In their three decades of playing together, Kilmarnock trio Biffy Clyro have become one of the most cutting-edge and far-reaching rock acts of their generation, blessed with an ability to write stadium-conquering anthems that thrill and mesmerise in equal measure.

Their Strat-wielding frontman, Simon Neil, is someone who understands the power of the riff, as well as the importance of the musical information above it – with a proven track record for striking a perfect balance between intensity and melody.

On this year’s 10th full-length album, Futique, the group still finds new ways to stretch that formula and experiment with the equation, dazzling and surprising us without ever running the risk of losing their identity.

Early singles such as A Little Love, Hunting Season and True Believer have a familiarity that would convince any listener that these tracks have existed for years and years. In fact, the same could be said for the album as a whole.

Working with producer Jonathan Gilmore for the very first time also allowed Simon to spread his wings and innovate, moving away from the classic trio format to embrace more layers and orchestration.

When you’re building music, the singer/guitarist explains, there’s a point where it can all “start to shrink”, so it’s best to handle grand designs and high ambitions with great care…

Simon, you’ve always been a Strat man. What is it about the original double-cutaway that does it for you?

The Strat is everything to me. My favourite model is the Michael Landau signature. I stumbled across one about 10 years ago and it just spoke to me. That’s the guitar I usually play in the studio, a reissue of his 1968 original. I actually ended up buying two of them. Those Strats are absolutely gorgeous and very much the foundation of everything we do, every time we record.

That said, you’re happy to experiment in the studio…

I flirted a bit with a small and boutique UK company called Fairlane Guitars. I’ve used their Zephyr model, and I’ve also used a guitar made by Novo in Nashville. My tour manager bought one and I pinched it off him for this record. Believe it or not, one of my main guitars for this record was this wee Fender Champ…

The one with the built-in speaker?

Yeah! It was released in Japan back in the ’90s. A tech had one, which played and felt so real and right, plus the sound that comes out of that speaker is just dynamite. You can get this really sludgy tone.

Obviously it’s quiet, but we mic’d it up for a few songs to get some cheap-sounding warmth. I’ve definitely embraced a few other guitars, but the Strat is my defining sound. It always speaks through whatever’s in the mix, no matter how thick it might be.

You’re no ultra hoarder like Slash or Bonamassa, but you must have some nice guitars knocking around.

I wish I had the money to collect like they do [laughs]. But I did treat myself to a nice guitar not long ago. It was one of the Custom Shop [Kirk Hammett] ‘Greeny’ [1959 Les Paul Standard] reissues, which I picked up in Nashville. I hummed and hawed because it was a lot of money.

I’m a Fender Strat man through and through, but I’m also a big Metallica fan. I’ve seen Kirk playing it over the years and know what a big deal that guitar is. I do like the sound of Les Pauls and find them extremely useful in the studio, but the act of putting one on feels wrong for me. It’s like I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.

I have a ’77 Les Paul, which got used on a couple of records. I also have a ’63 SG that I bought from Norm’s Rare Guitars. I tried to play it live a few times, but it struggles to hold tuning. That’s my pride and joy – a work of art that makes me sound like Angus Young. I use it to write, and the same goes for my White Falcon.

Did you use the ‘Greeny’ on the record?

It popped up on a couple of tunes: A Thousand And One, It’s Chemical! and Woe Is Me, Wow Is You. But I’m nervous of that guitar because it’s so expensive. I can barely look at it. I don’t know if I’ve overstepped my limit. But I love that middle pickup position where it goes out of phase. It’s so fucked up and cool, it’s almost Strat-y.

What were your go-to effects and amps in the studio?

The main amps were a Fender Twin Reverb and a big Marshall JCM800. We also used a Sears amp, this old cheap bugger that sounded dynamite when you turned it up, loads of character, though it was a little hit-and-miss in terms of how it reacted to pedals.

I also used some Audio Kitchen stuff, like this amp they make called the Little Chopper and a pedal called The Big Trees preamp. We did more DI and post-effects stuff this time, which I haven’t done a lot of in the past. I like to hear the air moving, but because we were working with a new producer, this album ended up with more of a modern approach.

What exactly were the benefits of doing that, then?

Normally, I’m too scared to DI anything, but it actually does bring a different quality. I used a few Chase Bliss pedals for textures in the background. This was the first time I wanted to make sure that what we recorded wasn’t necessarily the sound of what was on the floor. In the past, it’s been important to mainly capture us three playing together. This time I wanted everything shifting right there at the front.

On other albums, we’ve done everything so minimally, often using one microphone and one amp making one tone for an entire song. This time, I wanted layers. I didn’t want to sound too organic. It’s Chemical! ended up sounding really chorus-effected, but it’s actually more like 100 tracks of guitar doing different things.

I’ve gone from using the smallest amount of gear to make the biggest sound, to using as much as possible with the same end goal. And, actually, sometimes you can over-record guitars and the mix starts to shrink.

That’s interesting. You can end up becoming a victim of your own ambition?

Without Jonathan’s expertise, that’s where I’ve often ended up, at demo stage. I think I can add things and grow the song, but at a certain point it stops growing and starts to shrink. Jonathan kept us on that precipice of making it sound big enough without being swallowed by its own thickness.

And even on the albums that don’t always sound like a three-piece, it’s important for the songs to work stripped-back. We still prepare the same way. I still have my Marshall and Fender, plus my Boss Metal Zone and delays. They are on everything. That’s how we check that the songs are going to work – if they can exist with a basic setup, it doesn’t matter how we record it, we know it’ll translate.

A Little Love is all about big chords and even bigger hooks. What do you remember about writing it?

As soon as I went from minor to major, that’s when I knew the song was complete. It’s in DADGAD, which is one of my favourite open tunings because it can make chords sing. With just one or two fingers, you can have such a big impact, given how the voicings can change and reflect this deep sense of emotion.

There’s something really liberating about big open sounds like that, making the earth fucking shake with just one finger. DADGAD is a lot easier than some of the open C tunings I’ve used, which guitars usually don’t like because strings go from loose to tight. It can become a nightmare!

You and your tech, Richard Pratt from Gone Fishing Effects, unveiled the first batch of Booooom Blast overdrive/fuzz pedals back in 2020. Are there any plans to do more?

Yeah. That got used as well. To everyone reading this, it’s an absolute killer, so make sure you get it on your records, too [laughs]. We’re still making them. It’s a fine line, though. We thought about doing a wider release, but I like doing smaller batches.

