The 58 Instruments used on The Rolling Stone Top 100 Tracks of All Time

I was recently contacted by Berklee and a design agency who have put together this beautiful graphic of the 58 Instruments used on the Rolling Stone Top 100 Tracks of All Time.

They said “We worked with a music expert to review the top 100 songs from Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time to determine the different instruments used in each song. The instruments in the graphic were researched two ways: documented accounts of recording sessions as well as intensive critical listening”.

There are some really interesting inclusions here, such as the Mellotron (2 Tracks) and the Finger Cymbals.

You may be surprised to know that Electric Guitar only featured on 74 of the songs and Electric Bass was only on 69!

Rarest Instruments?

The beautiful image below contains some interesting facts: Do you know the only top 100 track to feature a recorder? How about the Contra Bassoon?

Novel Uses!

There are some really interesting uses of instruments – Did you know that Dave Davies of the Kinks achieved the dirty guitar sound in “You Really Got Me” by slashing the speak cone on his amp with a razor blade?

I hope you enjoy this graphic, it certainly opened my eyes to knowing there’s a lot more to it than Guitar, Drums and Bass.

Click to Enlarge Image

58 Instruments that Made Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Songs of All Time Infographic by Berklee Online

For more free guitar lessons, check out the above links. Maybe you’ll be the next guitarist to play on the Rolling Stone Top 100 Tracks of all time!