If you’re just start­ing out on acoustic gui­tar, buy­ing your first instru­ment might seem sim­ple enough…. Head to your local music shop (or ecom­merce retail­er), thrust out your hand, and say some­thing like, “Give me a begin­ner gui­tar now!” Pay your mon­ey, take your lessons, Bob’s your uncle, right?

Ah, but say you encounter one of those things known as a gui­tar sales­per­son? And say that per­son has some ques­tions… “Ok, we’ve got tra­di­tion­al-style dread­noughts with cut­aways or no cut­aways. We’ve got con­cert sized gui­tars, par­lor gui­tars, clas­si­cal, all sorts!” And you, for­mer­ly con­fi­dent shop­per, now find your­self at sea. What’s the dif­fer­ence?

They’re already on to talk­ing about dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als used in mak­ing gui­tars and you check out. You imag­ine a pur­suit where you know what you’re doing: I could learn har­mon­i­ca…. How many kinds of those are there?

Fear not, begin­ner, YouTube gui­tar edu­ca­tor Paul Davids is here to teach us the types of acoustic gui­tars we’re like­ly to encounter in the wild, as well as the dif­fer­ent kinds of “tone woods” and why they make a dif­fer­ence.

Tone wood sim­ply means the kinds of trees used to make the gui­tar – maple, mahogany, rose­wood, spruce, etc. – and it’s called “tone wood” instead of just “wood” for a rea­son. Among mak­ers and play­ers of elec­tric gui­tars, a nev­er-end­ing argu­ment per­sists about how much tone wood mat­ters. There should be lit­tle debate when it comes to acoustic gui­tars.

The sound of an acoustic gui­tar comes from the pick, or the fin­gers, and from the neck, where the strings’ con­tact with the fret­board trav­els down to the res­onat­ing cham­ber of the body and gets sent out into the world. At each of these con­tact points, the prop­er­ties of the wood in ques­tion nat­u­ral­ly con­di­tion the shape of the sound waves.

Enlist­ing the help of East­wood Gui­tars Pepi­jn ‘t Hart above, who donat­ed the gui­tars in the first video for demon­stra­tion pur­pos­es, Davids demon­strates beyond ques­tion that dif­fer­ent woods used to con­struct the back, sides, and top of an acoustic gui­tar have a tremen­dous effect on the tone.

From brighter to dark­er, tre­bli­er to bassier, or what­ev­er you want to call the range of tones, you’ll hear them in these exam­ples of dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als used to make the same sized gui­tars. Why is this impor­tant? As Hart explains, an acoustic gui­tar is basi­cal­ly its own ampli­fi­er. While you can adjust the tone some­what with tech­nique, the first thing you need to do as an acoustic gui­tar play­er is deter­mine the best type of instru­ment you’ll need for the kind of music you’re play­ing.

Gui­tarists may also need to con­sid­er (even­tu­al­ly), the kinds of musi­cians they’re play­ing with. A heavy rock ensem­ble with rum­bling bass and drums will require a much brighter gui­tar to cut through the mix, where­as accom­pa­ny­ing a ban­jo play­er or vio­lin­ist will call for more low end.

You can still grab the first begin­ner acoustic gui­tar you find online and call it a day. But if you’re seri­ous about learn­ing the instru­ment – and learn­ing to play in a musi­cal tra­di­tion, be it folk, blues, coun­try, clas­si­cal, rock, or what­ev­er – you’ll need this essen­tial infor­ma­tion. Davids and Hart make it fun and easy to acquire in the two-part edu­ca­tion­al series above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Build a Cus­tom Hand­craft­ed Acoustic Gui­tar from Start to Fin­ish: The Process Revealed in a Fas­ci­nat­ing Doc­u­men­tary

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

What Does a $275,000 Clas­si­cal Gui­tar Sound Like?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Foo Fight­ers have teamed up with Tay­lor Hawkins’ fam­i­ly to stream world­wide their all-star cel­e­bra­tion of the leg­endary drum­mer. Above you can stream the Tay­lor Hawkins Trib­ute Con­cert tak­ing place in Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um.  Note: if you missed the begin­ning, you can scroll the video back to the very start.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch the Foo Fight­ers’ Tay­lor Hawkins (RIP) Give a Drum­ming Mas­ter­class