Richard personally builds every pedal. If something – God forbid – goes wrong, people know they can send it back, get it fixed and returned. I feel like when things go to wider manufacturing, maybe the quality level dips a little. This is all made to order in someone’s shed.

It’s interesting how higher-gain pedals can work wonders on lower settings. Eric Clapton and David Gilmour were once using the Boss HM-2, which is mainly associated with extreme Scandinavian metal…

Isn’t that bonkers? It’s the sound of bands like At The Gates and Entombed, yet Clapton was plugging into one. We all use gear in different ways, sometimes for things beyond what it may have been designed for.

I used to think you needed someone’s rig to sound like them, but actually it’s all about the expression through your fingers. I’m still enthralled by the magic of the guitar, probably because I never conquered the technique side.

It’s this box of wonder that I approach as a creative instrument. A lot of songs on this record are in standard tuning, though a couple were standard a step down. I know I’m about to go down a creative period where I start fucking with tunings. I needed a wee break from the guitar before this album.

Why’s that?

We’d released two records during the pandemic and my guitar was my companion through that [so] I couldn’t look at my guitar for a year after that; I was scared of it. I felt this responsibility, where I had to write music every time I picked it up.

So instead I went away and made some heavy metal music in Empire State Bastard [with Mike Vennart]. As soon as I came home, I picked up the guitar and the songs started to come out. It was playtime again.

Being a novice when you are creating is actually a good place to be. You can have too much knowledge. Again, it’s that battle I’m having between being a better player and not ruining the creative relationship I have with my guitar.

So how do you go about evolving as a player?

I’d like to think I’m getting better as a player, though sometimes I think I’m only getting better as a songwriter. I guess they go hand in hand. Whenever I start to advance my chops as a guitarist, I end up stumbling upon a new idea and writing a new song instead of doing my exercises. But I’m at a stage where I really want to become a better guitarist.

What would you like to work on in the future – would it be anything like jazz comping, blues noodling or classical flamenco?

Definitely nylon! I’d love to become a proper fingerpicker. I’ve learned a few folk techniques over the years, but I’ve come to realise I haven’t progressed. I’d probably need to stop writing songs for a little while. As a person in my 40s, I really should be further along, you know? I feel like I missed a few years of learning other people’s tunes. Even for our very first show, we played nine songs and seven of them were our own.

Which guitarists do you look up to, then?

It’s a cliché, but I heard about Django Reinhardt and his missing fingers early on. I tried to learn a couple of his tunes when I was around 13 and didn’t realise how much it opened up a part of my brain.

What Django did for guitar was incredible. I love the pieces he wrote, despite the hindrances. He was a bit like Tony Iommi in that regard; he overcame his injuries and basically invented a whole genre of music. They both created something essential.

• Futique is out now via Warner.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

On his latest track Paul Position, Italian fusion mastermind Matteo Mancuso reminds us all why he stands as one of the most extraordinary talents to emerge in recent years. Mixing elements of country swing and heavy blues into a stunning four-minute display of genre-crossing brilliance, it’s the kind of song that will appeal to just about anyone who listens to instrumental guitar music.

None of that should come as a surprise, however, given the dazzling musicality and technical brilliance on display on last year’s debut album The Journey. What might be a surprise, however, is Mancuso’s usage of a six-string baritone for rhythmic ideas that dance into the realm of tech metal.

His instrument of choice was made by Italian company Bacci, rather than the Yamaha models usually seen in his hands. As it turns out, the idea had been bubbling away in his mind for quite some time.

“I was looking for a guitar that could cover the lower range for rhythms and riffs, like a seven-string,” the 27-year-old prodigy tells Guitar World. “But seven-strings feel really strange. For me they’re uncomfortable to play, and I don’t find them to be aesthetically pleasing – they just don’t look sexy!”

That thinking led him to longer scale length six-strings. Given that Yamaha aren’t currently in the business of baritone guitars since their Drop 6 models were discontinued, there was no conflict of interest in being seen with instruments made by other brands.

Tuscany-based luthier Bruno Bacci, meanwhile, specializes in high-end baritones which have ended up being wielded by modern funk masters like Mark Lettieri and Cory Wong. Clearly, it was meant to be.

“To my ears, a sixth string tuned down to B sounds better than the low B of a seven-string,” says Mancuso.

“The chords sound more even; I just prefer what I hear. They’re also easier to play! Basically baritones are regular guitars tuned one fourth down. For chordal work, it’s much easier than having to deal with an extra string. That was the start for me. Some people have been asking if I’ve left Yamaha, but that’s not true. Bacci will be just for baritones. My regular guitars will always be Yamaha.”

The track title Paul Position came to him after its completion. Parts of the solo section reminded him of certain Paul Gilbert licks – so why not acknowledge the influence head-on?

“Bacci asked me to record a song using only baritones,” he says. “It started around NAMM 2023. I had to do a demo, but I didn’t know what to play. I came up with some ideas that used open strings, so you could hear the bass frequencies and low end. I was also experimenting with a lot of country licks.

“I composed the song in April last year and decided to keep it separate from my first album. When I listened back, I realized the solo was inspired by Paul Gilbert – which is why I referenced him, swapping ‘Pole’ for ‘Paul’ as a little joke.”

As well as nods to the Racer X and Mr. Big legend, moments of the track are surprisingly reminiscent of Tosin Abasi’s work in progressive metal trio Animals As Leaders – perhaps not so much in terms of tone, but certainly in the thumb-led rhythmic chug of a detuned lower string, resulting in some of the most metallic flavors the Italian has given us to date.

There’s always been that side to him, he reasons, citing players like Yngwie Malmsteen and Randy Rhoads among his more aggressive influences when he’s looking to unleash the fury. Other lines are reminiscent of modern blues giant Joe Bonamassa – who famously championed Mancuso early on, and even invited him up on stage in Berlin on his last European tour.

Keen-eyed viewers of fan-filmed clips noted Bonamassa seemed to be laughingly shrugging at the notion of trying to keep up with Mancuso. In many ways, it felt like a passing of the torch. “Joe has definitely influenced me a lot, especially with his pentatonic stuff,” the rising star confirms.

“I was really nervous before taking the stage in front of 5,000 people. It felt like a challenge. Joe was great at making me comfortable – he’s such a nice guy. We did a soundcheck earlier in the day and he told me to just have fun and not to worry about anything else.

“That was so helpful because it set up the mood. I was nervous until I walked out – and then I suddenly felt really happy. Everyone was smiling and the whole band were supporting me. It was an incredible experience; easily one of my favorites from this year so far.”

