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XLR is a magazine, a radar and a diary about music gear and the making of music — for the people who make records and put on shows, wherever they do it.

The name is the three-pin connector that every signal in the business passes through: the microphone on stage and in the booth, the line to the desk, the DMX cable that runs the lights. Studio, stage and lighting rig share it, and so does this magazine. Every few hours XLR collects what the makers shipped, what the reviewers heard, what the studios and the touring crews are doing, which producers and collectives are surfacing and what they are saying — synths and modular, plugins and DAWs, guitars and drums, microphones, monitors, PA and lights, the rooms and the people — from a few hundred sources in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and more, then plots what is moving. The editor writes a letter every few days. Nothing is sold here; when a link leads to a shop, that is the maker's shop, not ours.

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Acoustic GuitarGuitars

Learn Some Essential Flatpicking Licks via “Carroll County Blues”

September 16

Kenny Baker’s arrangement of “Carroll County Blues” is an excellent study for budding flatpickers, as it introduces some essential language, licks, and techniques that are foundational to the approach.

Flatpicking Spring 2026

Read at Acoustic Guitar ↗

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Learn Some Essential Flatpicking Licks via “Carroll County Blues”

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