On May 17th, 2007 Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell was inducted into Hollywood’s RockWalk. A bronze bust of the legendary metal guitarist was unveiled and installed in the RockWalk. Many performers came out to the event including members of Alice in Chains, Anthrax, Kiss, Rob Zombie, and Slayer.
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Kris Norris is the lead guitarist for the band Metalcore band Darkest Hour. I really love his style, it’s so melodic metal. I realize that he is not an unbelievable guitarist by any means, but I think he is equally good at composition as he is at actually playing. I’m not really going to say much more, I’ll just let the videos speak for themselves. These are both from a dvd released by Norris himself. This first video shows how to play the solo from the song Tranquil.

One more video after the jump.
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Guitar Player magazine readers have recently named Peppino D’Agostino the best acoustic guitar player in the magazine’s annual poll.

So, it looks like this guy is not so “never heard of”. But I have never heard of him, so thats why he is here.

I think he needs to cinch up that guitar a little higher. He still has a little bit of movement left!

D’Agostino was born and raised in Italy. He picked up the guitar after seeing his cousin perform at church in Torino. He is self taught and cites musicians like Paco de Lucia and Carlos Santana as influences.

[Via Modern Guitars Magazine]

Although Chuck Schuldiner is known by many, I really think he is one of the most underrated guitarists of the past 50 years. He is considered by many to the founding father of death metal. Chuck was the founding member of the band Death. In fact, the bad was more or less just a front for Chuck’s musical efforts.

There are several reasons why I love Chuck’s style. First off, he was very good at utilizing alternate timings in a song. You don’t have to listen very closely to hear the timing change at several different points in the above video and it really works.

Just watching Schuldiner’s fingers move is amazing. His style of playing was very strange. He brought his fingers so high off of the fingerboard when shredding, yet his playing is so fluid.

Sadly, Chuck passed away of a brain tumor in 2001 after struggling through treatment for two years. Initially there were reports that he was on his way to recover after surgery, but later it was discovered that the initial diagnosis was incorrect. There was a relapse and when Chuck needed immediate treatment he was denied due to lack of funds. Many artists in the industry held events to raise money for Chuck, but he continued to grow weaker and died of pneumonia on December 13th.

If you are interested in hearing more of his music, visit the Chuck Schuldiner memorial website.

I have had several people ask me “Have you heard Don Ross??” after learning that I love to play guitar. Well aside from others asking me that question, no, I had never heard of him. I finally decided to check him out, and I wish I had earlier. Don Ross is a Canadian guitar player from Montreal. He started to teach himself guitar at 8 years old and at 26 began to seriously pursue a career in music. He has over 10 albums to his name and has won the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice.

His musical style can not be classified very easily. It is an instrumental kind of new age fingerstyle acoustic rock. He goes from very relaxing tunes to very up-beat technical songs. Here is one of my favorites from the videos available on YouTube.

If you do a quick search though you can find many more. Three songs I have listened to now and I can already see that he is going to become one of my new favorite acoustic artists.

If you like his music, head over to Don Ross’ official website and buy his CD.

Biréli Lagrène is an amazing Jazz guitarist. He sort of plays his own breed of gypsy jazz and I like it. You hear me talking on here from time to time about “acoustic shredding”. Well this guy can do it… but jazzified.

First emerging as a 13-year-old guitar prodigy in the 80s, Lagrène was often compared to guitarist Django Reinhardt. At that time the boy had been playing for 9 years already. That’s right… started when he was 4. After a few albums Biréli tried to shake the Reinhardt parallels by changing his style to more of a rock-fusion sound. His current music is more jazz oriented, but still has that strong Reinhardt influence.

If you liked the above video, check out Biréli Lagrène’s official website.

I was just surfing a bit and came across this Alexi Laiho interview from January 25th, 2007. It looks like Children of Bodom have just released a new live DVD called Chaos Ridden Years: Stockholm Knockout Live (2006) so Modern Guitars Magazine sat down with Alexi to talk about everything metal.

I have been a huge Children of Bodom fan for about 2 years now. They are one of the many great metal bands that have come out of Eastern Europe over the past few years. Alexi’s call to fame was his amazing playing style and his unique vocals. Although, in the interview he admits he didn’t choose to be singer, he was “stuck with it”. He credits a lot of his technique to virtuoso Steve Vai and living metal legend Zakk Wylde. Personally I love the guy for his ability to play in such harmony with the bands keyboardist Janne Wirman.
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Jimmy Page is seriously the shit. I know there are haters out there, but as far as I’m concerned he is the Godfather of Rock guitar. The Jimmy Page was doing things with music in the 60’s and 70’s that were revolutionary then. Now, they are common place. My favorite all time Page contribution has got to be the rock ballad. Stairway to Heaven is the most popular one, but he had many others including Ramble On and Over the Hills and Far Away. When I talk about a rock ballad I’m talking about a song that has a soft intro and a soft verses possibly played on acoustic guitar but then busts full out into a distorted rock chorus. Obviously like I said Stairway is the best example of this.

