All content archive
December 2025
Filter
65 articles
- December 8
-
- “It’s creepy. The whole thing that AI can do – if you think about it, it’s just really creepy”: Aerosmith legend Joe Perry warns: “AI is way beyond anything we ever thought”
- “You wouldn’t know it’s slowed down unless I told you. But it is. Because of what I’m singing you have to have something that’s not right about it”: The elegant simplicity of Radiohead’s second biggest song
- "This record shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be possible at all”: Here's Autechre – reinterpreted on acoustic guitar
- "This is our way of saying thank you": Soundtoys is giving away six free plugins this Christmas, starting with Little PrimalTap
- Lennon was clutching the tape of the final mix from this session as he and Yoko left for the Dakota: The story of John Lennon’s final creative act
- “I wanted to make it a truly unforgettable, unmissable week – a run of shows to dream about”: Robert Smith announces line up for his first run of Teenage Cancer Trust concerts
- "Humans will be doing all the serious music transcription for the foreseeable future": Songscription review
- December 7
-
- “If I sit down with a Dumble, the last thing I’m going to do is do any kind of fast techniques”: Mark Tremonti on why he is addicted to Dumble amps
- “I don’t know if I’d call them guitar heroes, but there are players with amazing dexterity that can pretty much play anything – and quicker than the human ear could possibly hear!”: Journey’s Neal Schon says that “classic guitar records” still matter
- December 6
-
- “It's amazing what you can do with a drum machine - and two of the most expensive sampling and production workstations ever made”: Unpacking the technical genius behind one of the most iconic rock songs of the 1980s
- “Nobody can play better than that guy, man!”: In a new in-depth interview, guitar virtuoso Steve Morse discusses the supernatural powers of John Petrucci, Eric Johnson, Angel Vivaldi and Deep Purple legends Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore
- “I remember my assistant putting on his headphones in the studio, and he took them off after a few minutes, looked at me and said, ‘Wow, this song is crazy’”: Dan Nigro says that he always knew that Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club was something special
- December 5
-
- “Mix, overdub, spinback and scratch, all locked in time with your modular”: ALM Busy Circuits' new Pamela’s Disco module lets you sync a Eurorack rig to a CDJ or mixer
- “I used to accommodate him. I'd isolate him, put him in a booth and not record him. The others, particularly Mick and Keith, would say 'Just tell him to get the hell out'": Beggars Banquet, the album that was the turning point for the Rolling Stones
- “I was sitting there with my four-track and there was this riff that I had. I started singing this melody and saying that line, ‘I want to be yours…’ And I remembered the poem”: How Arctic Monkeys’ most popular song was created from early-’80s punk poetry
- "One of the hardest things I ever had to do was mix that song": A music professor breaks down Steve Cropper and Otis Redding's (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay
- "What were the skies like when you were young?": How The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds showed the world that sampling could be an art form
- “It’s quite normal to be groped by men”: Harassment, low pay and exploitation all reported by young musicians and artists in new survey
- December 4
-
- Dirty Boy turns the tables on guitar’s digital revolution with a preamp pedal inspired by a plugin – the all-analogue SilverBOY
- This $99 plugin recreates a classic studio technique invented at Abbey Road for The Beatles – and it's free for the next three days
- "They put it on hold so nobody else can record it. But he didn’t actually record it. That was when Don Henley said, ‘You need to quit giving your songs away’”: Sheryl Crow says that she once wrote a song for Eric Clapton that never saw the light of day
- "We didn't want to make just another controller": OXI Instruments' E16 is a sleek and portable MIDI controller that's more powerful than it looks
- “The best MIDI controller setup isn’t about having more – it’s about staying connected to what matters”: AlphaTheta and Serato launch Slab, the first hardware controller for Serato Studio
- “It was pretty much written in a day. I knew I had something quite special. Then the next day we played it with the band and it sounded like a bag of…”: How Neil Finn created the beautiful ballad that gave Crowded House a global smash hit
- “My mom said, ‘I’ll lend you a quarter if you become a guitar player.’ I think I did!”: Legendary guitarist Steve Cropper dies aged 84
- December 3
-
- EVH Gear turns its “holy grail” Eddie Van Halen amp Hypersonic with an all-digital 5150III 6L6 modelling combo that weighs a whopping 16kg less than its tube-driven equivalent
- "It's the most influential drum machine ever created – and has likely featured on more records than any other": A history of Roland drum machines, from the TR-77 to the TR-1000
- “When we were finished gouging it with screwdrivers, spraying blops of paint on it, dragging it around the yard, and banging it on the driveway, we hung it up in a tree”: Adrian Belew on how he and Seymour Duncan made one of the first relic’d guitars
- “We’re in an era of conformity in electronic music – very few people get celebrated for doing anything outside of it”: How TEED went back to basics with a bedroom set-up and a borrowed synth for third album Always With Me
- “People were going, ‘Hey man, I saw you’re on that Avril Lavigne record.’ I went, ‘Nah, I didn’t play on that.’ They go, ‘Your name’s on it!’”: The drummer who’s played on 400 albums has made one of his own – full of one-minute tracks
- “The ABRAMS100 packs a whallop and it’s perfect for pedals!”: Electro-Harmonix presents 100-watts of serious solid-state power in a compact guitar amp head weighing just 2.5lbs
- “It taps into yearning for a place beyond, a place of love, for me to speak my mind and be myself”: Flea teases his first solo album with a seven-minute jazz rave single
- "When culture is allowed to move freely, people discover that their common ground is far wider than the borders that divide them": Level 42's Mark King, Jools Holland and Dame Evelyn Glennie join alliance to remove barriers to UK-EU touring
- December 2
-
- Fender and Jackson celebrate 50 years of Iron Maiden with limited run signature models – including a Masterbuilt Dave Murray Strat that’ll leave you losfer words
- “They said, ‘Well, that's all we've got, but if you could round it off and complete it, that would be great”: Greg Lester on how he used a Gibson Chet Atkins to turn a keyboard melody into a classic nylon-string guitar solo in the Spice Girls’ 2 Become 1
- “I just walked off the stage. I wanted Jake to have his moment. And Jake nailed it”: Nuno Bettencourt on why he handed Shot Of The Dark over to Jake E Lee at Ozzy's farewell show
- Brian Wampler just reimagined a bona fide modern classic with The Compulsion Drive – but is this OCD-inspired dirt pedal an overdrive, distortion or both?
