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Article Title: 10 Best Guitarists of the 21st Century

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There’s something about music that can take us away from our problems. Hearing a great guitar riff can seemingly transport oneself away from their current world, into one of radical sounds and landscapes. Seeing the guitar tabs on a sheet of paper is nothing like hearing the music that is played. When most people talk about the best guitarists, they usually think of people from decades or generations ago. However, there are a number of great guitar players today. Here are some of the best guitarists of the 21st century.

10. Jason Mraz

Jason Mraz is a songwriter and guitarist who emerged onto the scene right after the start of the millennia with a unique and fun sound with strong appeal. Mraz actually picked up guitar after a friend gave him one that was about to be thrown away. When he acquired the guitar from his friend, he taught himself how to play. Now, his guitar is almost like another appendage, coming with him everywhere. Mraz tends to enjoy Taylor guitars.

9. Jamie Cook

Jamie Cook comes from across the pond in England. He picked up his love for music early in life and helped found a band in 2001 called the Arctic Monkeys while he was still in high school. This Indie band would go on to become popular across the world, in no small part due to Cook’s innovative rhythmic guitar playing. Cook will change guitars regularly, but he generally only requires a simple setup.

8. Dan Auerbach

Dan Aureback is the guitarist for the Black Keys. His musical interests at a young age while listening to blues and bluegrass music from his parents. He decided to quit college in order to pursue his interest in guitar. Luckily, childhood friend and fellow founder of the Black Keys and him produced something good enough to catch the eye of a music label, and the band got signed. He would go on to produce, but guitar is his true love.

7. St. Vincent

Annie At. Vincent’s first guitars was a red, plastic guitar her mom got her when she was five years old. She then got her first real guitar at the age of twelve. She has gone on to tour with a number of popular names. While constantly working, she tries to stay out of tabloid and emphasize the music. She’s been quite successful at this, despite some publicity about a relationship with Cara Delevingne.

6. Synyster Gates

Synystre Gates is best known for being the guitarist for Avenged Sevenfold. The band is generally known as a metal band, but they move from various genres as they are inspired. Whether you like the band or not, you can not deny the guitar skills of Synyster Gates. He was even voted “The Best Metal Guitarist in the World” in both 2016 and 2017 by popular magazine Total Guitar.

5. Jack White

Jack White is most commonly known as the lead singer and guitarist for the popular band The White Stripes. The band was unique because it was made up of a husband and wife team. IT was also unique that Jack decided to take his wife’s name instead of the other way around. The relationship may not have lasted, but the band did. Jack has also collaborated with other artists and performed solo. Jack has won 12 Grammy awards. Jack has been known to make his own guitars out of household items. He once made a guitar out of wood, nails, a Coke bottle, guitar string, and a pickup.

4. Gary Clark Jr.

Gary Clark Jr. is known for his unique blending of sounds. He uses his guitar to mix his blues, jazz, soul, and hip hop influences together to turn it into something magical. He started playing guitar at the age of 12. As he developed a name for himself in the Austin music community, he learned more and more. He is known for frequent use of the fuzz pedals. He quickly started to collaborate with some of the greats. He has won four Grammy awards.

3. Matt Bellamy

Matt Bellamy is the heart and soul of the rock band Muse. His dad was also actually a professional guitarist. He learned how to play guitar at the age of eleven, but he is also a professional piano player. When playing guitar, he uses tools to produce an electric sound. He has had Mason Guitar Works make his guitars for two decades and owners a majority stake in the company. He has won two Grammy awards.

2. John Petrucci

John Petrucci is the lead guitarist in the progressive band Dream Theater. He originally only started playing guitar to get the opportunity to stay up late to practice at eight. When this didn’t work, he gave it up until age eleven. When he developed a love for the craft, he dedicated six hours a day toward practice. One thing he is best known for as a progressive guitar player is his quick alternate picking technique. He will also play a seven-string guitar to give him more options on how to create sound. He uses Majesty-series guitars.

1. Guthrie Govan

Guthrie Govan picked up his first guitar at the age of three. His destiny was clear pretty early in life. He started playing by imitating the music he listened to. While music was a love, he went to Oxford University to study English. After a year, his talent was discovered. With a record deal on the table, he decided to pursue a career in music. Govan is academic by nature and continues to teach guitar to others. He has even written two books on the subject.

 

Everyone has different taste in music. However, it’s difficult to deny the talent of these brilliant guitar players. These are the musicians that will teach the next generation of musicians. With these people leading the way, we know that the future of music is safe.

Leamington’s Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter FRANCINE HONEY Releases Double Single “I Carry On” — Available Now!

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Leamington’s Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter FRANCINE HONEY Releases Double Single “I Carry On” — Available Now!

