Rutgers-Newark Opens Hispanic Heritage Month With Mariachi and a Question
A campus kickoff earned real attention. Whether the month's programming backs it up is the fairer test.
Strum Magazine
How Classical Music Helps You Study Without Distraction
Tempo, dynamics and playlist length decide whether the music helps you focus or pulls you out of the page.
What Is a Luthier? The Craft Behind a Well-Set-Up Guitar
The word covers everyone from Stradivari's heirs to the person who fixes your buzzing nut. Here is what the trade actually does, and when you should hand over your guitar.
Different Ways to Strum a Guitar, Explained
Pick, fingers, thumb, or hybrid — each right-hand approach changes what your guitar can do.
Scale Length Explained: Why 25.5 and 24.75 Inches Feel Different
The distance from nut to bridge sets string tension, fret spacing, and how the same gauge bends — the two classic lengths are a whole playing philosophy apart.
How Often Should You Change Your Strings? The Honest Answer
String makers' published guidance lands at roughly 100 playing hours or three months for a casual player — and your ears are the final gauge.
The Right Humidity for an Acoustic Guitar, Explained
Wood expands and shrinks with the air around it, and both Martin and Taylor document what happens to a guitar outside a narrow humidity band.
Reviews
Album Reviews: How We Score Records and Why
What our rating measures, what it deliberately leaves out, and how to read it.
Reviews
How to Read a Music Review Like a Critic
Taste tells you what a writer likes. Substance tells you whether you should trust them. Here is how to tell the two apart.
Reviews
How to Test a Used Amp Before You Buy
A plain-spoken checklist for power tubes, pots, speakers, hum, and the red flags that should end the conversation.
Reviews
How to Choose a Guitar Humidifier: Specs, Prices, Trade-Offs
Two-way packets or a refillable soundhole tube? A buyer's primer built entirely from the makers' own documentation and published federal wood-moisture data.
The Eras Tour Became the First $2 Billion Tour — and Reset Live Music's Numbers
Taylor Swift's 149-show tour crossed $2 billion in ticket sales by its December 2024 finale, a figure no tour had ever reached.
Truss Rods Explained: The Mechanism Behind Neck Relief
A guitar neck is under roughly 200 pounds of pull from a set of light-gauge strings, and the thin metal rod inside it is the only thing keeping that force in check.
NAMM Pushes Back on Tariffs Threatening Guitar Prices
New Guitar Gear to Catch This August
July's release wave — Gibson, Marshall, MXR and a baritone build worth a closer look — lands in stores as August opens.