Yvette Young may now be one of the most recognizable faces of the contemporary guitar scene on social media – yet, she's quick to admit she wasn't completely sold on the idea of sharing her music on Instagram when she first started building a name for herself.
“I was an art teacher, and I taught at an art school, and then my student tricked me into getting an Instagram and I was one of those tinfoil hat, ‘I'm not gonna let Mark Zuckerberg have my DNA’ people,” she quips during a Guitar Center Hollywood masterclass alongside Kiki Wong.
“[The student] was like, ‘You're so dumb. You need to be on social media.’ And I was like, ‘I guess.’”
The rest, as they say is history. As Young recalls, “I posted a video, and then it got me touring. It got me endorsements, and that was great. I'm so grateful.”
As for her foray into the guitar world, Young reveals she “started on acoustic,” as she was initially “afraid” of guitar pedals.
“It was terrifying because there's so many knobs and buttons, and it was a little bit like a spaceship to me. So when I first started writing, it definitely was very melody centric, and I didn't really think about how to make a guitar sound different from just a traditional guitar tone.”
However, acquiring a looper eventually led Young down the pedal rabbit hole, and she soon became just as addicted as the rest of us: "I remember I had a looper, and then I had a couple of reverb and delays, and I all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Wait a minute…’”
In fact, the virtuoso launched her own signature pedal – the feature-packed Qi Etherealizer with Walrus Audio – just last year. It is a multi-effects stompbox that promises to be an “ambient machine” and an “idea generator that helps musicians get past that oftentimes tricky starting point."
