When we think of the world of rock music, we think of the bands that have entertained us, their look and their sound.

We instantly think of the guitars that are part of their style, from the classic design of the Fender Stratocaster to the timeless cool of the Gibson Les Paul. Just as important to a band sound, if not more so, are the amplifiers.

When it comes rock music, there's no name in field of amplification that conjures up the same imagery as Marshall.

Marshall amps are the backbone of rock music, producing audio gear since the 1960s. While founder Jim Marshall found massive success providing amplification for guitars and basses, the guitar was not his speciality instrument.

Marshall had a successful career as a drummer and drum teacher, and opened a shop in the early 60s in London's Hanwell. His shop specialised in drum kits, cymbals and drumming accessories, however he was often asked about stocking guitars and amps.

The popular amplifier brands at the time were based in the US, and the cost of buying in and importing was to inhibitive. Having had some experience as an electrical engineer, Jim Marshall began to work with a technician from EMI called Dudley Craven and his own shop Mr Fixit, Ken bran. On their sixth prototype, the team finally found the Marshall sound.

The evolution of Marshall amps

The key difference between Marshall's amplifiers and many other amps of the time was the separation of the pre-amplifier from the speakers. Separating these elements meant that you would have a valve driven head section and separate cabinets with four 10” speakers. The famous Marshall stack was born, becoming an integral part of the stage set of rock bands on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thanks to the gain of these amps, they were a key part in the development of hard rock and heavy metal. As rock'n'roll gained a harder edge toward the late 60s and early 70s, Marshall was leading the way with their powerful amplification. Marshalls were the go to amp for many key performers of the time; Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were among Marshall's famous advocates. This continued into the 70's and 80s with players such as AC-DC's Angus Young and Guns'n'Roses' Slash as keen exponents of the brand.

Today, Marshall is still one of the biggest amplifier and audio equipment brands in the world, and one of the UK's best exporters. The legacy of Marshall amps continues today, giving bands that unmistakable sound.

Citations:

• The classic Marshall stacks

Peterborough Music has a broad range of drums, guitars, basses and Marshall amps.

The guitar is a firm favourite when it comes to learning how to play a new instrument. Most people choose this instrument due to its versatility and the choices available. Unlike many of the other instruments available, the guitar enables you to start learning the music you want to play from classic to rock and blues to pop.

Choosing the Type of Guitar to Buy:

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The first step in the process of learning how to play a guitar is finding the right guitar for you. Your first major choice will be deciding between an electric or acoustic guitar; many say you should choose an acoustic as your first guitar, but this is not necessarily the case and if you dream of ‘turning it up to eleven’ then go for it! Rather choose the guitar that interests you, this way you will not get bored and lose interest.

Buying a Guitar for Children:

When buying a guitar for children it’s important to choose the right size. Full size guitars are easy to find but are not always practical for little arms and fingers which will need to stretch to reach the strings. A guitar should fit comfortably with your arm being able to reach over the guitar with ease. Your arm should not be lifted above your shoulder in order to strum as this can leave you feeling uncomfortable and will make it difficult to play or practice for extended periods.

How Much to Pay For a Guitar:

Many people fall into the trap of purchasing the cheapest option; the cheaper options can have difficulties with tuning and comfort which may impact your ability to play. It’s understandable that parents want to choose the cheapest instrument when buying for their child, just in case they lose interest, but in the long run these cheaper guitars will make it harder for the child to learn.

Take a look on auction and free sites to see if anyone is selling a good quality second hand guitar. This is a great way to save money when compared to buying new, especially if you are unsure that this is something you will continue with.

Nylon or Steel:

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If you’ve decided to buy an acoustic guitar then you will have to choose between nylon or steel strings. Steel is ideal if you want to play rock or country, while nylon is more suited to the classical or folk genre of music. Nylon will also require more tuning than the steel, so this is an important factor to consider. However some people do find that Nylon strings are more comfortable for beginners.