International award-winning Leamington, ON-based singer/songwriter and recording artist Francine Honey has released a double single — both solo and a duet — for her newest song, “I Carry On” — available now!

The song is a testament to the human spirit and its ability to overcome the challenges that life throws our way. It asks the question: Where does this courage come from?

Co-written and recorded with Honey’s songwriting friend and neighbour, Robert Gray, “I Carry On” is the second single released in anticipation of Honey’s upcoming fifth project, 2020 Vision — a chronicle of her life story so far in song. The double album due out later this year follows the Fall 2019 single release of “Red Sky” and full-length Holiday album, Take Me To The North Pole.

Honey explores: “When the path through is unclear, there are unexpected heroes that appear with help. Whether it is a partner, a caregiver, a parent, a child, a friend, or one’s faith in something larger than life, this song expresses gratitude to those that light our world and help us through. There is nothing like seeing the light of love beaming from someone’s eyes when we need it most.

“I have had my share of challenges in life struggling to make ends meet as the sole provider for my two children and somehow I always knew I’d get through them,” Honey adds. “Robert and I were outside chatting one day as neighbours do and he told me he was going through a major health challenge with cancer.

“We bonded over our mutual feelings about overcoming challenges with the help of a positive attitude, gratitude, love and song writing! We talked about how others have inspired us in the past, and wrote about how people are there for you when you need them and the strength that we as humans find to survive and overcome our challenges.

“You just do what you have to do to get through it.”

It took them a few months to find the time to sit down to write this song they talked about, and when they did finally meet, it came together pretty quickly. In fact, Honey was headed down to Nashville to record Take Me To The North Pole and loved the song so much, she asked producer Neilson Hubbard if they could record the song for release in 2020. Honey invited Gray to Nashville to be there if he wanted to see the song being recorded, and after, asked if he wanted to take a stab at singing the song himself in the studio.

“Luckily, he agreed,” she recalls, “and it became clear a duet brings new meaning to the song.”

For this reason, there are two versions of “I Carry On” — the solo is a more country version with Honey’s vocals, and a duet featuring Gray which adds another dimension to the song, she says.

Honey is not new to dealing with adversity and finding a way to “Carry On.”

A mother of two and former federal civil servant, Honey is finally living her dream; she has the love of her life, and the career she long denied herself. Her path through life and into songwriting has been years in the making: Although she’s made music since childhood — “I wrote my first song in 1976” — Honey never dreamed of making it a career. Instead, she studied math and computers, got married, had kids and worked as a project manager. Her life seemed perfect. Then a near-simultaneous breakup and job loss forced her to relocate, find a new career and raise a family alone. Music went on the back burner; she never stopped writing, but songs went unfinished — until her kids fixed that.

“When my 18-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son kept telling me to “Get a life, Mom!” they really were showing wisdom beyond their years,” she says. “After spending time thinking about what my life would be after they left the nest, I realized I had stories to share, and there was still an opportunity for me to at least try and turn my musical hobby into my profession.”

Along the way, the down-to-earth artist has displayed extraordinary dedication to her craft. Honey’s debut self-produced (in her living room) album An Ordinary Woman came out in 2008 and was followed in 2014 by Re-Drawn, produced by Lang Bliss in Nashville. The latter includes the song “I Soldier On” — and its French partner “Je Vis Sans Limites” — in support of the Soldier On fund in Canada. In 2015, she also re-recorded many of her early songs for the EP An Ordinary Woman (In Studio) with Mark Plancke of SharkTank Productions in Windsor, ON.

Honey took a few years to work on her craft, studying, exploring and chasing her sound, until 2018, when she began working with GRAMMY Award-nominated producer Neilson Hubbard in Nashville, TN. She recorded her full-length album to be continued… live off the floor in six days.

The album has received critical acclaim Internationally; her song “Stay” is a finalist in the 2018 International Songwriting Competition in two categories, recognized from more than 19,000+ entries around the world, receiving semi-finalist nominations in both the Americana and Blues categories. In addition, “Stay” was a semi-finalist in the 2018 Canadian Songwriting Competition (Folk/Singer/Songwriter).

The Austin Songwriting Group out of Texas awarded first place honours in the Country Category with “Stay” and first place in the Singer-Songwriter category for “Can’t Break Through To You” in April 2020 along with five other song placements including a third place for “I Carry On” in the Inspirational category.

2019 saw Honey release a few singles starting with “Flocons de neige sur mes cils,” the French counterpart of “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes.” This was followed by “Chez mon oncle Lucien”, a song written around the Hangman’s Reel that her grandmother used to play on her violin, is a traditional French-Canadian song with the memory of doing maple syrup at her uncle’s farm. “Red Sky” was released in October 2019, described as a gritty and dreamy flight through change.

