
Wong Notes Live! with Matteo Mancuso
From Wong Notes by Premier Guitar
December 10, 2025 · 1h 20m · Season 9 · Episode 7
About this episode
Cory Wong interviews Italian guitar hero Matteo Mancuso about his unique guitar playing style and techniques.
Back in August, at Cory Wong’s Syncopated Summer Camp in Nashville, Wong hosted a late-night interview and hang session with Italian guitar hero Matteo Mancuso. If you weren’t there, you’re in luck: This week’s episode of Wong Notes features that exclusive rendezvous in its entirety, recorded live in front of an audience of camp attendees.Mancuso unearths his roots on the guitar, from starting on the electric guitar to learning Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix while using his father’s finger-picking style. “Later on, I discovered about the pick, but I was too lazy to start again,” says Mancuso, who shouts out other fingerstyle players like Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt. Mancuso credits his unique playing vocabulary to his atypical approach to the instrument, which meant he had to “find some solutions to some technical problems” that he encountered while learning to play. What kind of warm-ups does he turn to when he wants to get his fingers and brain moving? Mancuso has a few thoughts, but it all has to be “goal-oriented.” Mancuso and Wong, both veteran bandleaders at this point, swap advice and techniques on heading your own band…
People in this episode
Host: Cory Wong
Guest: Matteo Mancuso
Topics covered
- guitar techniques
- music education
- band leadership
- fingerstyle guitar
- interview
Keywords
- guitar
- interview
- Matteo Mancuso
- Cory Wong
- fingerstyle
- music
- band leadership
Sponsors
DistroKid
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Premier Guitar
Books & works: Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix
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