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form “My Hero” in a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Foo Fight­ers’ Drum­mer Tay­lor Hawkins

Watch 1,000 Musi­cians Play the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Dave Grohl Falls Off­stage & Breaks His Leg, Then Con­tin­ues the Show as The Foo Fight­ers Play Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (2015)

John Coltrane talked about his play­ing in edu­ca­tion­al terms, see­ing him­self as a stu­dent and, through his play­ing, as a teacher of new musi­cal forms and pos­si­bil­i­ties. His most endur­ing les­son may come from what some crit­ics call his first tru­ly icon­ic and most influ­en­tial album, 1960’s Giant Steps. On the record­ing’s title com­po­si­tion, Coltrane meant to chal­lenge him­self, and end­ed up chal­leng­ing gen­er­a­tions of musi­cians.

“The under­ly­ing har­mon­ic move­ment of Coltrane’s 16-bar com­po­si­tion — often called the ‘Coltrane Changes’ — has long been a set­tled mod­ule in jazz edu­ca­tion ped­a­gogy,” writes Stu­art Nichol­son in an essay for Jazz­wise. Cit­ing Coltrane schol­ar and biog­ra­ph­er Lewis Porter, Nichol­son calls the com­po­si­tion “effec­tive­ly an étude — or a thor­ough study — of third-relat­ed chord move­ment”: 26 chords and 10 key changes between 3 keys, B, G, and Eb.

This was new ter­ri­to­ry; with the title track to Giant Steps, Coltrane left the blues, which he’d stretched to the lim­it on Blue Train (his only record as a band­leader for Blue Note). He was recov­er­ing from his great­est life les­son — get­ting fired from Miles Davis’ band and get­ting clean — and fol­low­ing through on a real­iza­tion he’d had in the ear­ly fifties after join­ing Dizzy Gille­spie’s band: “What I did­n’t know with Diz,” he said, “was that what I had to do was real­ly express myself. You can only play so much of anoth­er man.”

Coltrane’s “oth­er man” was Char­lie Park­er, but as he moved away from Park­er as hero and began to study under Monk and Miles, he devel­oped his own impro­vi­sa­tion­al style, dubbed “sheets of sound,” and his own approach to play­ing chord pro­gres­sions: the “Coltrane changes.” On “Giant Steps,” Coltrane pushed the dia­ton­ic scale almost to break­ing (a cre­ative intu­ition giv­en that “dia­ton­ic” derives from a Greek word mean­ing “to stretch” or “extend”). Coltrane stretched, but he did­n’t pull his changes out of thin air.

Many of the ideas were already there in the canon — in Jerome Kern’s 1917 “Till the Clouds Roll By” and Duke Elling­ton’s “Blue Rose,” notes Carl Woideck for the Library of Con­gress. “Not rec­og­nized at the time, the sec­ond half of ‘Giant Steps’ was tak­en direct­ly from a pas­sage in the­o­rist Nico­las Slonim­sky’s ‘The­saurus of Scales and Melod­ic Pat­terns’ which vis­its the same three keys that the first half of Coltrane’s piece does.”

It took a mind and will like Coltrane’s to draw these threads togeth­er into the har­mon­ic com­plex­i­ty of “Giant Steps.” The com­po­si­tion’s “relent­less chord changes of key cre­ate a har­mon­ic obsta­cle course that is dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate, more so at this rapid tem­po,” Woideck writes. This is espe­cial­ly so for soloists, as pianist Tom­my Flana­gan found out when he almost lost the thread in his solo sec­tion.

In the visu­al­iza­tion above by Har­lan Broth­ers, we see Coltrane sail through his solo, bounc­ing off his band while they work through the changes. “Instead of just visu­al­iz­ing the sax solo,” writes Broth­ers, “I thought it would be super fun to be able to see how the entire quar­tet inter­act­ed,” includ­ing Flana­gan, bassist Paul Cham­bers, and drum­mer Art Tay­lor. See Coltrane’s changes hit like col­ored drops of rain in a down­pour in the ani­ma­tion and learn more about how it was made at Broth­er’s YouTube page.