Here Mancuso tells Guitar World about the 10 guitarists who shaped his sound – a list which reflects why he’s such a rounded player, well-poised for a long career of guitar stardom.

1. Jimi Hendrix

“I know people who listen to me might think I’m far away from the Hendrix style, but he was my first big influence. Like many people, the first songs I learned were Hendrix songs like Purple Haze. And one of the first chords I learned was the Hendrix chord... that was its official name for me!

“Hey Joe taught me the basic chord shapes like C, G and A Minor. Other tunes like Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and Little Wing were a great starting point for learning my first pentatonic solos, as well as the importance of bending and wide vibrato.

“Many people think I started out playing classical because I use fingerstyle, but actually it was electric, and Hendrix was the backbone of all my technique.

“In terms of vocabulary and technique, it was mainly pentatonic, but there was some Dorian stuff I learned from Hendrix, especially going across one string. That’s how I learned about not sticking to boxes and moving horizontally rather than vertically. It was a major discovery for me as a 10-year-old.”

2. Angus Young

“During my first years of playing I was all about Jimi and Angus. One of the first songs that blew my mind was Whole Lotta Rosie. There’s a famous live version where Angus plays an extended solo and he’s really ripping on that SG. I remember thinking, ‘I need an SG right now!’

“Angus has small hands like me, but he still has a lot of power when it comes to bending and vibrato. As a kid, I thought you needed big hands for that, but Angus proved you didn’t.

“He had a very clean, natural and dynamic sound – just an SG going into a loud Marshall. Sometimes that’s not the easiest tone to work with, because it can be harder to play and people can hear all the imperfections. It’s the total opposite to the metal compressed thing, which is very forgiving. That’s why I love Angus’ tone. It’s so raw and you can hear he’s having a good time!”

3. Eddie Van Halen

“Eddie was my introduction to the late ‘70s and ‘80s shred movement. The first Van Halen record is very special – it has Eruption, as well as Ice Cream Man, which is one of my favorite tracks by them. I remember watching his most famous live versions of Eruption on YouTube. I had no idea you could do things like that with a guitar!

“Seeing that led to me trying to play with a lot of gain. I found it really difficult because you need a lot of control in your right hand. Being a fingerstyle player, controlling all that distortion was a hard thing to master.

“Beyond what Eruption did for guitar solos, there was the Van Halen remake of You Really Got Me, reinterpreting older music for a new generation. I loved the look and sound of the Frankenstrat. Eddie always looked so cool on stage.”

4. Eric Johnson

“Eric was and still is one of my biggest influences. I first heard him through a live version of Cliffs Of Dover from 1988. It blew my mind immediately; and to this day I would say it’s one of the greatest live recordings ever captured, just because of how clean he plays those lines and the sound of his vibrato.

“The next tune I learned by him was Zap, from the same album [Live In Austin, TX]. I became completely obsessed with Eric. I wanted the same sound, the same feel, the same everything! He was doing stuff that I didn’t really hear from the other players.

“I learned a lot from his music, such as the spread triads concept – which is actually very simple. You take whatever triad it is, let’s say a C Major one, and instead of playing the major third in the same octave, you play it in the next one. That’s why it’s called a spread triad! That was a big discovery and I still use that concept in my own playing.

“Then there’s all the pentatonic cascading stuff. He could make his guitar sound like a violin because of how clean he played. In order to improvise like him, I started to actually imagine I was him! That exercise helped a lot, actually.”

5. Scott Henderson

“Scott was probably one of the first fusion guys I heard. One of the first songs I heard was Dolemite. Immediately I could tell he was a genius player, even if there’s no crazy technique behind his music. His solos are – well, I wouldn’t say easy – but not technically incredible. But what he plays is always musical; he does the right thing for the song in every situation.

“His touch is amazing, especially when you look at his whammy bar control. He’s one of the few players that can play through the changes in a really interesting way, stringing through different scales and arpeggios. He can deliver a lot of information; but at the same time he’s rocking out with a bluesy sound that’s like Stevie Ray Vaughan on steroids.

“Because of that, I think he brings the best of both worlds. He has the aggression and power of rock players, but the sophistication and colors of jazz. I knew I wanted to be that kind of guitarist: someone who could rock out but also have a clear understanding of scales and what works where.

“I’ve seen Scott live twice. The first, at the Blue Note in Milan, was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. After hearing Dolemite, I started listening to his work in the Chick Corea band. There’s one solo I transcribed from a song called King Cockroach; even after hearing it 100 times, it still gives me the chills. Then there’s his work with Tribal Tech, which is more fusion-sounding. I really like the song Face First from those recordings.”

6. Frank Gambale

“Frank is another player who stunned me the moment I heard him. By this point, I’d reached a certain technical level, so that stuff was less important to me and came second. What really got me hooked was his endless exchange of ideas.

“His solos are very original. I’ve never heard anyone play like Frank, to be honest. There are so many emulators of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Eddie Van Halen, but no one has been able to play like Frank. He’s such an innovator – and not because of the sweep picking, because that’s what people tend to focus on.

“Of course it’s an important aspect, but it’s his vocabulary that I find truly unique. It’s all the quartal stuff and outside ideas. I also like his compositions, because he’s really influenced by one of my favorite bands, Steely Dan. You can hear it in how he searches for all those interesting harmonies. Like Scott Henderson, he has a lot of sophistication and knowledge, but he can also rock and play hard.

“There’s one album that I listen to a lot – Thunder From Down Under – which has him riding a giant kangaroo on the cover. The song Leave Ozone Alone is one of my favorites.”

7. Allan Holdsworth

“You can classify guitar players before Allan and after Allan – he’s that important in the history of guitar. But interestingly, I don’t think his mind was very guitarist. Sometimes he sounded like a sax or violin player. His style was so unorthodox, especially when you listen to what he did in Soft Machine or with Tony Williams. Even when he was 20 years old he was innovating.

“He influenced me in a lot of ways, especially when I was starting to experiment with how I looked at the fretboard. Allan helped me see it all differently. I love how he wasn’t thinking about modes; it wasn’t about Dorian or Phrygian and that stuff – he was thinking in terms of three scales. It was the major, melodic minor and harmonic minor, with some harmonic major as well.

“He didn’t really care about the modes. He just thought about one root note and a scale that went across the fretboard. I’m a big fan of that mindset. It’s better to think of one scale going across your guitar than seven different ones breaking it up. He inspired me to look at the neck like that.

