Happy Birthday, Us. A Year Of Guitar Stuff

Yep, today marks the anniversary of Guitar-Muse.com. Since the meager beginnings of just posting a “Guitar Of The Day” everyday (anyone remember that?) to pretty much full news coverage, interviews and reviews, we’ve grown a ton.

Our founders have been in the website business since 1998, and even they were a bit shocked at the early growth of the site, considering we didn’t put a penny into advertising. We might have if we had a penny to advertise with at the time, but we chose the social media / word of mouth route instead.

Here are a few memorable and fun moments (well in our business, articles are “moments”) to look back on. It’s hard to choose the “best” – so this isn’t a “Best Of” list, rather – just things that stick out in our minds for one reason or another.

If you’re new to Guitar-Muse.com, this is also a good opportunity to take you for a walk and show you what we’ve been up to.

Giveaways And Contests

We reviewed alot of cool new gear and then gave it away. It’s one of the only ways we can pay you back for visiting the site, following us socially, etc. The Smitchens started a tradition of completely rewritng the winner’s biography, mainly because we don’t know anything about the winner when the results have to be posted. Examples?

• EHX Stereo Talking Machine
• Line 6 HD POD Desktop
• EHX Neo Mistress

How about the Google Guitar contest? That was pretty fun. When google launched their online guitar on Les Paul’s birthday, we had a little contest around that as well, and the results were pretty fun.

Also, we did a few treasure hunts, which we WILL be bringing back. Those were a lot of fun.

There were many more contests, and there will be many more!

The Smitchen’s Fascination With Strange Crap

Beer guitars. Video game themed guitars. RV guitars?

• The Genuine Article: When You Say Budweiser, You’ve Said It All.
• The Jackson Zoraxe
• Five Guitars MacGuyver Would Love
• The Epiphone Airscreamer – yep, its an RV.

Of course The Smitchens contributes much more, which you’ll see later on this page, but here are a few editorial pieces:

Smitch covered Steve Vai’s record breaking online guitar lesson, wrote about The Art Of Learning, and the lessons he learned from his non traditional guitar teacher.

Interviews

We’ve Talked to a bunch of talented people, here are a few:

• Greg Koch
• Scott Tournet – Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
• Greg Howe
• Rich Renken – Line 6
• Scott Holiday – Rival Sons
• Chris Kemper – Kemper Amps (re: the profiling amp)
• Paul Pigat
• Joe Gore
• Tony MacAlpine
• Mike Matthews – Founder of EHX

… And a bunch more.

News

Covering news is fun, especially when it’s guitar news. Some pretty interesting stories broke this past year, but I’m not gonna rehash old news here, you can always check it out with the “News” link at the top of any page, or click here.

Education

On top of covering guitar news, and generally trying to have a good time, we try to provide some educational benefit for you as well. Our staff of writers are well versed in all things guitar, and we pass on that goodness straight to you, as much as possible.

This is a tough one to choose some examples from, so I’m going to go pretty randomly here.

• Guitar Amps – The Sound of Tubes
• Three Basic Shell Chords For Guitar
• What’s The Difference Between add9, Maj9, And 9 Chords?
• Get More Mileage Out Of The Barre and Jazz Chords You Already Know
• A Brief History Of Fuzz-Boxes
• Interview With Kathy Peck Of H.E.A.R. – Protect your hearing.

Tips And Tricks

Our writers have been busy with tips and tricks to further your playing technique, practice time, songwriting, gear, and more.

• Playing Fast Can Keep You Single And Songless
• The Mr. Rogers Guide To Rock Stardom
• A Novice’s Guide To Recording Guitar Amps
• 11 Ideas To Beat Guitar Writers Block
• If you’re into recording, our Interview With Will Kennedy was full of useful information. Part 1, Part 2

Fun Stuff

We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a good excuse to have fun while our significant others think we’re working. This tends to produce some of the most popular articles. Sometimes these articles are flat out silly stuff, other times just interesting guitar topics that you might not have ever thought about.

• 11 Innovations that Changed the Guitar Forever
• Steve Vai – 4 Degrees Of Separation
• Our April Fools Joke. We gave away Vai’s (stolen) Evo Jem.
• Top 11 Overplayed Cover Songs
• Guitar Hero Now Used For Science?
• What Were They Thinking?
• Five Talented Young Guitarists You Might Not Have Heard
• Three Great Guitarists Who Didn’t Stand A Chance
• Top 11 Bands That Became Brands – Yeah, Kiss is on the list.
• Is Being A Rock Star Bad For Your Health? – Exploring how rock stars have died.
• Guitar Auto Tune – The Future Is At Stake

 

Featured Guitars

From the beginnings of posting a guitar of the day, to reviews, or just spotlights on guitars, most of these can now be found in the “Featured Guitars” section.

Reviews

Where would we be without the reviews? We try out alot of stuff and report back to you.

All the product reviews can be found in the “Reviews” section.

Artist Spotlights

Spotlights on artists, all can be found here. There’s so much talent out there, and we try to keep a bead on it.

And That’s Just 8%

Every link on this page only represents 8% of the content we’ve produced in the last year. It’s incredibly difficult to pick and choose what to show you here, and I’m gonna have a mental breakdown if I keep this up, and I don’t want to step on The Smitchen’s toes in that department, so we’ll just stop right here.

The Future

We’ve got some plans for the coming months that are even bigger than everything we’ve done this past year, including major expansions of various sections of the site, to round out our value to you, the readers, as well as more of the same contests, giveaways, interviews, reviews and news.

Thanks for being here with us, and stay tuned!