Zakk Wylde – Pentatonic Hardcore

The following video is probably Zakk Wylde’s most famous. I believe it was originally distributed by the magazine Young Guitar. The instructional video is an hour long and has Zakk going through many different basic and advanced skills including Pentatonic scales, chickin-pickin licks, vibrato, pinch harmonics, alternate picking and much more. If you follow this video and practise it every day for about 3 years, maybe you will be able to shred like him.

Zakk Wylde – Machine Gun Man Video (Headbangers Ball)

Now this next video I think is my favourite ever. It is Zakk playing Machine Gun Man (Pride and Glory) on an acoustic at Headbangers Ball. Not only does he show of his insane acoustic shredding skills, but he blows me away with his amazing singing ability. Some people can sing, but you can always tell a good singer when they can maintain their tone when singing at full volume. This video gives me goose bumps pretty much every time I watch it.

Zakk Wylde – Pentatonic Speedballer

This last video is title “Zakk Wylde – Pentatonic Speedballer”. Essentially it is just him shredding and you watching. If you happen to have the book that goes along with this though you would get the tabbed music so you can follow along. I find it entertaining to watch, but from a learning perspective it doest really have much to offer on its own, unless you are already that good. I like it because he plays a lot of bluesy riffs in there and tosses that in with his shredding.

These three videos should give you an idea of Zakk Wylde’s playing style. I suggest you just do some searches on the video sites like Google Video and YouTube to see what else you can find. He has quite the cult following and I’m sure there are a lot more out there.

Happy shredding.

This first video the guy plays Canon in sort of a neo-classical style. It’s all very precise and reminds me a lot of Joe Satriani or Yngwie Malmsteen.

Wait there’s More… this second video is my favorite of the two. It is very bluesy but at the same time the guy shreds like there is no tomorrow. On top of that he’s still in high school, which makes me very jealous of his playing and improvisational ability. It sort of reminds me of a Zakk Wylde sound from the Pride and Glory days.