“Of course, the playing was amazing too. Tokyo Dream is one of his many masterpieces, with all those giant chords. I can’t play some of them because my hands are too small. I didn’t understand Allan when I first heard his playing; it was too advanced. Then around the age of 20, I was like, ‘Woah, I get it!’

“Devil Take The Hindmost has one of the best fusion solos of all-time. In terms of innovating the guitar, Allan is up there with Jimi, Eddie and Django Reinhardt.”

8. Django Reinhardt

“Speaking of Django, there was a period of time where I really started digging into the world of gypsy jazz. Django taught me a lot. I think he’s one of the best pickers of all time. There’s something magical that happens when he does all the chromatic stuff – even though he’s only using two fingers, it’s so on-point. It almost sounds like MIDI guitar!

“If you imagine that level of technique in the 1940s, it’s incredible. People were looking at him like a god. Learning his music was a technical challenge for me – gypsy jazz arpeggios with fingerstyle is very tricky because you need a lot of volume, which comes from using a pick. And those players often use very thick picks to get that sound. It was difficult for me to achieve that with just fingers on an acoustic.

“Through him I learned a lot about playing through chord changes. His music isn’t that complex harmonically. There aren’t a lot of chords like there are in fusion; instead he’d use a lot of vocabulary over just a few chords, like a II-V-I progression with 10 different possibilities for the V.

“He used so many scales from whole tone to half diminished. Some of it sounds like modern jazz, but he was doing this stuff 80 years ago. Django was ahead of his time. He created a magical sound.”

9. Wes Montgomery

“All the first clean jazz licks I learned came from Wes. What I love about his playing most is that all his solos were improvised, but they sounded like they were preconceived.

“There’s no incredible technique behind his playing, but he had such melodic control and this incredible flow of ideas. I love how he found his sound through his limitations, because he was using just his right hand thumb. Most players wouldn’t be able to do much with just that.

“His rhythmic concepts were amazing – that was one of his greatest strengths. Over the years he’s one of the players I’ve transcribed the most. When you hear me playing clean, I would say 80 percent of the single note lines have come from him.”

10. Pat Metheny

“Pat has influenced me a lot in life – not so much in terms of how I play, but definitely in how I compose. But I love his use of chromatics and his approach to soloing. He tends to be very melodic at first, then right at the end he starts doing all the crazy stuff.

“I feel like there are two characters that coexist in his sound, from the really sweet-sounding ideas to the extremely out-there jazz madness. He’s one of the best single note line improvisers out there and also one of the best composers.

“I remember the first time I heard Last Train Home and Still Life (Talking), which is one of his best albums with the Pat Metheny Group. There are so many tunes which inspired me, like Minuano and First Circle. He’s an incredibly well-rounded player.”

• The Journey is on sale now via Mascot Label Group.

Django Reinhardt was a true guitarist’s guitarist. As George Benson states, “Django stretched the guitar imagination to its limit. He was the fastest, the most creative, he had great rhythm, and he was a good composer too.” 

B.B. King had a similar take on the Belgian virtuoso, “Django was one of my idols. His guitar seemed to talk. He played music that was sophisticated, but a layman like myself could still understand it.” The list of devoted Django enthusiasts goes on and on, and for extremely good reason. Simply put, he was a musical genius, and guitarist extraordinaire.

Born in 1910 in Liberchies into a family of Manouche gypsies, Django was prodigiously talented, and by age 13 he was performing with the street entertainers of Paris. In 1928 he survived a fire that left him with a severely disfigured left (fretting) hand, leaving him with only full use of its first and second fingers. 

But with great determination he overcame this disability by evolving a completely new method for fingering, using just two digits for single notes and making limited use of the third and fourth fingers for playing certain chord shapes.

Inspired by the radical new artform of jazz, and the hot trumpet style of Louis Armstrong in particular, Django was soon performing again. In 1934 he formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France with violinist Stephane Grappelli. This was one of the first all-string jazz groups, featuring an unusual line-up of two rhythm guitars, violin, double bass and with Django on acoustic lead. 

In 1946 he visited America as the guest of Duke Ellington, and on his return switched to electric guitar and began incorporating the influence of the radical new sound of bebop into his playing and compositions. While many associate Django’s music with the sound of guitar and violin in perfect harmony, he also made literally hundreds of recordings in other musical settings.

In this lesson, we’re looking at Django’s phenomenal playing against a 12-bar blues, a format he visited many times throughout his career in both major and minor guises. 

Reinhardt’s influences were a huge combination of styles, such as the traditional Romani manouche music from his family, juxtaposed with classical music from composers like Ravel, and particularly Debussy. 

Let’s not forget the French bal-musette music that he performed extensively in his teens, all balanced alongside the music he heard from Louis Armstrong and other of Satchmo’s contemporaries that excited him so greatly.

Due to absorbing these disparate styles it’s almost inevitable that Django’s playing would sound nothing like an American guitarist, such as the great Charlie Christian. Texas-born Christian was equally incredible but with a completely opposing sound; warm and languid, not fiery and fierce like Reinhardt. Vive la difference! And enjoy. 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 4, Bass 5, Middle 5, Treble 5, Reverb 5

Like later-era Reinhardt, I’m using a Selmer-style acoustic guitar with a magnetic pickup over the soundhole. However, any electric guitar will work. We’re after quite a bright tone so pick close to the bridge and leave the treble wide open at both your guitar and amp. A little bit of drive and grit in the tone can add that extra body, compression, depth and bite. 

Example 1. Django lines

We begin with three choruses of a 12-bar blues, two in Major, one in Minor, full of trademark Reinhardt phrases. As always, compare the note selection with the associated chord symbols, as so much of Django’s playing is about making melodic choices relating to the harmony. 

Major Chorus #1, 1a) features arpeggio action, with an explicit use of C major pentatonic (C-D-E-G-A) in bar 8. Our second chorus, 1b) uses harmonics to spell out Cmaj7 (C-E-G-B) moving to C7 in bar 5. Example 1c), our minor chorus, uses a three-against-four rhythmic phrasing device that is exploited heavily in the gypsy jazz genre. 

Example 2. Django tools

This example negotiates major and minor blues forms, divided into six specific four-bar phrases, each indicative of an idea, concept or approach evident in Django’s style. 

We see lower approach notes, the combination of upper and lower approaches, connected arpeggios, semitone bends and three-in-row consecutive picking patterns, before rounding off with a ‘one up, three down’ picking pattern that makes multiple appearances in Django’s vocabulary). 

