A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(December 2021) |
John Heussenstamm | |
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Born | Los Angeles, CA, United States | December 28, 1953
John Heussenstamm (born December 28, 1953) is an American guitarist and music educator. He was the original lead guitarist in the Surf Punks, [1] toured with the Deniece Williams Band in 1977, [2] and was a band member of Innocent Bystanders. He is the author of Guitar Workout, a book published by Hal Leonard Corporation in 2010. [3] He is featured as an author and guitarist in The Gold Mine Series, as a coauthor with Chad Johnson in 100 Blues Lessons and with Paul Silbergleit in 100 Jazz Lessons. [4] Heussenstamm was also a featured guitar instructor in three DVDs published by Hal Leonard: 200 Blues Licks, 200 Jazz Licks and 200 Country Licks. [5] His YouTube channel has received over 10 million total hits and has over 15,000 subscribers since 2008. [6] As of February 2015, Heussenstamm resides in Laguna Beach, California. [7]
Heussenstamm is the nephew of composer and music theory professor George Heussenstamm, and the brother of artist Paul Heussenstamm. After high school, he began studying the guitar intensely, leading to a gig in the rhythm and blues group Lovera. He landed a touring gig with the Deniece Williams Band, which opened shows for many other notable acts of the Motown era, such as KC and the Sunshine Band and Earth, Wind & Fire. Under the name "Johnny Malibu", Heussenstamm recorded and performed with the Surf Punks. [8] In the late 1970s, he continued to expand his musical horizons by briefly studying Indian music with Ali Akbar Khan. [9]
From 1980 to 1990, Heussenstamm toured in Australia, mainly in his own bands with names such as the Alligators, the Lifters, Cicada, and the Rent Collectors. He recorded with Innocent Bystanders and independently as John Heussenstamm and the Alligators'. Before returning to the United States, he independently recorded three new age albums, Cloud Hidden, Nameless Wanderer, and Honest Living. [10]
Since the 1990s, Heussenstamm has been teaching, recording, and gigging in the Orange County, California area. In 1992, the LA Times wrote that Heussenstamm was "the most aggressive blues guitar player on the scene today." [11] He recorded many independent projects with artists, such as Thelma Jones and Dennis Lockwood. His underground popularity became apparent when he began posting video guitar lessons on YouTube. This led to his lessons being featured on many instructional websites such as VideoGuitarlessons.com, GuitarInstructor.com, and Premier Guitar. [12] According to the online magazine Guitar International, he has become "a recognized guitar pedagogue, for both his in person lessons" and for his book, Guitar Workout: Speed Picking, Sweeps, Arpeggios and Harmony for the Modern Guitarist, published by Hal Leonard in 2010. [13] [14] This was followed by Heussenstamm being featured in Hal Leonard's The Goldmine Series.
Joe Pass was an American jazz guitarist. Although Pass is well known for his work stemming from numerous collaborations with pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, his status as one of the most notable jazz guitarists of the 20th century is generally attributed to his work on his solo albums, such as Virtuoso.
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section ; and to provide all or part of the harmony, i.e. the chords from a song's chord progression, where a chord is a group of notes played together. Therefore, the basic technique of rhythm guitar is to hold down a series of chords with the fretting hand while strumming or fingerpicking rhythmically with the other hand. More developed rhythm techniques include arpeggios, damping, riffs, chord solos, and complex strums.
Surf music is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental surf, distinguished by reverb-heavy electric guitars played to evoke the sound of crashing waves, largely pioneered by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. The second is vocal surf, which took elements of the original surf sound and added vocal harmonies, a movement led by the Beach Boys.
John Dawson Winter III was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums, live performances, and slide guitar playing from the late 1960s into the early 2000s. He also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Lead guitar is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featured guitar, which usually plays single-note-based lines or double-stops. In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz, punk, fusion, some pop, and other music styles, lead guitar lines are often supported by a second guitarist who plays rhythm guitar, which consists of accompaniment chords and riffs.
Troy Stetina is an American guitarist and music educator with more than forty rock and metal instructional methods to his credit, and total sales currently over 1 million units. He was the director of Rock Guitar Studies at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and writer for Guitar One magazine, and now teaches independently.
The Surf Punks were a pop punk band formed in 1976 by Malibu residents Dennis Dragon (1947-2017) and Drew Steele. Dragon recruited the additional talents of Malibu residents Tony Creed AKA the "Hulk", for lead guitar and blues harp, fellow bodysurfer/frisbeeist John Hunt on the bass, and South Bay resident John Heussenstamm for lead guitar. This was the original core group, produced and engineered by Dragon in his garage studio across the street from Zuma Beach, his favorite body surfing spot. Mark Miller joined them on "Locals Only." Jeff "Ray Ban" Eyrich joined the Surf Punks on bass when John Hunt left the group.
Shred guitar is a virtuosic style of electric guitar performance. Categorized by its use of advanced techniques, shredding is a complex art form. Shred guitar includes fast alternate picking, sweep-picking, diminished and harmonic minor scales, tapping, and whammy bar use. Often incorporated in heavy metal, guitarists employ a guitar amplifier and a range of effects such as distortion. This creates a sustained guitar tone and may facilitate guitar feedback.
Man are a rock band from Wales.
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Heavy metal guitar is the use of highly-amplified electric guitar in heavy metal. Heavy metal guitar playing is rooted in the guitar playing styles developed in 1960s-era blues rock and psychedelic rock, and folk harmonic traditions and it uses a massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos and overall loudness. The electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has historically been the key element in heavy metal. The heavy metal guitar sound comes from a combined use of high volumes and heavy distortion.
Greg Koch is an American guitarist from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. In April 2012 Fender Musical Instruments Corporation named Koch one of the top 10 unsung guitarists. In April 2023 The Wisconsin Area Music Industry announced that Koch would be inducted into the WAMI Hall of Fame
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Yiannis Papadopoulos is a Greek rock fusion guitarist, author and composer.