Coltrane’s com­plex­i­ty is daunt­ing for the most accom­plished musi­cians. How much more so for non-musi­cians? It can seem like “you need a doc­tor­ate of music to go any­where near his record­ings,” Nichol­son writes. But “noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.” With its danc­ing lines and cir­cles, Broth­er’s visu­al­iza­tion gives us anoth­er way to appre­ci­ate the “sheer joy of music mak­ing and the pow­er and ener­gy of his play­ing” that inspires stu­dents, seri­ous fans, and new­com­ers alike through “uni­ver­sal val­ues that still speak to us now.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How John Coltrane Intro­duced the World to His Rad­i­cal Sound in the Ground­break­ing Record­ing of “My Favorite Things”

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Kate Bush has been lying in wait for us on this side of the mil­len­ni­um – espe­cial­ly for those of us on the U.S. side of the pond, who paid too lit­tle atten­tion when she became pop roy­al­ty in the UK (and Japan!) at the turn of the 80s.

Bush was too quirky, too British, and maybe too much her own woman for U.S. audi­ences, maybe. But now they’re ready. Final­ly, in the mil­lions, Amer­i­cans are catch­ing up to the bril­liance of her 1985 sin­gle “Run­ning Up That Hill” thanks to its res­ur­rec­tion by Stranger Things Sea­son 4.

Thus far, the Inter­net has pre­ferred her ear­ly stuff. Her first album and its epony­mous sin­gle, Wuther­ing Heights, gar­nered atten­tion online because of its beloved, bizarre video, an inspi­ra­tion to Kate fans world­wide. 1979 was the last time that she toured and the last time she appeared onstage until a 2015 come­back appear­ance.

Bush relied on elab­o­rate music films to car­ry her image. Her ear­ly turn to video, we might say, helped make her a cult favorite when she declined to be a celebri­ty for a few decades. Now video has killed the tour­ing super­star, and Bush is an Amer­i­can pop queen.

In 2022 — almost 40 years after its release — “Run­ning Up That Hill” has hit No 1 on the Hot Bill­board 100 Song­writ­ers charts, the first song by a female artist to top the chart this year. Her 1985 album Hounds of Love has become Bush’s first Bill­board No. 1 album, this sum­mer, rank­ing at the top for alter­na­tive albums and No. 2 for top rock albums.

“Run­ning Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” first peaked at No. 3 on British charts in 1985. The  album, Hounds of Love — one of her very best among a long string of great records — was hailed as “f**ing” bril­liant” by NME. “Our Kate’s a genius, the rarest solo artist this coun­try’s ever pro­duced,” wrote Jane Solanas.

Over here in the States, we were hard­ly unaware of Kate. Although “Run­ning Up That Hill” only hit No. 30 on the charts, her music con­tin­ued to thrive in under­ground scenes yet unmea­sured by sales and chart posi­tions. (Hounds of Love’s “Cloud­bust­ing” invad­ed U.S. raves and clubs in 1992 via sam­ples in British group Utah Saints’ “Some­thing Good,” a song most peo­ple heard on sketchy dance floors and rat­ty cas­sette mix­tapes).

As for the main­stream U.S. press, well… “The Mis­tress of Mys­ti­cism has woven anoth­er album that both daz­zles and bores,” wrote a Rolling Stone crit­ic in 1985. “Her vision will seem sil­ly to those who believe chil­dren should be seen and not heard.” A New York Times’ review called Hounds of Love “slight­ly pre­cious, cal­cu­lat­ed female art rock.”

There’s noth­ing slight about Kate Bush’s work, but Cheers to the sounds of f***ing bril­liant chil­dren at work. See why Bush’s revival — or endur­ing stay­ing pow­er — should come as no sur­prise in the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kate Bush Enjoys a (Long-Over­due) Revival, Sparked by Sea­son 4 of Stranger Things

Revis­it Kate Bush’s Pecu­liar Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing Peter Gabriel (1979)

300 Kate Bush Imper­son­ators Pay Trib­ute to Kate Bush’s Icon­ic “Wuther­ing Heights” Video

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness