TRY A DIFFERENT PATH

Mark Knopfler has this deceptively powerful advice to offer on how gear can influence music: “Sometimes if you take your lyric and change the tuning or the instrument that you try the song on, pick up something else and do it a different way, very often it will dictate something else to you. It’s the difference between sitting down with a piano or sitting down with a guitar, or sitting down with a Spanish guitar as opposed to an electric. I often find that what you’ve written can yield something else. A capo is an amazing thing; just a simple little capo... Even a different string gauge can create something completely different; very often I’ve found that if I’m playing something with very heavy strings, you’re not bending them and so something else happens.”

ABOVE Steve Vai urges guitarists to stand by their own vision of what sounds good on guitar – and the kind of music they want to make