While each of these ideas function independently as a source for further study, you could also connect each line together to create another pair of choruses. 

Example 3. Rhythm part (Major Chorus) 

We end this look at Reinhardt’s playing by defining the rhythm part for the major chorus. It’s a great idea to acknowledge the upstroke grace note before each chord change, adding to the propulsion of the rhythm section and also assisting with the smooth transition from chord to chord. 

Why not consider transcribing the minor chorus also? The staccato feel here is achieved by holding and releasing the pressure on each chord with the fretting hand, but you should feel free to experiment and explore the different rhythmic feels you can achieve by varying the duration of each chord.

Joe Pass was born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua to Sicilian immigrants in New Jersey on 13 January 1929. He acquired his first guitar at the age of nine after being captivated by country legend Gene Autry’s appearance in the 1940 movie Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride. 

It wasn’t long before Joe’s interest became an obsession and he would practice for two hours before school and two hours after, and then continue for four more hours after dinner before he went to bed. 

His father drove him relentlessly and would ask his young son to work out – on the spot – any tune that happened to be on the radio. He also encouraged him to embellish melodies as he heard them. At that time Joe didn’t know what improvising was. To him it was “filling up the spaces”.

By the age of 14, Joe was out gigging at parties and dances. His father, a steel worker, was astonished that his son could earn more than he could: $5 per night. 

It was around this time that Joe developed an interest in jazz. His primary influence was Django Reinhardt, whose records were now starting to appear in the United States, inspiring and frightening guitarists in equal measure. 

Joe further expanded his jazz education when he discovered the electric guitar pioneer Charlie Christian through his recordings with the ‘King of Swing’ Benny Goodman. 

From there, Joe took influence from a number of burgeoning young jazz guitarists of the 1940s such as Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney. As Joe said: “These guys added another dimension to the instrument.”

Time With Montgomery

Later on, Joe took to the playing of Wes Montgomery. Little did he know that some years later the admiration would be reciprocated. So it was that in 1968, when Montgomery was at the peak of his popularity, he appeared on television’s The Woody Woodbury Show. 

When the host asked the spotlighted player who his favourite guitarist was, Montgomery pointed at the house band, declaring: “He’s sitting right there in your band!” The band’s guitarist was Joe Pass.

In the mid-1940s, and still a teenager, Joe was sent to New York to study with the guitar legend Harry Volpe. After discovering that Joe was the better improvisor, Volpe switched to teaching Joe sight-reading, which didn’t interest the student at all. He left for home, but the buzz of New York City had left its mark on the young jazzer and he so soon moved back to the city. 

Pass was now spending his time taking in as much of the great jazz scene that NYC had to offer, soaking up the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum and other jazz mavericks of the era. But it was also at this time that he picked up a drug habit, something that was to plague his life for the next 15 years.

Joe spent these years hopping from town to town, weaving in and out of prison and rehab. He played bebop for strippers in New Orleans, often staying up for days on end and constantly pawning his guitar. He also spent time in Las Vegas picking up any gig he could. He summed up these years by confessing “staying high was my first priority”.

In 1954, Joe was arrested and sent to the Public Health Service Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, where he served four years. Following his release, in 1960 he entered Synanon, a rehabilitation centre based in Santa Monica, California, and it was there that he finally started to look at his life and career more seriously. 

Two years later he made his debut recording, Sounds Of Synanon, which also featured five other jazz musicians who were resident at the facility. The influential publication DownBeat stated the album “unveils a star in Joe Pass.”

Living A Full Life

Much of what Joe Pass is known for today is present on Sounds Of Synanon and other early recordings. Like his idol Wes Montgomery, Joe didn’t record too young and was in his early 30s when he made his recording debut. 

This meant, after years of playing in clubs all over the US, Joe’s blistering and impressively accurate technique was unleashed fully formed on the record-buying public.

Pass may well have been the first electric jazz guitarist to possess the technical facility to hold his own among the sax and piano players of the time, but it wasn’t just about speed. His ideas were so melodic and well crafted; it was never just a series of fast scale-runs. 

He showed complete mastery of the bebop jazz language – a language invented on horns. And for anyone who’s tried to play a Charlie Parker theme at speed on the guitar, they’ll know it’s not easy. 

Those lines don’t sit under the fingers in the way a pentatonic scale does. Joe, however, found a way and it sounds so smooth and legato-like that it could almost be sax.

The legend was that Joe didn’t own an electric guitar at this time, and he used a loaned Fender Jaguar for his early life outside rehab. Shortly after, as work became more stable, he acquired the guitar that he’ll be forever associated with, the Gibson ES-175. 

Plenty of jazz guitarists used the 175 as their go-to instrument and still do. With a slightly smaller body than the Gibson L5 (Montgomery’s choice), the 175 also has a laminate top that tightens up the sound and makes the guitar less prone to feedback. 

For the rest of the 1960s Joe spent most of his time working studio sessions and TV shows. This work was steady and well paid but anonymous. The busiest session players during those years were jazz musicians – because they were the ones that knew how to play anything that was thrown at them in the studio. 

To this day, most people are unaware that the biggest pop hits in America were recorded using jazz musicians. Joe was one of them, but he wasn’t especially happy and, like many others, had quit the scene by the early 70s.

Elevated Jazz

In 1973 Pass met record producer Norman Granz who, with his organisation Jazz At The Philharmonic, had managed to elevate jazz from club to concert hall. On Granz’s roster were the likes of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. 

He paid his musicians well and had formed Pablo, a record label, to create hundreds of albums with stars such as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie.

Joe signed with Granz’s label in late 1973, and, shortly afterwards, released the groundbreaking and influential album Virtuoso. Comprising 11 jazz standards (and one off-the-cuff blues), it’s an album that every guitarist needs to hear. 

Norman Granz put Joe, with no backing band, in a studio and set the tapes running. What comes out is something extraordinary and all of it is improvised. Most solo guitarists would have probably worked out a few routines, but not Joe. If he’d recorded all the tunes again the next day, then they would have sounded completely different.

Each tune was taken apart and reassembled on the spot. Joe embellished the melodies with a heady combination of fret-melting single-note runs and block-chording, all delivered with such skill and playful abandon that surely Django Reinhardt himself would smile in appreciation. It was the album that truly put Joe on the musical map and remains one of Pablo’s best-selling releases.