Finding a Tutor

There are two ways of learning to play the guitar, the first is to find a tutor and pay for lessons and the second if to use free lessons available on the internet. If you choose to use the free lessons, remember this will require more dedication from yourself as you won’t have anyone encouraging you to learn and improve.

Have a look for a couple of tutors in your area and ask them about the learning process and how they teach. This will give you an opportunity to get a feel for them. You are going to be spending time with this person, so it’s important that you are comfortable with their teaching methods. It’s also important to ensure you choose a teacher and not a guitarist with no teaching abilities.

Free Online Lessons

There are a number of free lessons available on the internet which will teach you how to play the guitar. You will need to be dedicated as this is something you learn in your own home and at your own pace.

• Find chords and scales with ease online at all-guitar-chords.com • If you are unsure during the learning process, you can look up chords and hear how they sound at chordbook.com • There are a choice of free lessons and examples at guitarlessonsworld.com • Enjoy twenty five free video tutorials at guitartricks.com • Tuning your guitar is very important in order to get the right sound. Learn how to tune and pick your guitar at howtotuneaguitar.com

For more information and advice on learning the guitar visit DV247 - one of the world's biggest and most established music centres.

A new guitarist should think about both a commitment to a long learning process, but also to repeating a number of daily tips and tricks that can help them to become a better player at a faster speed. The main focus of a player should be on refining the basics, from getting used to rhythm to tuning and scales, while also working on more elaborate tricks and songs that can gradually be incorporated into a personal repertoire and tried out for live audiences. Some of the best tricks and tips though are ones that rely on simple persistence:

1 - Rhythm, Timing and Metronomes

It may not seem like the most exciting trick, but getting the foundations right through basic practice is crucial to your playing. Use a metronome to set up a beat, and spend at least 20 minutes a day working on playing along through simple chord progressions and scales. Metronomes make it easier to build up a familiarity with timing, and provide a good way to maintain a consistent schedule.

2 - Be Careful with your Practicing

One of the worst things you can do as an early guitarist is to throw yourself into practicing too much. You might learn a lot, but you also run the risk of becoming burnt out from your playing, and more likely to drop the instrument altogether. Intensive practices every day are better than hours and hours of work. Focus on what works best for you, and build up around certain areas.

3 - Use Music Theory to Understand How the Guitar Works

Music theory is daunting for the new player, especially if they haven’t had any formal musical training in the past. However, by appreciating notes, scales, and how different effects are achieved, and by being able to read music, it will be easier to start to layer certain tricks on top of normal playing.

4 - Simple Tricks

When you get a bit bored with rehearsing chords and scales, think about developing a few flashier tricks. Easier tricks to learn include hammer ons and pull offs, which involves hammering a fret hand finger onto the fingerboard and pulling off to create two notes from one action. Hammers ons and pull offs can be combined to create a flowing piece of music.

5 - Adjusting Tones and Pedals

You can also experiment with the tone of the guitar by practicing with a few pedals and effects switches, and the settings on an amplifier. While the noise created might not be exactly pleasing the first time you try, fiddling with bass, treble and equalisation means that you create substantial differences in the tone of your playing. Investing in a distortion or drive pedal will also create heavier sounds, as well as pushing reverb to create the effect of playing within a specific space.

The most important thing to remember is not to rely too much on effects pedals to disguise a lack of technique, but to see if there are any particular effects that you like and what to incorporate into your general playing. It is also necessary to think about how expensive the pedals will be, and whether you can borrow one before investing in your own.

With over 20 years experience Christina Appleworth would consider herself an expert guitarist playing a range of genres from classical to classic rock! Check out the range of advanced guitar lessons available from LickLibrary.com

Think 'unplugged' and the image that comes to mind is a band or artist playing tracks that had previously been recorded on amplified instruments like electric guitars or synthesizers being played on acoustic instruments or piano. The word became part of the popular MTV series launched in 1989 but the unplugged seeds had been sown 20 years previously.

JAMMING SESSIONS

Elvis Presley and The Beatles started a trend of recognised performers being captured in informal settings or in studio jamming sessions. But, although the sessions were forerunners of the unplugged format, they came about more by accident than design.