Honey’s music has received critical acclaim and sees airplay on CBC, Radio-Canada, AM800, CTV, SiriusXM, Folk Roots Radio, and more across Canada, the US, UK, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. Her over 20k+ fans online are very happy she left her government career to pursue music full-time. She performs regularly on-line with her series “Honey In Your Coffee” and streams almost every live venue performance. Her belief that music gets you through life and her commitment to helping people feel less alone by sharing life through song connects people across the world to support each other. Her campaign last year to touch those suffering with grief through the holidays with her song and video “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes” and the French counterpart garnered over 1.5 million views, but most importantly connected people grieving from all over the world. It’s no wonder that the video for “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes” was a finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest.

As a graduate of the Berklee College of Music Professional Singer-Songwriter Certificate Program, Honey regularly makes the nine hour drive from Ontario, Canada to songwriting workshops in Nashville where she has been mentored by icons like Beth Nielsen Chapman (who contributes backup vocals to Honey’s “Snowflakes On My Eyelashes”), Mike Reid (“I Can’t Make You Love Me”), Mary Gauthier (“Mercy Now”), Verlon Thompson (“Boats to Build”), Gretchen Peters (“Independence Day”) and Jonatha Brooke (“Put the Gun Down”).

Honey is a member of the Americana Music Association, Songwriter’s Association of Canada (SAC), Nashville Songwriter’s Association International, and Canadian Country Music Association. She co-ordinates the SAC’s Leamington & Windsor Regional Writer’s Group mentoring other songwriters, has showcased at the Texas Songwriters Symposium four years in a row, as well as at the NSAI Tin Pan North Festival, Hugh’s Room, the WinterFolk Blues and Roots Festival in Toronto, the Kingsville Folk Music Festival, and the Folk Music Ontario conference. Her music and songwriting have not only taken her through Canada and the U.S but to the U.K., Switzerland, and Italy.

She continues to co-write with other artists, aiming to have her music recorded by fellow performers and licensed for TV. “If I could get a song on Grey’s Anatomy or another TV or Netflix series, that would be cool,” she laughs. “But really, I just want to keep going, writing better songs. I’m finally a songwriter and I know I’ll do this the rest of my life.”

Today’s 1-minute tip for artists stuck on social media: List Your Favorite Writers

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Today’s 1-minute tip for artists stuck on social media: List Your Favorite Writers

Write a post about who you follow, why, and what your fanbase might get out of following them as well.

Today’s 1-minute tip for artists: Write a book review.

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Today’s 1-minute tip for artists: Write a book review.

Reading breeds knowledge. Reading opens the mind to a whole new world. Talk about how they showed you to see the world in new ways, and how this book helped you in music, and in life.

The ‘First Lady of Guitar’ Liona Boyd is “Sending Love In The Time Of Corona” with New Song

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The ‘First Lady of Guitar’ Liona Boyd is “Sending Love In The Time Of Corona” with New Song

Multi-award winning and Gold and Platinum-selling Canadian, ‘First Lady of the Guitar’ Liona Boyd is “Sending Love In The Time Of Corona” by way of a new single available now.

Proceeds from the song’s release will be directed to the Unison Benevolent Fund to help support musicians and industry professionals with counselling and emergency economic relief.

“While bicycling early one morning near my winter house in Palm Beach, Florida, I was anxiously thinking about my friends, family and fans scattered around the world and how we are all having to cope with rapidly changing times due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Boyd shares of the song and its heartfelt inspiration. “I began to hum the melody and lyrics to a little song, which would become ‘Sending Love In The Time Of Corona.’

“I first posted a simple version of the song on YouTube using my computer’s camera. After seeing all the comments fans had kindly posted, I decided to make a more developed version and worked remotely with Andrew Dolson and my producer, Peter Bond, in Canada.

“Wanting to help raise money for the Unison Benevolent Fund, I conceived this song to bring a message of hope and appreciation to those affected, and to those helping others.”

A 2019 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National GUITAR Museum, a hat tip shared by the likes of B.B. King, Glen Campbell, and Bonnie Raitt, Boyd’s illustrious 40+ year career continues to enthral millions with her romantic take on classical, folk and world music.

Recipient of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario, she is the winner of five JUNO Awards, five Guitar Player Magazine’s Classical Guitarist of the Year awards, Vanier Award, Women Who Make a Difference award, Prix ‘Esprit du Ciècle, and Artist of the Year and Honorary Mayor of San Antonio, Texas — plus four Honorary Doctorate of Law degrees and an Honorary Doctorate of Music degree.