Three further volumes of Virtuoso were recorded. Granz then teamed Joe with piano giant Oscar Peterson and Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen for the album The Trio, which went on to win a Grammy. The three musicians became a regular touring group throughout the 70s and 80s, taking Joe all over the world. 

Joe also collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald, and the pair recorded four studio albums together between 1973 and 1986, as well as several live releases. This revealed another side to Joe’s musicianship, demonstrating a sensitive and complementary accompaniment to Ella’s sublime vocals. Ella and Joe enjoyed a deep connection and friendship that shone through on everything they played together.

An Education

Joe produced several instructional books throughout the 1980s. These manuals, which are still in print, each focus on a different aspect of his impressive range of skills; it’s rare to find a jazz guitarist who hasn’t tried to absorb some of Joe’s genius by poring through the volumes. 

Later, Hot Licks produced two instructional videos featuring Joe: Solo Jazz Guitar and The Blue Side Of Jazz. These are still available and are full of tips from the master, all delivered with his charming humour and dry wit.

In the early ’90s Joe’s health started to decline, and in 1992 he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He continued to play and record up until 16 days before his death on 23 May 1994, at the age of 65. His last recording was a collection of Hank Williams songs, with guitarist and vocalist Roy Clark. In total, Pass appeared on more than 70 albums as either leader or sideman.

So much of Joe’s later career was dedicated to teaching. He toured college campuses and held masterclasses and workshops all over the world. His entire philosophy was to make jazz guitar simple and accessible. It was something he succeeded in doing. In one of his masterclass videos Joe is asked about his choice of chord shapes. 

A smile appears as he explains he doesn’t go for long finger stretches or too much in the way of harmonic extensions. “I like the simple shapes, the ‘grips’ I call them. If it’s hard, I don’t do it!”

Many guitar players will perceive Joe’s music as far from simple yet it does have a simplicity to it. One that gets straight to the point, straight to the heart of a song. Joe had that rare ability to play exactly what was right in any given moment. Yes, there are, at times, a lot of notes, but they were never gratuitous. He wasn’t interested in impressing other guitar players, although he most certainly did. 

Joe’s drive was to serve the music first and foremost. His incredible improvisational skills and technical prowess were saved for the perfect moment. It might be a cliché to say ‘they told a story’ when describing how certain legendary musicians play, but this is an accurate way to assess Joe’s approach. Some people operate the guitar, but Joe Pass really played it.  

The archtop acoustic guitar played by jazz legend Django Reinhardt in his most iconic photograph is going under the hammer today (November 10) at London’s PropStore Auction.

The Levin De Luxe was actually owned by Duke Ellington’s guitarist Fred Guy, but was played by Reinhardt during the gypsy jazz guitar player’s visit to New York City in 1946. 

At that point it was captured in an image by the photographer William P. Gottlieb – the man responsible for most of the iconic photographs associated with the so-called ‘Golden Age of American jazz’ in the early 20th century.

Gottlieb also took a picture of the Levin being played by Guy, and the instrument remained in the Duke Ellington man’s hands until his death in 1971, before it passed to his wife and, eventually, a family friend. 

Now it’s come up for sale via auction in the UK and it gives us a chance to take a closer look at an instrument that has (somewhat misleadingly) gone down in jazz iconography. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Levin, it was a Swedish brand, based out of Gothenberg, Sweden’s second largest city. Guy bought the instrument from Waidele Musik after the Duke Ellington Orchestra stopped in the city for a tour date in 1939.

The instrument features a spruce top with two f-holes, eyecatching flame maple back and sides and a tortoiseshell pickguard. 

It’s finished in sunburst, with “brass color” hardware and the lot also includes various picks, a thoroughly-aged leather guitar strap and “antique” strings that were kept in the case by Guy.

The instrument still looks stunning, but is not without damage, which is perhaps not surprising, given its near-century on Earth. As such, the Levin is said to have suffered several small cracks and dents and is missing a fret marker (though it’s included loose in the sale).

The Levin De Luxe is expected to fetch between $85,000 to $170,000 at auction today (November 10).

At that price, it will likely fall outside of the realms of the most expensive guitars sold at auction, but it’s nonetheless a genuinely iconic piece.

For more information, head to Propstore Auction.

The story of Django Reinhardt’s life is as well known as it is legendary. Born in Belgium in 1910 to Manouche Romani parents who wintered there each year, his gadjo (non-Romani) name was Jean, but to everyone in Romani culture he was Django. Surrounded by music from birth, Django was a quick learner, a prodigy, and was playing professionally in Le Bal-Musette by his mid-teens. 

The tragic accident that almost ended his life, let alone his career, is part of guitar folklore. At the age of just 18 he had returned to his caravan after a gig where his wife had prepared a batch of cellophane flowers to sell at market the next day. Django, having knocked a candle over, was confronted by a sudden inferno and suffered terrible burns over his entire left side as he fought to rescue his wife, and himself, from the flames. 

Many months rehabilitating in hospital eventually brought him back to health, but his left hand was left disfigured to the extent that the third and fourth fingers were drawn back, claw-like, into his palm. Here they remained for the rest of his life, unemployable for single lines, although he did eventually find a way to use them for doublestops when chording. 

Left with just his first and second fingers for any lead lines, Django unwittingly created one of the great mysteries in guitar history. How did he do it? How was he able to play with such power, precision and speed with just two left-hand fingers? Besides, it wasn’t just overcoming the physical injury that proved Django to be a rare genius. At the beginning of the 1930s, Django had an epiphany as he discovered jazz, the music that would change the direction of his life and that of guitar history.

Django meets jazz

When Django heard trumpet titan Louis Armstrong for the first time he burst into tears saying “my brother” quietly to himself. Armstrong was the dominant force in jazz during the late 1920s and early 30s. Alongside his contemporaries he sounded as though he’d come from another planet in much the same way that Jimi Hendrix did four decades later.

Django’s almost immediate assimilation of jazz language blended beautifully with his natural Gypsy flair and created a new guitar style and musical genre that has persisted, intact, to this day. It’s an approach that Cornelius Corkery describes as “profoundly human”, going on to stress that it “cuts right through you regardless of your age”. When Corkery first heard Django as a teenager, he recalls: “I couldn’t believe a guitar could sound so happy!”

To Chris Quinn, Django’s “tone, dynamics and phrasing were mind-blowing,” he tells us. “He was a creative genius with an effortless command of his instrument. His entire approach was revolutionary.”

