurate that might be, you really saw a cultural, sociological, and artistic coming-together in the early 1950s, the result being an entirely new breed of music. North meets South, city meets country, black meets white, suit and tie meets bolo and Cuban heels ... bam! Rock and roll, baby. How could it not happen?

Volumes have been written about the way that the popular music styles of the late 1940s and early '50s came together to create rock and roll. Far less has been said, however, about how the more extreme, driving, and revolutionary guitarists in the jazz, country, and blues worlds were all doing their thing on very similar equipment.

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'68 Flashback: Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland

Jimi Hendrix secured his throne in psychedelic rock's Olympus with the completion of Electric Ladyland. The double album was the final and brightest jewel in the acid-and-paisley-era trilogy he'd begun in 1967 with his debut full-length Are You Experienced and the next year's Axis: Bold As Love.

For Hendrix, it was a triumph over considerable obstacles. His band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was falling apart, and the studio he envisioned, where he intended to record the album, was plagued with construction and cost troubles.

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The Early Years of Van Halen: A Paper Route, a High School Essay, and a Couple of Lucky Breaks

It took a decade of false starts, misfires, and acrimony, but David Lee Roth's return to Van Halen after a 22-year absence was not only a dream come true for many faithful fans, but it produced a blockbuster tour that began in September of '07 and is still rolling on, scheduled out as far as April '08.

It's now been 30 years since Van Halen's Warner Bros. debut became a breakthrough commercial success. Considered one of the most wildly influential hard rock albums ever, Van Halen has inspired many a critic to compare guitarist Eddie Van Halen—aged 22 at the time of its release—to Jimi Hendrix in terms of his immediate and enduring impact on guitar playing.

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This Week in Music History: January 20-26

Births
Leadbelly January 23, 1888
Slim Whitman January 20, 1924
Sam Cooke January 22, 1931
Etta James January 25, 1938

Deaths
Alan Freed January 20, 1965
Terry Kath January 23, 1978
Jackie Wilson January 21, 1984
Peggy Lee January 21, 2002

Releases
1964 Meet the Beatles

Charts
1955 Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" album enters the charts
1958 Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" enters U.K. charts at No. 1, the first record ever to do so
1968 "Judy in Disguise" by New Orleans' John Fred and his Playboy Band hits No. 1
1978 Saturday Night Fever hits No. 1

Events
1958 Elvis Presley receives his draft notice, but is granted a 60-day deferment so that he can complete his fourth film, King Creole.
1965 The Byrds record their hit cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."
1986 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame holds its first induction ceremony. Honorees include Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

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Five New Blues Guitar Releases to Blow Your Mind (Free MP3 Downloads!)

Few sounds express musical passion better than the cry of a bent guitar string sustaining a single note. It can tickle the spine like the howl of a lone wolf on a dark prairie, and seem just as chilling and lonesome.

In the world of blues guitar, how that note is squeezed is one of the qualities that distinguish the alpha wolves from the rest of the pack. And new albums by Ronnie Earl, Joe Bonamassa, Luther Allison, and Mike Welch, all masters of the modern blues fretboard, capture their distinctive voices at full bay. There's also a notable wild card entry by modern chitlin circuit king Bobby Rush that's the most raw and playful blues album to come out of Mississippi in a decade.

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Gibson Tone Tips: Pickup Selection

One running theme that you might have discerned in this Gibson Tone Tips series involves my efforts to encourage you to keep it down—that is, reduce pickup heights, gain levels, amp size, and so forth—in order to ratchet up the tone factor. This time around the block I'm revisiting the same old warhorse with regard to pickup selection. As with other installments that have revolved around this subject, some of the advice here might seem to be counterintuitive, but stick with me. I'm hoping it will all prove itself in the pudding, and if it doesn't, feel free to throw it out the window and do whatever floats your boat.

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Why the Philippines Are Asia's Rock Engine

Weaned on window-side serenades and bred on unruly karaoke bars, the Filipino culture is a distinctly musical one that dates back to the early 1500s. The native musicians of the Philippines—a cluster of more than 7,000 islands in the western Pacific Ocean—have integrated assorted American and Spanish influences with the loud, clear voice of their country's own musical past to create an infectious throb that's catching on. From China to Indonesia, Singapore to Japan, if there's an accomplished band on-stage in Asia, they're more often than not of Filipino descent.

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