I've been subscribing for a couple of years now. The quick laundry list:
1. My favorite bit is there tends to be a diverse selection of guitar players and lessons. One month may be jazz heavy, another may be blues heavy, and sometimes there is even some punk/metal stuff thrown in. As a player I enjoy blues and metal, but I enjoy the diversity as it spawns ideas. Also note that while there are main stream guitarists covered there are also a lot of more obscure folks covered as well.
2. Yes there are a lot of ads. Show me a magazine that isn't loaded with ads these days tho'.
3. Yes there are a lot of gear reviews. Great if you're a gear head not so good if you could care less. Usually at least 50% reviews 50% lessons, sometimes more on the review side.
4. I've been playing for a few years now and find most of the lessons are generally intermediate to advanced and assume you are fairly well versed in music theory. I don't count myself as an extraordinary guitar player though. I ended up buying a few music theory books to help me understand the lessons after a few issues. Frustrating but a great challenge!
5. No there are no tabs of the latest or oldest hits out there. Everything in this magazine revolves around learning to make music, not copy somebody else note for note.
All in all a decent enough magazine. I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5 just because I'm a bit against all the gear reviews and the lessons are sometimes too brief or vague to be useful for me.
When GP started publication there wasn't anything else to compete with it. Now the aspiring youg guitarist has his or her pick of guitar mags, full of tab transcriptions of the latest hits and fawning interviews with pretentious guitar heros.
GP has tried to stand out form these magazine by being more about music and equipment, and to have a broader view of guitar playing, and to an extent is has succeeded. You're far more likely to find a profile of an intersting Flamenco or Brazilian guitarist in GP than in one of the other mags, and while you won't find fully tabbed out songs, GP is far more likely to deliver an article that goes into some depth on theory and application. In that sense, GP is more for musicians, and the other guitar magazines are mostly for teens looking to cover their favorite bands.
GP isn't always great. Some issues are completely devoid of anything that interests me, and there's far too much punk and shred guitar for my tastes. But a subscription is ridiculously cheap; I don't mind if I only find something of use in as few as half the issues I receive.
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I've subscribed to Guitar Player for a little over a year now. It seems like a great magazine that attempts to cover all of the bases of guitar playing. It has reviews and interviews with everyone from pretentious guitar heros to down-to-earth acoustic players and punk rockers. There are quite a lot of ads but they are expected for such a magazine. There are CD reviews based off of the guitarist's aspect also.
Although there are not complete song tabs there is a section that aims to improve aspects of guitar playing taught by acomplished musicians (Rusty Cooley, Robben ford, and some more). I personally prefer this over full song transcriptions because these improve personal playing instead of simply copying what some other muscian has done; thereby leaving room for innovation instead of emulation.
This magazine has a lot to cover, so it tries to be eclectic and thorough. It interviews and examines classic rock, jazz, acoustic, classical and metal guitarists.
This is great for those that are serious about guitar playing. For the casual, MTV based guitar player, Guitar World is probably a better magazine for you.
If you are truely serious about a specific type of guitar playing. You would do better to pick up a magazine solely about your style of guitar playing (ex. Acoustic Guitar magazine).
Pros: A thorough magazine that covers most if not all aspects of guitar playing.
Cons: There are too many ads and the products that are reviewed are generally too expensive for the average guitarist (it's at least too much for me to care)
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I've subscribed to this magazine since the 1970's. For a lot of that time, it was the only guitar magazine widely available. It provided a great deal of instructional content, especially the columns which ran for years, and which were like taking monthly lessons from top players.
Unfortunately, the instructional content is an afterthought these days, relegated to a few quick one page riff ideas by random people each month. The magazine is almost totally consumed by "gear reviews", of which they seem quite proud. It's obviously an attempt to stay on the good side of all the equipment manufacturers who buy advertising. I'm profoundly bored with all the equipment content. The articles and interviews with players are getting shorter and shorter. The unspoken message seems to be "Don't worry about learning how to play what you have, just get out there and buy more stuff."
Their choices of cover artists are also getting more and more "flavor of the month"-oriented (when they aren't showing equipment on the cover). They'll run very short articles on great players, then give the cover and longest article to someone more known for their sense of fashion or appearances in celebrity gossip columns than for their guitar playing.
And don't get me started on their editor's monthly sermon on how we should all be out there creating "great art". Zzz...
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Having played on and off for over 35 years, this is a great magazine if you're heavily in the "on" mode but is very high end if you're trying to make your way back from "off" to "on". I tend to prefer "Guitar for the Practicing Musician" but that reflects my rock orientation and need for simpler explanations even after all these years.
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As an Air Force officer, I envy this magazine. It's got a definite nautical emphasis, but the other services aren't neglected. Without a doubt the best single thing going in print for understanding the current policies/thought/developments in doctrine and technology of the US military.