- "This isn't just about Jorja. It's bigger than one artist or one song”: Jorja Smith’s label claims royalties on AI track, allegedly trained on her voice
- “He was speaking through his eyes. He just gives us a nod. He mastered the art of communicating without using words”: Jon Batiste describes his “gloriously awkward exchange" with Prince at one of his legendary after-hours jam sessions
- “If I’d had a producer and I was simply an artist, I don’t think they would have had the patience to listen to what I wanted to do”: We catch up with the man who rewired the charts in 1979 - and is now blowing up on TikTok - with Pop Muzik
- "We stand for love over hate, hope over fear... join us and be a part of it": Paloma Faith, Fontaines D.C., Brian Eno and Kneecap join campaign group Together Against The Far Right
- "All the way through, I never stopped the tape once. He'd just go through the whole song and say ‘give me another track'. We did that nine times and then he said ‘I’m outta here’": Steve Porcaro on the two unreleased songs he wrote with Michael Jackson
- Still on the hunt for a bargain? These 58 Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for musicians are still live - but they'll be gone soon
- “It’s the biggest song in the set and it wasn’t a single. It wasn’t anywhere close to being a single”: The classic track that defines John Mayer as a guitarist and a songwriter
- If you were wondering if the deals aren't as good this year, then this saving on Ableton Push 3 Standalone is all the proof you need
- December 1
-
- Get the most out of your pedals and save £422 on one of the best pedal platform amps I've played - the Victory V40 Duchess Deluxe MKII Head
- Quick! You still have time to grab the Yamaha PSS-A50 for only $59 at Thomann! I love the Refaces, but this is the best Cyber Week ‘couch keyboard’ deal I’ve seen
- Who needs the £10,499 Gibson Dave Grohl signature DG-335 when the excellent Epiphone version is just £777 today?
- Jeff Beck's 1954 Oxblood Les Paul is the most expensive Les Paul of all time. This Epiphone version comes in at a fraction of the price, and with a further 20% off at Thomann, it may be an irresistible deal for the Jeff Beck aficionado
- “We built Paradise to make any guitarist feel like they’re playing in a dream studio": Universal Audio releases Paradise Guitar Studio – and it's 25% off for Cyber Monday
- I’ve tested 13 studio headphones this year and my top choice just landed a serious Cyber Monday deal - save $110 on the Sennheiser HD 490 Pro
- “Got many requests for this one from a few years back”: Aphex Twin uploads two previously-unheard tracks to his Soundcloud page
- “A clear winner”: The best Cyber Monday TV streaming deals for music fans, ranked
- I love the Elektron Syntakt, mostly because it’s like a Rytm, but cheaper, and it’s got one of the biggest savings I’ve seen this Cyber Monday
- 17 outstanding plugins that you can still get for under $50 this Cyber Monday - but be quick, the sales end soon!
- “We are devastated - Thom’s infection has made it impossible for him to sing”: Radiohead postpone two of their four Copenhagen dates
- It’s an open secret that the MXR FOD Drive is the Dookie Drive circuit under a different name, and for just $99 you can get the tones from Green Day’s best album on your pedalboard this Cyber Monday
- “What we’ll do is maybe just take an acoustic, get the song done, upload it and say, ‘OK, I want to hear this song as a country song’ or ‘I want to hear this song as a rock and roll song”: Teddy Swims admits he’s used AI on his own material
- I switched to Ableton Live from Logic Pro, and I've never looked back. If you want to do the same, you can still score 25% off in the Sweetwater Cyber Week sale
- "Years of unprofessional behaviour from people above us led to our decision”: Six ex-members of Cradle Of Filth sue frontman Dani Filth
- “That was truly one of the most fun things I've ever done”: David Ellefson joins a band of over 1,000 musicians to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne
- “My main influences? Love, anger, depression and Zeppelin": It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is coming to HBO Max later this week, and this is your last chance to subscribe for just $2.99 a month
- “I said to her, ‘I think people love you and root for you more than you know or believe’”: We speak with Lily Allen’s co-songwriter and executive producer about the storm of creativity that led to West End Girl
- “Miles Davis and all those guys would just record right to the vinyl. And I was fascinated by that. So I got that feeling in my stomach – butterflies”: Why Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry loves to record with no safety net
- “He wanted it to sound tinny, so he literally put the mic in a tin. That’s the way he would chase ideas”: When Justin Hawkins and The Darkness teamed up with Queen’s eccentric producer, strange things happened with champagne buckets, panpipes and more