Jon Chappell

Biography

Jon Chappell is an author, editor, writer, and publishing professional with 15 years in management-level positions in prestigious music and pop culture publications.

He started professional life as multi-style guitarist, transcriber and arranger, attending Carnegie-Mellon University where he studied with guitarist Carlos Barbosa-Lima, and then earning his master's degree in composition from DePaul University, where he also taught theory and ear training.

Jon served as Editor-in-Chief of Guitar Magazine and Guitar Online in New York, Technical Editor of Guitar Shop Magazine, and Musicologist for Guitarra, a classical magazine. He is founder and the first Editor-in-Chief of Home Recording Magazine.

He has played and recorded with Pat Benatar, Judy Collins, Graham Nash, and Robert Cray, and has contributed numerous musical pieces to film and TV. Some of these include Northern Exposure, Walker, Texas Ranger, Guiding Light, and the feature film Bleeding Hearts, directed by actor-dancer Gregory Hines.

In 1991, Jon became Associate Music Director of Cherry Lane Music where he has transcribed, edited and arranged the music of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Vai, Bonnie Raitt, and Eddie Van Halen, among others. He has 15 method books to his name, which have sold in excess of 750,000 copies, and is the author of three highly successful books in the "Dummies" series, Blues Guitar for Dummies, Guitar for Dummies, and Rock Guitar for Dummies. He has written several books on recording, including The Recording Guitarist: A Guide for Home and Studio, published by Hal Leonard; Build Your Own PC Recording Studio (McGraw-Hill); and Digital Recording (BackBeat Books).

In 2000, he became Content Director of United Entertainment Media's Music Player Network, where he oversaw the writing, production, and launch of multimedia content for the daily, weekly, and monthly cycles of news- and feature-based stories. Additionally, he marketed their Web content with e-mail campaigns, and he not only directed the editorial production of those missives, but managed the technology aspect as well, dealing with such issues as data integrity, spamming concerns, bounce-backs, and mailing-list merges

Jon Chappell has published pieces in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, Pulse, Entertainment Weekly, PC Magazine, Mac World, and many other publications.