GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE

Thesis: Guitar Player Magazine is dedicated to both aspiring and veteran musicians; displaying the latest products, offering professional insights, and even some basic lessons of favorite songs.

Five Facts:

a: Guitar Player was started in the late 60's, but flourished in the 80's thanks to editor Tom Wheeler. 

b: A subscription of 12 Issues is only $14.99, while 24 issues for only $22.99.

c: Readers praise Guitar Player Magazine for its wide variety of musicians (all with different styles). 

d: GP offers guitar lessons for popular songs: for example, in this month's issue, Matthias Jabs gave an interpretation of Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower.

e: GP also gives reviews for the latest equipment.  For instance, this month reviewed the specs of five different AMPs. 

Triune: Like all magazines, Guitar Player primarily mixes the NEOCORTEX and LIMBIC brains -- the first 19 or so pages are colorful images and poses of artists displaying their products, with specific fonts to emphasize the point their trying to make. Later, the pages are primarily detailed with interviews and product descriptions -- utilizing the NEOCORTEX.

TRENDS: The magazine utilizes a strong EPISTOMOLOGICAL SHIFT in many of the pages -- using professional guitarists to advertise their products (a way of saying: if you play this, you could be professional). There’s also a good PERSONAL SHIFT, with multiple artists (Dweezil Zappa, Wilson King) talking about their genre of music and how they got into that specific type of music.

Principles: Guitar Player uses blatant PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES, such as flashy fonts and bright colors in their products. There’s also a sort of even PACING in the magazine: the first few pages are straight up advertisement, which is followed by an even amount of articles. The articles and advertisement then play an even game of volleyball over the pages.

Persuasive Techniques: The magazine plays a unique game of BANDWAGON and BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE: products use both popular artists and professional models to advertise -- as if saying that their product is used by professionals AND plain folks like you and me. There’s also some HYPERBOLE: “The Greatest Guitars are products of Great Vision”