By the late 1970s high-profile unplugged performances began to creep in and the first one of note came in 1979 from The Who's Pete Townshend at The Secret Policeman's Ball, one of the Amnesty International benefit productions in London. Townshend ditched his trademark electric guitar (a Rickenbacker 360 Fireglo ) to give Pinball Wizard and Won't Get Fooled Again the acoustic treatment.

HAVING A BALL

That set the unplugged ball rolling and the show's sequel show in 1981, The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, featured acoustic sets by the likes of Bob Geldof, Sting and Phil Collins. The trend blossomed throughout the 1980s but the concept had still not been tagged unplugged.

Jethro Tull became the first band to play on MTV in 'unplugged' mode on MTV in 1987 when the acoustic trio of frontman Ian Anderson and guitarists Martin Barre and Dave Pegg performed a couple of tracks. XTC gave an acoustic set in spring 1989 and in the same year Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora gave Livin' on a Prayer the acoustic treatment at an MTV awards night.

The Unplugged tag was applied officially for the first time in November 1989 with Squeeze the first band to play.

NOTABLE NIRVANA

Over the years there have been dozens of critically-acclaimed Unplugged programmes. Nirvana's set on the MTV show was one of Kurt Kobain's last TV appearances. It was recorded in November 1993, about five months before Cobain died.

Most bands played versions of their hits and other original tracks but Nirvana bucked the trend by playing covers by the likes of David Bowie and Lead Belly and some of their less well-known material.

The only recognised hits were All Apologies and Come as You Are. This heralded a different approach to other Unplugged performances, where artists usually perform their hit singles and other self-penned material.

IN FINE VOICE

In the same month Duran Duran filmed their acoustic performance after a pause in the band's world tour caused by wear and tear on Simon Le Bon's vocal cords. Unlike Nirvana Duran Duran churned out their classic hits and Unplugged, which was well received by critics, marked Le Bon's return to top vocal form.

Peterborough Music offer vintage guitars including the Rickenbacker 360 Fireglo , noted for being used on many of the great tracks released by groups such as The Beatles and The Who.

The home studio can be a wonderful way to capture your self-expression without breaking the wallet, but many beginner and intermediate studio engineers (and even some experts!) encounter a significant obstacle in their quest to record the perfect song.

This obstacle is audio mixing.  Upon hearing that term, many think it is just a matter of adjusting the volume levels accordingly so that no instrument drowns another out.  If it were that simple, there wouldn't be audio engineers who make big bucks each year.

There are many things that you must calculate all at once while engineering a song, but this is a basic introduction to audio mixing that will help you get started on the right foot.

Depending on what type of music you are recording, you will have various different instruments that you need to become comfortable with.  Of course, some musicians blur the line between styles and include other, abnormal instruments to their songs but you have to try to stay familiar with many of the attributes of certain instruments.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

• You absolutely need a great pair of studio headphones.  See our article on setting up your home studio on a budget for more info and recommendations on which headphones are great.  If you can't hear what is going on, how will you know what to change?  A good pair of headphones is vital to the mixing process, and will help you out in tough times when you have trouble finding little details.

• Don't overexert yourself.  Your ears are the most important part of the puzzle when it comes to mixing, so if you keep listening to the same part over and over again or hear the music played back at loud volumes, your ears may become fatigued and no longer as sharp as they could be.  Take constant breaks in between edits, and if you feel like you are not making any progress, shelve it until later in the day or maybe even another day altogether.

• Invest in decent recording software.  Sonar Cakewalk or Steinberg Cubase, or if you have an especially  big budget, Steinberg Nuendo.

The big picture can easily be thought of as a metaphor for a cake: you need to take many different ingredients, in this case the instruments and their respective audio recordings, combine them together, and get just the right amount of each ingredient so that the cake, or the song in this case, comes out perfect.  When mixing audio, it helps to think of it in three dimensions.  What you will essentially be doing is creating small surround sound mixes, and you will do this by panning tracks left and right, adjusting volume levels, equalizing the music so the high parts sound bright and the low parts really touch the bass, and adding aftereffects like reverb and delay.

