Mary Flower

1 week ago | acousticguitar.com | Mimi Fox |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Mary Flower |Dylan Schorer

I’ve always loved how a simple melody can open the door to so many musical possibilities. The concept of theme and variations has been around for centuries, from classical composers to jazz improvisers, and it’s something I naturally gravitate toward in my own playing.

Dec 18, 2024 | acousticguitar.com | Mary Flower

I credit Joni Mitchell for inspiring me to leave college and pursue a career in music. During those years, I figured out her song “I Had a King” in open-G tuning, which quickly became a mainstay of my repertoire. Mitchell’s songs were stunningly original, and I discovered how hard it was to sound bad in open tunings—whether playing the blues or creating instrumentals. It was all about using my ear to find the treble melodies and letting the open bass strings ring.

Nov 13, 2024 | acousticguitar.com | Mary Flower |Adam Perlmutter |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

In a remembrance of Happy Traum that he wrote for the Acoustic Guitar website, David Lusterman recalls receiving Traum’s last album, There’s a Bright Side Somewhere (2022), and being struck by how strong and vital the guitarist sounded at 84. Listening to a take on the traditional song “He Was a Friend of Mine” from the record, it is easy to understand what Lusterman heard.

May 12, 2024 | acousticguitar.com | Pete Madsen |Mary Flower |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Doug Young

The legendary classical guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia famously described the guitar as a small orchestra, and generations of steel-string guitarists, armed with six strings and ten fingers, have pursued and expanded that potential. A range of fingerstyle techniques has allowed these musicians to function like a complete band, creating independent melodies, bass lines, harmony, and even percussion on a single guitar.

Apr 14, 2024 | acousticguitar.com | David Hamburger |Mary Flower |Steve James |Pete Madsen

If you’re like most guitarists, you started to solo by learning the minor pentatonic or blues scale. But after a while, running the blues scale up and down got to sounding like, well, just playing a scale. In this lesson, I’ll teach you how to add variety to your playing by using the open strings in combination with notes of the minor pentatonic and blues scales.