Revolutionary it was, and it still sounds so. Django played with complete freedom, often surprising himself when hearing playbacks in the studio, listening as though he were hearing someone else. 

Being at the cutting edge of something would have meant Django, like his hero Armstrong, had no reference point but his own playing. There was simply nothing else around remotely like it. As Remi Harris points out: “While many great guitarists have their own signature sound and style, Django actually pioneered an entirely new genre of music.” That music is now universally known as Gypsy jazz.

From 1934 up until the outbreak of World War II, Django, alongside violinist Stéphane Grappelli, produced a series of legendary recordings as part of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, each showcasing his phenomenal mastery of the fretboard. Blistering chromatic runs, mind-blowing arpeggios, ferocious chording and intense rhythmic drive are just some of Django’s assets that continue to perplex guitarists even today.

But there was more: a sensitivity with a melodic line, a subtle string bend and clever use of space all contributed to a sense of drama – and even romance – when Django played. “Django’s playing is completely unique,” says Harry Diplock. “In all this time there has never been another guitarist that plays like Django.”

For Alex Bishop, Django’s playing is “unbelievably melodic”. “His phrases are so song-like,” he says, “his sense of time/rhythm so smooth and flexible. He’s more like a vocalist than a guitarist at times.” Despite the fact that Django was one of jazz history’s true in-the-moment improvisors, Remi Harris states that Django’s playing is “memorable and melodic – many of his solos sound like compositions in their own right”.

Bebop era

The end of World War II coincided with the first ‘bebop’ records appearing in Europe, a new approach to jazz that was pioneered by saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. This music placed the emphasis more on extended chord/scale ideas and was a seismic shift away from the melody driven jazz of the previous 20 years.

Django wasted no time incorporating this new musical vision and seemed to master bebop language almost overnight, something many of his American contemporaries were never able to do. Django formed a new quintet with young Parisians, bolted a primitive (but awesome‑sounding) Stimer pickup to his guitar and went electric. 

This period, 1947 until his tragic passing in 1953, represents Django’s full maturation as a guitar maestro. Again, countless recordings exist of this new Reinhardt – even more driving, daring and ferocious than before. “Django’s music evolved as he got older,” says Harry Diplock. “The 1930s ‘Gypsy jazz’ was a mere snapshot of his playing at that time.”

At this point, Django unwittingly divided his audience with many preferring his earlier work to his bebop explorations. But it always retained that “human touch”, as Cornelius Corkery points out, “that romance, feel and emotion. He doesn’t lose that. Even when turning up to shred-tastic levels and bombastic fretboard pyrotechnics, it’s always human, always real. Real music!”

Django Reinhardt tragically passed away in 1953 after suffering a stroke. He was just 43 years old. For many years after, his music seemed to shrink back into the Romani culture it originally came from and was in danger of falling into obscurity through the 1950s and 60s.

It wasn’t until 1968 that the Festival Django Reinhardt premiered in Samois-sur-Seine, a village south of Paris, where Django lived in his final years. From there a resurgence began; it was a resurgence that saw a new generation of incredible guitarists rise to prominence including Biréli Lagrène, Boulou Ferré, Fapy Lafertin, Raphaël Faÿs and Django’s youngest son, Babik Reinhardt. 

The Festival Django Reinhardt continues to this day and still serves as a meeting spot for Romani from across the continent. It’s not uncommon to find oneself at a campfire jam session featuring multiple generations of guitarists sparring over endless choruses of Django classics such as Minor Swing or Nuages.

One will hear the tradition and lineage, traceable right back to Django’s earliest recordings, in each and every one of these players acting like a common ground from which they can then branch out. One could be forgiven for thinking that the learning and performing of Django’s music would be a purely nostalgic pursuit.

On the contrary, each generation has successfully blended contemporary influences with the trademark Hot Club sound. This offers yet another important facet of Django’s legacy; his music has the flexibility to absorb and incorporate new ideas and, indeed, welcomes them. This is music borne of the past but not stuck in it. “Django with a modern twist,” as Lewis Kilvington describes it.

The current crop of players seems to have arrived at Django’s door via a variety of musical paths. For example, Cornelius Corkery is a huge admirer of maverick guitarists such as Buckethead and Dimebag Darrell. Chris Quinn started with Clapton, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker.

Alex Bishop set out with contemporary folk and indie influences. Incidentally, both Quinn and Bishop are now luthiers as well as players. Remi Harris, meanwhile, came to Django via Peter Green, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, and Harry Diplock arrived through Muddy Waters and Joe Satriani, and first heard Django on the soundtrack of a computer game.

Lewis Kilvington comes from a musical family, his father being a pianist inspired by rock ’n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis, hence the name. It’s difficult to imagine another guitarist that unites as many contrasting influences as Django Reinhardt seems to.

Legacy lives on

And what of Django’s enduring legacy? What keeps his music so fresh into the present day, and what aspects of his playing style and approach make his music so eternally vibrant? Jazz is a music that has always evolved at a dizzying pace and had Django not been such a musical chameleon he’d probably have sounded old-fashioned a mere 10 years after his first recordings. In 2023, however, his music is yet to sound dated. 

Today, jazz is divided into two main camps: the nostalgic and the cutting edge. These two camps rarely meet, except when it comes to Django where players are free to be both. Django’s music is also accessible enough to appeal to those who wouldn’t particularly label themselves as jazz fans.

“Django’s music is jazz, but you don’t have to be a jazz fan to understand or enjoy it,” says Remi Harris. “It’s simply an infectious style of music to play and listen to.”

Alex Bishop offers an alternate viewpoint: “What strikes me is the way Django’s music is rooted in social gatherings – family gatherings, friends getting together around campfires or late-night sessions in Parisian bars and cafes. In this isolating age of social media young people still crave opportunities to get together and share group experiences.” 

The contemporary Hot Club scene is indeed a very social one. Musicians spend as much time hanging out, jamming and sharing ideas as they do fulfilling their professional commitments. Harry Diplock has been on the London scene for over a decade and takes regular trips to Paris to hang out with like-minded Django lovers.

He’s also co-founder of the London Django Collective, which he describes as “a vibrant collective of musicians writing original music inspired by Django Reinhardt”. For Harry, the magic of Django is myriad: “It’s a combination of virtuosity and simplicity,” he says. “There’s also a beauty in playing an acoustic guitar with no amp or effects, which will always get people’s attention.”