If you had all of the music panned dead center, and there were no effects like reverb added, and all of the volumes were even, you would end up with a recording that sounded very much like a garage band, as if you placed a microphone in the middle of the room and recorded your band playing.  Taking into account the acoustic elements of each instrument and adjusting the mix for it will make the whole recording sound more organic and easier on the ears.

Hopefully this gets you in the right mindset to begin building strong mixing skills.  There are still many things we haven't touched upon, but those topics will surely be covered in later articles.

There are many instances where a song will only have one guitar, or perhaps three guitars, and a few vocals, as well as other effects like orchestral instruments and sound effects.  It can get very complicated, very fast, and there are countless books on every aspect of recording, but don't be discouraged.

With enough spare time and practice, you will be able to mix your own recordings successfully without dropping big bucks on professional studios.

Countless musicians love to boast about their massive guitar pedal collection, and videos on websites will reveal that many of these guitarists have huge amounts of pedals strewn about the stage.

In many cases, having this many pedals is unnecessary, yet many guitarists feel that the more pedals they own, the better a play they are.  Sure, having a pedal is nice, and in many times it can certainly add or improve your tone, but only if you have the right one.

How do we determine which pedal is right for us?  Well, we have to ask ourselves a few questions first.

What Kind of Music Do I Want to Play?

The pedal you want to choose will largely depend on what kind of music you want to play.  If you are aspiring to play psychedelic music, you will probably want effects that add a transcendent element to the guitar, whereas if you are a death metal guitarist, you would want the best distortion you can get.  Pop music and country have very little use for pedals, though you can definitely add some as you see fit.

What Guitar Do I Have?

This is an important one.  If you have a Fender Stratocaster with single pickups, I am willing to bet that you are not playing metal, and are looking for a diverse, flexible guitar that can provide many different tones.  If you are playing metal, rock, or anything of the sort, guitars like Ibanez, BC Rich, Schecter and ESP Guitars will all have guitars that have humbuckers, which are like two single pickups combined into one and in turn produce a thicker sound.  If you add distortion to a single coil pickup guitar, it will not sound as heavy as it would on a humbucker.  On the other hand, if you are trying to achieve light, airy sounds with a humbucker, you will have a tough time trying to accomplish this.

What Amp Do I Have?

The amp is as important, if not more important, than a guitar.  You can have the best guitar in the world that will take you a million years to pay off, but if you don't have a decent amp to compliment it, it will still sound like rubbish.  If you had a cheap, inexpensive and low quality guitar running through a high end amplifier, I can almost guarantee that in the hands of an experienced guitarist it will sound much better than the former situation.  There are many types of amplifiers out there, and it is best to check out some reviews and information regarding your specific model to determine what type of music it is best suited for.

Below are a few of the different types of pedals available, and what kind of effects they provide, as well as what type of music you might find them in.

Distortion - Mostly found in hard rock and metal genres, distortion will give the guitar a crunchy sound that, when strings are palm muted, will add a very heavy feel to the music.

Reverb - Adds a sort of echo effect, as if you were standing in an empty room or a large cavern.  This pedal is extremely popular in most types of music, from country and pop to metal, alternative and blues, as well as jazz.

Delay - Delay is more of an experimental effect that isn't used too heavily, but can add nice touches when used sparingly.  Most commonly found in psychedelic music or guitar-centric music, a delay pedal will repeat a riff that you play a certain amount of times, while you continue playing other things.  Takes a lot of practice to be able to pull this effect off successfully.

Wah Pedal - Ah, the great Wah pedal.  It is basically a pedal that you can move back and forth while playing, and it will make the guitar sound like it is screaming or crying, hence the name.  You may have heard this in countless solos by Hendrix, Metallica, Cream, and most blues artists.  It certainly provides a fun sound that can add an extra layer of emotional depth to your solos.

