Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos that reflect characteristics of the human singing voice. It typically involves playing the guitar in the traditional position with the use of a slide fitted on one of the guitarist's fingers. The slide may be a metal or glass tube, such as the neck of a bottle. The term bottleneck was historically used to describe this type of playing. The strings are typically plucked while the slide is moved over the strings to change the pitch. The guitar may also be placed on the player's lap and played with a hand-held bar.
David Scott Mustaine is an American musician best known as the co-founder, vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of thrash metal band Megadeth. Prior to forming Megadeth, Mustaine was the original lead guitarist of Metallica but did not appear on any of their albums.
Instrumental rock is rock music that emphasizes musical instruments and features very little or no singing. Examples of instrumental rock can be found in practically every subgenre of rock, often from musicians who specialize in the style. Instrumental rock was most popular from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, with artists such as Bill Doggett Combo, The Fireballs, The Shadows, The Ventures, Johnny and the Hurricanes and The Spotnicks. Surf music had many instrumental songs. Many instrumental hits had roots from the R&B genre. The Allman Brothers Band feature several instrumentals. Jeff Beck also recorded two instrumental albums in the 1970s. Progressive rock and art rock performers of the 1960s and 1970s did many virtuosic instrumental performances.
Zachary Phillip Wylde is an American guitarist and singer. He is best known for his tenure as the lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and as the founder, lead guitarist, and lead singer of the heavy metal band Black Label Society. His signature bulls-eye design appears on many of his guitars and is widely recognized. He was also the lead guitarist and vocalist of Pride & Glory, who released one self-titled album in 1994 before disbanding. As a solo artist, he released the albums Book of Shadows and Book of Shadows II.
Steven Siro Vai is an American guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, and producer. A three-time Grammy Award winner and fifteen-time nominee, Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of eighteen as a transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, and played in Zappa's band from 1980 to 1983. He embarked on a solo career in 1983 and has released eight solo albums to date. He has recorded and toured with Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake, as well as recording with artists such as Public Image Ltd, Mary J. Blige, Spinal Tap, and Alice Cooper. Additionally, Vai has toured with live-only acts G3, Zappa Plays Zappa, and the Experience Hendrix tour, as well as headlining international tours.
Glenn Raymond Tipton is an English musician. Often noted for his complex playing style and classically influenced solos, he is best known as one of the lead guitarists for heavy metal band Judas Priest.
Howard Duane Allman was an American rock guitarist, session musician, and the founder and original leader of the Allman Brothers Band.
Chris Poland is an American guitarist, best known as the former guitarist of the thrash metal band Megadeth. Since 2002, Poland has been the guitarist of the instrumental rock/jazz fusion bands OHM and OHMphrey, among others, and has appeared on several projects and albums from a variety of different genres.
Lead guitar, also known as solo guitar, is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs 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.
Blues rock is a fusion music genre that combines elements of blues and rock music. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electric blues and rock. From its beginnings in the early to mid-1960s, blues rock has gone through several stylistic shifts and along the way it inspired and influenced hard rock, Southern rock, and early heavy metal.
Derek Sherinian is an American keyboardist who has toured and recorded for Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, and Joe Bonamassa, among others. He was also a member of Dream Theater from 1994 to 1999, is the founder of Planet X and also one of the founding members of Black Country Communion and Sons of Apollo. He has released eight solo albums that have featured a variety of prominent guest musicians, including guitarists Slash, Yngwie Malmsteen, Allan Holdsworth, Steve Lukather, Joe Bonamassa, Billy Sheehan, Zakk Wylde and Al Di Meola.
Crossroads is a 1986 America musical drama film inspired by the legend of blues musician Robert Johnson. Starring Ralph Macchio, Joe Seneca and Jami Gertz, the film was written by John Fusco and directed by Walter Hill and features an original score by Ry Cooder featuring classical guitar by William Kanengiser and harmonica by Sonny Terry. Steve Vai appears in the film as the devil's virtuosic guitar player in the climactic guitar duel.
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.
The Elusive Light and Sound Vol. 1 is a 2002 compilation album by Steve Vai. The album collects many of the songs that Vai recorded for movies and television shows.
"Cliffs of Dover" is an instrumental composition by guitarist Eric Johnson which appeared on his 1990 Ah Via Musicom album although the song had frequently been played live by Johnson as early as 1984. The album version of the song is composed in the key of G major. The song was played with a Gibson ES-335 through a B. K. Butler Tube Driver and an Echoplex plugged into a 100-watt Marshall amplifier. The song takes its name from the White Cliffs of Dover, an extensive and visually stunning chalk outcrop that runs along the southeast coast of England. It is also featured on the video game Guitar Hero III and is available as DLC for the game Rocksmith 2014.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is a music rhythm video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. It is the third main installment in the Guitar Hero series. It is the first game in the series to be developed by Neversoft after Activision's acquisition of RedOctane and MTV Games' purchase of Harmonix, the previous development studio for the series. The game was released worldwide for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 in October 2007, with Budcat Creations assisting Neversoft on developing the PlayStation 2 port and Vicarious Visions solely developing on the Wii port respectively. Aspyr published the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X versions of the game, releasing them later in 2007.
Dave Reffett is an American hard rock and heavy metal guitarist, singer, producer and bassist from Blue River, Kentucky.
Heavy metal guitar is the use of highly-amplified electric guitar in heavy metal. Heavy metal guitar playing is rooted in the guitar playing styles developed in 1960s-era blues rock and psychedelic rock,and folk harmonic traditions and it uses a massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos and overall loudness. The electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has historically been the key element in heavy metal. The heavy metal guitar sound comes from a combined use of high volumes and heavy distortion.
Thomas McLaughlin, better known by his stage name McRocklin, is an English guitar player, music producer and mastering engineer. He was the child prodigy guitarist featured in Steve Vai's music video "The Audience is Listening" (1990). He became the lead guitarist in Bad4Good, a band produced by Vai in 1991. He is currently the lead guitarist and co-producer of the band McRocklin & Hutch.