Since the beginning of her career in 1974, Boyd has released 28 albums, and a Christmas special, A Winter Fantasy, nationally televised via PBS and CBC across the United States and Canada, respectively. She has appeared on countless stages around the world, and collaborated with the likes of Yo Yo Ma, Eric Clapton, Gordon Lightfoot, Tracy Chapman, Olivia Newton-John and Sir Andrew Davis, to name a few.

The author of two books, No Remedy for Love and In My Own Key, Boyd is a dedicated philanthropist and activist for a lengthy selection of charities close to her heart.

She has also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Joann Falletta International Guitar Competition and was inducted into Guitar Player Magazine’s Gallery of Greats.

“Sending Love In The Time Of Corona” is available now.

That time Mikhail Gorbachev sold Pizza Hut in this 1997 commercial

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That time Mikhail Gorbachev sold Pizza Hut in this 1997 commercial

To supplement his lecture fees and book sales, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev appeared in print and television adverts for companies like Pizza Hut.

Black Thought of The Roots: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

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Black Thought of The Roots: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

While our culture adjusts to the New Normal, artists are revealing the threads of our common humanity as they find new ways to bring their work to virtual communities. In this installment of Tiny Desk (home) Concerts, hip-hop wordsmith Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought of The Roots crew, took the occasion to premiere three new songs.

Billie Joe Armstrong and Susanna Hoffs Perform The Bangles ‘Manic Monday’

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Billie Joe Armstrong and Susanna Hoffs Perform The Bangles ‘Manic Monday’

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong teamed up with Susanna Hoffs to perform the song her group made famous, Manic Monday, written by some guy named Prince.

1-minute tip for artists: Share stats.

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Keep up with trends and stats and turn them into a social media post: Vinyl sales year by year, revenues for concerts by decade; amount of downloads now versus 10 years ago, streaming stats, how many people still buy ringtones, even the amount of YouTube videos uploaded daily are fun stats to share.

Simple Success Tips for Math Students

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There isn’t a rigid technique of studying math that works for every student. However, there are several general guidelines that a student can use to improve and eventually achieve success in a math class. Here are a few tips for ambitious math students hungry for success.

Attend Your Classes

Regardless of how genuine your excuse is, missing a class puts you just as far behind as skipping it for an irresponsible reason. Therefore, unless it is unavoidable, do not miss a class. A class gives you a platform to learn consciously and subconsciously through the interactions of your peers with the teacher and each other.

Practice

The secret about math is that you grasp the most when you practice. You will learn the concepts through classwork and studying, but the only way to reinforce the problem-solving techniques is by attempting as many questions as possible on the topic of study. Always try to do the practice assignments that your lecturer gives you in class. There is no problem with going to the internet and asking assignment helpers, “will you do my math homework?”, when you have too much on your plate. However, ensure you do the same assignment yourself when your schedule frees up.  That is the only way you won’t miss out on what the lecturer is trying to teach you by issuing that assignment.

Cross-Check Your Answers

What is the point of practicing if you have no method of checking your answers for accuracy? Have a referral strategy. Use questions or problems that have predetermined solutions you can compare with. However, the beauty of math is that even without the predetermined solutions, you can work backward to find out if your answer is correct or not. For example, you can prove the solution of an algebraic equation by inserting it into the equation to see if the two sides balance. Checking your answers helps you find the errors in your problem-solving formula.

Be Organized

Successful mathematics study starts with planning. All mathematics formulas for solving simple and complex problems define a procedure of operations. For you to master the art of problem-solving in mathematics, you need to learn how to organize your thoughts to perform one action after the other, procedurally. Habitually, when presented with a problem, write the known information on a piece of paper, such as the variables mentioned in the problem and the formula you intend to use. This helps to organize your brain and to ensure you don’t miss anything in the process of looking for your solution.

Consult With Your Lecturer and Peers

Communication goes hand-in-hand with being organized. Constant communication in the learning process enables your tutor to correct you or clarify a difficult concept or method in real-time. Instead of waiting until the lecturer grades your paper to find what you did not understand, constant communication enables the tutor to assess and correct you during the learning process.

When faced with a difficult problem, consult your classmates and peers. The brain is a strange organ. We might attend the same class and get different things out of it. Therefore, solving problems as a team helps you and your peers combine the individual tricks and tips learned from the class.

Learn From Your Mistakes

Most students don’t take the time to find out why they failed a certain problem. The students who take steps back to find out their errors make significant progress. Doing revisions and corrections is a sure way to avoid failing the tested topic again. Whenever you figure out what went wrong, you won’t make a similar mistake in the future.

Math skills don’t come easily to everyone. They are built through strong interest and motivation. Follow the simple tips mentioned and you will improve your math grade.

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That Eric Alper

Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.

Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com

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