Yvette Young

Biography

Yvette Young is the most influential guitarist in modern math rock, a classically trained pianist and violinist who turned the electric guitar into something closer to a keyboard, tapping chords and melodies with both hands in open tunings nobody else would think to use. She was born June 28, 1991, in San Jose, California, into a musical family. Her father Phil was a singer, accordionist and composer, her mother played organ and accordion, and Yvette started piano lessons at four and violin at seven. That classical grounding is everywhere in her playing, from the way her lines move like counterpoint to the way she builds songs out of interlocking parts rather than riffs and solos.

She came to the guitar later and taught herself by ear, which turned out to be her secret weapon. Without anyone telling her where the chord shapes were supposed to go, she retuned the strings into open, piano-friendly tunings, sang the parts she heard in her head and then found them on the fretboard. She has said she writes with her ear, so she is never really in a box. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UCLA, and her short videos of herself tapping intricate instrumental pieces spread through the guitar internet fast. Covet started as her solo project in the mid-2010s and grew into a trio, signing with Triple Crown Records and releasing Effloresce in 2018, Technicolor in 2020 and Catharsis in 2023.

Here is the gem. Yvette is a visual artist as much as a musician. She worked as an art teacher before touring took over, she illustrates and paints custom guitars (including one for Willow Smith), and her art is part of how fans know her. Ibanez gave her a signature model, the Talman-style YY10, unveiled at the 2020 NAMM Show, and followed it with the YY20 in late 2021, a rare honor for an independent instrumental artist.

Her reach goes well beyond math rock. She played in a Logitech commercial that aired during Super Bowl LV in February 2021, contributed music to the 2025 Superman soundtrack, and teaches guitar through an online master course. Rolling Stone placed her at number 155 on its 2023 list of the 250 greatest guitarists, a rare spot for an instrumental, independent artist. She has also released solo music outside Covet, including the Acoustics EPs and a Piano EP, and a run of singles from "Sojourner" to "Always". Through all of it she has become a role model for a generation of players, especially young women, who saw in her videos that the guitar could sound delicate, strange and joyful all at once.

Legendary Performance

Covet, Audiotree Far Out Session

July 26, 2023 (release) · Architectural Artifacts, Chicago, Illinois

Released on July 26, 2023, Covet's Audiotree Far Out session was filmed at Architectural Artifacts, a sprawling salvage warehouse in Chicago packed with antique doors, stained glass and old ironwork. Instead of a clean studio, the trio set up among the relics and played the two most upbeat songs from Catharsis, "lovespell" and "firebird," with Jessica Burdeaux on drums and Brandon Dove on bass.

The session is a perfect showcase of how Yvette Young's music works live. There are no backing tracks covering the gaps. Her two-handed tapping carries the chords, the melody and the counter-lines at once, while delay and reverb stretch each phrase into a shimmering wash. Watching her hands up close makes it obvious why the Audiotree crew described the band as emotional nerd rock: the parts are fiendishly complicated, but the songs feel light, playful and full of feeling.

For many viewers it was the clearest look yet at Covet's mature lineup and sound, heavier and more rhythmic than the early videos, with Young's playing tighter and more confident than ever. It stands as a snapshot of math rock in the 2020s at its most inventive, captured in a room as unusual as the music.

Gear

Ibanez YY10 signature ("Creamsicle" and "Flubber") (2020)

Known for: her signature Talman-style offset, tuned F A C G C E

Yvette Young's main instruments are her Ibanez signature YY10 models, Talman-style offset guitars introduced at the 2020 NAMM Show. Her touring pair includes "Creamsicle," with an alder body, roasted maple neck, rosewood fretboard and Seymour Duncan SSL52 Five-Two Strat pickups, and "Flubber," with a roasted maple neck and Wilkinson single coils. She chose single coils for their clarity, because a tapped chord with every note ringing needs definition rather than thick distortion.

She tunes her YY10s to F A C G C E, a variation on the F A C G B E tuning the guitar ships in, and strings them with D'Addario NYXL .011 to .056 sets that hold up to heavy tapping in low, open tunings. The later Ibanez YY20, a two-pickup T-style design released in late 2021, serves as a backup and a different flavor for certain songs.

Vox AC30

Known for: chiming Top Boost clean under layers of delay

Her amp is a Vox AC30, plugged into the high input of the Top Boost channel with the reverb on and the tremolo off. The AC30's chime and quick response make tapped notes sparkle, and its natural compression evens out the volume differences between hammered notes and picked ones. It is the same classic British amp associated with The Edge and Brian May, used here as a bright, glassy canvas for her layers of delay and reverb.

MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, EarthQuaker Avalanche Run, Meris Mercury7, Hologram Microcosm, DigiTech Whammy Ricochet

Yvette Young's pedalboard is huge, because ambience is part of the composition. Delays and reverbs do the heavy lifting: an MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run, Universal Audio Galaxy '74 Tape Echo and Reverb, Meris Mercury7, Boss DD-3 and a Hologram Electronics Microcosm for looping and granular textures. EarthQuaker's The Warden compressor and a Caroline Somersault add sustain and wobble, while a DigiTech Whammy Ricochet, Boss OC-5 Octave and ZVEX Mastotron fuzz handle the wilder moments. The goal is to turn single tapped notes into orchestral swells.

Signature Technique

Two-Handed Tapping, Open Tunings and Pianistic Voicing

Yvette Young's signature move is two-handed tapping, and she uses it like a pianist. Her fretting hand holds down chord shapes or hammers on bass notes while her picking hand taps melodies higher up the neck, so a single guitar plays bass, harmony and lead at the same time. Because she learned piano at four and violin at seven, her parts move in independent voices, a classical idea applied to a rock instrument.

Open tunings are the second pillar. She tunes to shapes like F A C G C E, which put lush, open-sounding chords under her fingers and make wide intervals easy to reach. Combined with tapping, those tunings produce the shimmering, harp-like arpeggios that define Covet songs like "Shibuya" and "Glimmer." Because she learned by ear, she builds her own chord shapes instead of borrowing standard ones, which is why her music sounds unlike anyone else's.

Her rhythm sense is rooted in math rock's love of odd meters and shifting accents, but she keeps it singable. She often starts with a melody she can hum, then finds a way to tap it while keeping a groove going underneath, and her parts are built in interlocking layers that she can loop or recreate live. She also uses hybrid picking and percussive slaps on the strings for rhythmic punch.

Her influence on the 2010s and 2020s guitar scene is enormous. Her early online videos inspired countless players to try tapping and alternate tunings, helped spark the wider instrumental guitar boom alongside bands like Chon and Polyphia, and showed a generation of young players, particularly women, that technical, adventurous guitar does not have to sound aggressive to be impressive.