Some people criticize Page for being a sloppy player. The solo from Heartbreaker is an example of exactly what I’m talking about. To the untrained ear yes, it just sounds like a barrage of random notes with no reason. However, in all that chaos I hear a great solo. (more…)

These lessons were from March 2006’s Guitar World CD and were accompanied by a tab in the magazine. I had not really heard much Lamb of God until this month when Mark Morton was on the cover of Guitar World and I decided to check them out. On first listen I wasn’t a very big fan, but I find that with a lot of music. A lot of the stuff I listen to now I was either indifferent to or hated the first time I heard it. Already I have grown a liking for the song For Your Malice, and I think thats going to be my gateway to loving Lamb of God.

For Your Malice Intro Lesson

This first video is just Mark Morton showing us how to play the intro riff to For Your Malice off of 2003’s As the Palaces Burn.

I can vouch for this tab below. It is correct. You will, have to practice the open Ds a bit to get the right rhythm though. The way that I got it was its d u d u dud u dud u dudu where down = d and up = u. If you listen to it a few times and commit the rhythm to memory and then try it it will be easier. Start out slow and build it up. Also, take note that this is played in drop-d tuning.
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We have all had our Iron Maiden phase right? I know I have… It came just slightly after my Metallica phase and just before my Zakk Wylde phase… Although, I don’t know if I can call it a Zakk Wylde phase if it never ended. Anyway… back to Adrian Smith. Maiden was always known for their harmonizing guitar licks. So lets see what Adrian uses today to bring his music to the ear.

Adrian Smith’s Guitar Rig

Adrian uses a combination of Marshall all tube heads (30th Anniversary) and digital effects to create his sound. One thing that is uncommon is for a guitarist to go both ways… thats right, I’m talking about Fender and Gibson. Adrian uses both American Fender Stratocaster’s (with Floyd Rose) and Gibson SG Standard’s. He has two of both, a main and a backup. The SG is usually tuned to drop-D and is stock. The Strat has SRV Texas Special pickups in the neck and middle pickups with a DiMarzio in the bridge and is in standard tuning. Adrian says that he prefers to use a patch cable to connect his setup to his guitar as opposed to wireless. In fact, he usese a 60-foot Peter Cornish patch cable. He says that he just prefers the sound, whether it actually makes a difference or not, he’s not sure.

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Although I mostly listen to hard-hitting metal bands, every once and a while I like to kick back and listen to some mellow tunes. When Crosby Still’s and Nash won’t cut it I like to slap in something from these artists. If you play guitar, or even if you don’t, I’m sure you’ll be able to appreciate the acoustic talent these players have.

One of my favorite acoustic albums is Friday Night in San Francisco, which is a live jam session with John McLaughlin, Paco De Lucia, and Al DiMeola. It really has some great guitar playing.

Check out these guitarists for some great acoustic music:

Jesse Cook
Strunz and Farah
Eric Clapton - Unplugged
James Taylor
Al DiMeola
John McLaughlin
Paco De Lucia

If you are not familiar with John McLaughlin or Paco De Lucia I really suggest you watch this video on Google Videos. They both play their own flavor of flamenco classical guitar and it really is amazing to hear them jam. I own a live CD from these two that also has Al DiMeola and I always put it on when I have just had a little too much Metal. It is basically acoustic shredding.

In about 2 hours time I will be heading down to the MacEwan Ballroom at the University of Calgary to see Arch Enemy with guests Chimaira. I’m pretty excited for this show, I have never seen Arch Enemy play and I think Michael Amott is a wicked guitarist. In light of this I thought I’d do a post up about Amott’s guitar setup.

Michael Amott uses some complex midi switching on his live setup. Since he does a lot of switching in his songs and he didnt want to go with a multi-effect setup, he settled on a MIDI-controlled Providence looping/switching system.

From Guitar to Amp

It’s not that simple to describe Michael’s setup in list form since he uses multiple effect loops connected to his MIDI switch, but I’ll do my best. (more…)

Mark Morton’s stage setup is really geared towards mastering the mids. He splits his guitar signal into two channels using a Whirlwind Selector and then runs it through two Mesa/Boogie Mark IV heads. He then sets one of the heads with the mid frequencies scooped and the other with them boosted. Before each show he and his sound tech work together to balance the two heads and get the best sounding mid frequency. (more…)

When recording As I Lay Dying’s 2005 album Shadows are Security, guitarist Phil Sgrosso was introduced to the Krank Revolution Series One head by the album’s mixer Andy Sneap. Since then he wouldn’t dare use anything else for live shows. He is often told how much the live shows sound like the album, which is always great to hear.

As far as live setups go Sgrosso’s is pretty simple and straight to the point. The main focus of his setup is distortion. He has two Krank Revolution Series One 100-watt tube heads (a primary and a backup) hooked into four Mesa/Boogie Recto-Standard straight-front 4×12 cabinets. The cabs house Celestion Vintage 30s. Something that is interesting is that the two upper cabs are not even plugged in. (more…)