Yngwie Johan Malmsteen is a Swedish guitarist. He first became known in the 1980s for his neoclassical playing style in heavy metal, and has released 22 studio albums in a career spanning over 40 years. In 2009, Time magazine rated Malmsteen as number 9 among the 11 greatest electric guitar players of all time.
Sweep picking is a guitar playing technique. When sweep picking, the guitarist plays single notes on consecutive strings with a 'sweeping' motion of the pick, while using the fretting hand to produce a specific series of notes that are fast and fluid in sound. Both hands essentially perform an integral motion in unison to achieve the desired effect.
Rising Force is the first studio album by guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, released in late 1984 through Polydor Records. This was originally planned as an instrumental side-project of his then-current band Alcatrazz, but due to singer Jeff Scott Soto's appearance on the album, Malmsteen opted to release it as a solo album. It reached No. 14 on the Swedish albums chart, No. 60 on the US Billboard 200, and received a nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 1986 Grammy Awards. The album is regarded as a landmark release in the shred and neoclassical metal genres.
Lead guitar is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featured guitar, which usually plays single-note-based lines or double-stops. In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz, punk, fusion, some pop, and other music styles, lead guitar lines are usually supported by a second guitarist who plays rhythm guitar, which consists of accompaniment chords and riffs.
Neoclassical metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is heavily influenced by classical music and usually features very technical playing, consisting of elements borrowed from both classical and speed metal music. Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore pioneered the subgenre by merging classical melodies and blues rock. Later, Yngwie Malmsteen became one of the most notable musicians in the subgenre, and contributed greatly to the development of the style in the 1980s. Other notable players in the genre are Randy Rhoads, John Petrucci, Michael Romeo, Jason Becker, Tony MacAlpine, Vinnie Moore, Uli Jon Roth, Stéphan Forté, Wolf Hoffmann, Timo Tolkki, and Marty Friedman.
Shawn Lane was an American musician who released two studio albums and collaborated with a variety of musicians including Ringo Starr, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Reggie Young, Joe Walsh, Jonas Hellborg and many others. After studying the piano, he mastered the guitar, which he played with exceptional speed.
Mike Varney is an American record producer and music publisher. He is the founder of the Shrapnel Label Group, which includes Shrapnel Records, Tone Center Records, and Blues Bureau International. He also has a 50% stake in Magna Carta Records, a New York-based label. Varney is often credited with being the individual most responsible for popularizing the mid-1980s shred guitar boom, and has continuously specialized in producing musicians within the genres of instrumental rock, hard rock, jazz, jazz fusion, blues, blues-rock, progressive metal, and speed metal.
Planet X was an instrumental rock supergroup, founded by keyboardist Derek Sherinian and drummer Virgil Donati. They were active for a decade, releasing three studio albums and a live album, each with a variety of guest musicians and oft-changing lineups.
Frank Gambale is an Australian jazz fusion guitarist. He has released twenty albums over a period of three decades, and is known for his use of the sweep picking and economy picking techniques.
Shred guitar or shredding is a virtuoso lead guitar solo playing style for the guitar, based on various advanced and complex playing techniques, particularly rapid passages and advanced performance effects. Shred guitar includes "fast alternate picking, sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic scales, finger-tapping and whammy-bar abuse", It is commonly used in heavy metal guitar playing, where guitarists use the electric guitar with a guitar amplifier and a range of electronic effects such as distortion, which create a more sustained guitar tone and facilitate guitar feedback effects.
Steeler was an early 1980s American heavy metal band that featured Swedish guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen upon his arrival in the United States. The band was founded in 1981 in Nashville, Tennessee, by vocalist Ron Keel and released one album on Shrapnel Records in 1983 before morphing into Keel.
Economy picking is a guitar picking technique designed to maximize picking efficiency by combining alternate picking and sweep picking; it may also incorporate the use of legato in the middle of alternate picking passages as way to achieve higher speed with less pick strokes. Specifically:
Rusty Cooley is an American guitarist, known for his highly refined guitar technique. He is regarded as one of the fastest guitarists in the United States and a master of the shredding technique of guitar. Guitar Player magazine called him "the leading light of the post-Malmsteen shred-volution."
T. J. Helmerich is an American musician and audio engineer.
John Macaluso is an American drummer who has played for Ark, TNT, and Yngwie Malmsteen among others. Born in Commack, New York, Macaluso started playing drums at age 11. Having recorded more than 200 records and played multiple world tours, he continues to write and record music as well as do live performances. He also runs clinics and teaches others.
Brett Edward Garsed is an Australian musician and songwriter, best known for his work as a guitarist with John Farnham and T. J. Helmerich, as well as being a former member of the American band Nelson. Garsed was featured on Derek Sherinian's solo records Planet X (1999) and Planet X's Quantum (2007), and more recently Sherinian's Molecular Heinosity (2010).
Joey Tafolla is an American guitarist.
Barry Sparks is an American Rock bassist/Guitarist from legendary bands such as Yngwie Malmsteen, the Michael Schenker Group, UFO, Dokken, and Ted Nugent, amongst others. Currently Sparks is part of the touring band for the Japanese rock group B'z, and has also contributed to many of their albums and singles.
Centrifugal Funk is the second and final studio album by the Mark Varney Project (MVP), released in 1991 through Legato Records; a remastered edition was reissued in 2004 through Tone Center Records. This line-up of the group features guitarists Frank Gambale, Brett Garsed and Shawn Lane. The album consists primarily of covers of existing jazz fusion compositions, save for one track performed by Lane—"Lane's Blitz"—which he later dismissed as an impromptu warm-up rather than a planned solo, and thus his dislike for it. Varney has disputed Lane's version of events, but the track was omitted on the remaster.
Jacky Vincent is a British musician who was the lead guitarist and backing vocalist of the rock band Falling in Reverse from its formation until his departure in 2015 and was the guitarist of the power metal band Cry Venom. Since then, he has concentrated on his solo career and teaching. Vincent has two solo albums: Star X Speed Story, released in 2013 through Shrapnel Records that came third in the Guitar World 2013 readers poll for Best Shred album, and Life Imitating Art released in 2018. Vincent won the Alternative Press Guitarist of the Year award in 2012 and came third in the Guitar World "Best Shredder" readers pool awards in 2013.