Flanger - Flange is what you hear when a speaker is held up to your ear and it is moved to the other side, and back and forth quickly.  That kind of whooshing sound is what you will get with a Flanger pedal, and it can be found in many songs by Hendrix, as well as the intro riff to Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne.

Compressor - A compressor will be your best friend if you rely heavily on your distortion pedal.  It will prevent any extra noise from seeping through, and when you aren't playing any notes it will quiet down the excessive humming that may be coming out of your speakers.  Also makes abrupt stops in your songs more effective, as it will instantly kill of the note you end without any extra noise.

Multi-Effects - If you can't decide on any one pedal, try looking into multi-effects pedals!  These things will feature dozens of different effects that you can use either singly or together, and you will be able to create your own effects using attributes from many others.  Usually features a number of pedals that you can step on and program your preset effects, so that you don't have to bend down and choose a new preset in the middle of your song.  A little more expensive and definitely larger than most other pedals, but the multi-functionality will be a payoff for those looking to purchase more than one effects pedal.

So you've read the first article and you now know the basic components that make up a home recording studio.

You've got the money saved up, cash is in hand, and you are ready to make the plunge.

Here are my personal recommendations for a hassle free setup without spending too much.

• Microphone(s) - If you plan on recording only vocals to put over premade tracks, then you only need one microphone.  If you want to record amplifiers of any sort, you will need at least two.  To get a great variety of microphones, I recommend picking up an Audix i5, and 2 Shure SM57s.  If you don't mind having used equipment, with a little searching you can easily find these microphones at half the price.

• Recording Interface - It can be tricky to find the right hardware for your recording interface, but there are a few fail safe options! If you want great tone, very little lag between what you play and what you hear, I highly recommend investing in the Line 6 Toneport UX2, which gives you plenty of inputs, outputs, and zero audio lag if you do a direct connection to the computer and headphones.  If you want to spend a little more, the MBox Mini is a wonderful little interface because it allows you access to Pro Tools, one of the best and easiest recording programs available.

• Headphones - Like I mentioned before, the headphones must be high end for you to be an effective audio engineer.  My personal favorite headphones are the Shure SRH840 and Audio Technica ATH-M50.

• Speakers - Rather than buying regular computer speakers with a sweet subwoofer, we want to get studio monitors.  When you listen to any music through these, you will notice that it sounds flat and there will be little bass.  This is because it is meant to accurately reproduce the sound coming out of the computer without adding any bias to the low or high end, as subs or tweeters would do.  This will let you have a very clear picture of how you are doing on your track mixes. My favorite budget monitors are the KRK Rockit G2s, hands down.  These 5 inch little guys pack a punch, and get as loud as you would need.

After you have all of the equipment, set it up according to the instructions provided with each piece of gear.  If anything is USB powered, make sure you install the CD drivers before you plug in the device, unless otherwise noted.  This is how your connection flow should be once you are all set up and ready to go.

To Record Guitar

Guitar -> Amplifier -> Microphones -> Audio Interface -> Computer -> Headphones and/or Monitors

To Record Vocals

Microphone -> Audio Interface -> Computer -> Headphones and/or Monitors

Basically, the input starts where the instrument is, and the output will be the end result, which gets channeled to the headphones and monitors. The order of how you record each track is equally important, by the way.  If you are a vocalist who is just looking to lay down some tracks over prerecorded instrumentals, just record your tracks and lay them over the prerecorded ones.

If you are starting from scratch, however, you always want to begin with the rhythm section first.  Set the metronome up and record the drums, either through virtual drums or real recordings that we will cover in a later article.  After the drums, the next step must be bass because it lays the groundwork for the guitars to follow.  The bass must be on time with the drums to provide a strong rhythm section, and if the guitars are not on time, you will be able to easily tell.

Next, you want to record the guitars, and at the very end come the vocals and keyboards, as well as other sound effects you may want to add.  From here the next step is some trial and error as you play with your new equipment on your own.

In a future article we will cover how to record drums, as well as guitars, and audio mixing!