Lewis Kilvington is involved in the Yorkshire Gypsy Swing Collective, a celebration much like its London counterpart. “It’s a group dedicated to playing music inspired by Django,” he tells us. “I feel very lucky to be able to share and teach Django’s music to people from all over the world. Django is still inspiring guitarists of all ages to this day. When I’m teaching my younger students they always react to Django the same way: with amazement.”

Remi Harris has his own groups and tours regularly playing a mix of Gypsy jazz, blues and rock. His recent book 100 Gypsy Jazz Guitar Licks is destined to become something of a bible for the next generation. 

Says Remi: “Django’s life is an amazing story of triumph over adversity. How he managed to overcome his disability and create such extraordinary music is so inspiring. Couple that with inventing a genre of music that has flourished with clubs and festivals all over the world today. There aren’t that many musicians who have left such a powerful legacy.”

Chris Quinn can be found on both the Gypsy jazz and folk circuits throughout Europe and the US. “Django was a creative genius,” he says, “a one-off and, in my opinion, the most important jazz guitarist of all time with a unique sense of note choice, phrasing and a complete understanding of the sound he was going for.”

Alex Bishop is now settled in Bristol where he builds Gypsy jazz guitars having toured with folk/jazz festival favourites Sheelanagig.

“There’s so much of Django’s personality reflected in his music that I feel I’ve got to know him over the years,” says Alex. “One imagines that he could express himself musically in ways he never could with words. Also, his music has all the depth, richness and complexity that jazz has to offer yet it remains very accessible.”

Cornelius Corkery has been in London for over five years playing the regular Hot Club haunts in the city. He started a podcast, Gypsy Jazz Hangouts, in 2020 and is about to take his show The Django Songbook on tour.

“Django’s music transcends generations, fads and trends,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine this music ever being irrelevant. Despite the fact that it’s a product of its time, Django’s music is timeless, innovative and magnificent. Pure music!”

It may be a cliché to say that necessity is the mother of invention, but that doesn’t make it any less true. A great example of this is how Django Reinhardt managed to reinvent his playing after his fretting hand was badly damaged in a fire. All but losing the use of his third and fourth fingers led him to favor voicings that are now staples in what has become known as Gypsy jazz.

In fact, it’s common to see a jazz guitarist vamping on chords that seem to somehow outline complex harmony but without using painful stretches and energetic leaps around the fretboard. 

While it isn’t possible to dispel the mysteries of jazz harmony in a couple of hundred words, it is realistic to gain an insight from the kind of chord vocabulary and movements these players use. 

So, no complex, hand-twisting extended voicings or ringing open chords here this time. But hopefully a very useful approach that can open the door to more authentic jazz (or Gypsy jazz) ‘vamping’.

Example 1

This G major 7th is as minimal as it comes. From low to high: G (root), F# (major 7th), B(3rd). No 5th, which is often omitted in jazz through choice – though don’t mix this up with the fifth string, which is confusingly where the 5th (D) would be fretted. You may find it helpful to mute it with the side of a finger, so it can’t get in on the act and spoil things!

Example 2

This A minor 7th takes the same approach regarding the 5th – and the fifth string! From low to high we have: A (root), G (minor 7th), C (minor 3rd). There is a nice option to turn this into a D7/A by moving the G down a semitone to the 4th fret, giving us an F# (3rd).

Example 3

Diminished chords can be named in different ways, but we’ll call this Bb diminished due to the presence of Bb as its lowest note. From low to high: Bb (root), G (bb7th), Db (minor 3rd). Strum rhythmically while moving this shape chromatically up and down to follow in Django’s footsteps.

Example 4

Raising the Bb and Db by a semitone gives us this G/B chord. The 3rd (B) is on the bottom, so if you want to make this a G minor/Bb, just drop it down to the 6th fret again. In isolation, this is probably the least ‘jazzy’ sounding of our chords here, but it’s all about context.

Example 5

This C minor 6th is a great demonstration of minimalist fingerings creating complex chords. Here, we have the root (C) on the sixth string, and then the minor 6th (A) on the fourth. Finally, the minor 3rd (Eb) is found at the 8th fret of the third string. Don’t forget to keep the fifth string firmly muted!

Here’s the thing. Choosing the 100 greatest guitarists of all time turned out to be just too darned tough for Total Guitar’s fanatical team of guitar nerds. So, armed with a ‘shortlist’ of over 250 players, we asked our lovely readers to have the casting vote in an online poll on Guitar World. Here’s how it works. 

We took 170 guitarists from our big list and grouped them into six categories: classic rock, blues, heavy metal, shred, indie/alternative and a ‘best right now’ contemporary poll. Six categories and six polls later, we had some results. The winning guitarists make up 80 of the 100 you’ll see here.

We've also singled out a number of other players we deemed too important to leave out, who appear at the end of each section as ‘Also in the running…’, as well as early innovators, trailblazers, acoustic, and jazz/fusion categories.

Read on for the lowdown on all 100 players – you can use the handy navigation bar above to jump between categories.

The best rock guitarists of all time

1. Brian May

Arise, Sir Brian Harold May, the greatest guitarist of all time, the player most regal, and the one whose pathway to the summit began in the most unorthodox fashion, with a father-and-son woodcraft project converting a fireplace into one of the most inventive electric guitars ever made, the Red Special. 

This homespun mad scientist sensibility served May well. Just look at how he used the Deacy amp. Appropriating a sixpence for a guitar pick, he would develop a sound that was instantly and unmistakably his, a three-dimensional cushion of overdrive that ferried Queen’s magisterial songs through the ether. 

There really is something texturally gourmand about May’s tone, a phalanx of Vox AC30s, with the Dallas Rangemaster in front, the phase shifting, the tape echo. As for his playing, it was sheer rock as theater, the fire to match the bombast, and the operatic splendor of a peerless band whose frontman must have been a dream to play alongside.

Indeed, with Freddie Mercury’s voluminous charisma onstage, May was given free rein to be himself as a guitarist, to make his sound as big or small as the song needed to be. He made full use of that freedom, with solos you could sing along to, melodies that stuck with you for days, and timeless riffs that will forever remain exhilarating as the first time we ever heard them.

2. Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was the supernova of creativity that the electric guitar had been waiting for. It’s tempting to say that Hendrix was ahead of his time, and yes, it’s true, he was. There’s a stronger case explaining why he was born just at the right time. 

Gear had evolved enough to accommodate high volumes and new noise, rock ’n’ roll had deflowered pop culture, the time was just right. And if he were born any later, say, in today’s climate, would he have been so free to shepherd that squall of feedback in an era in which limits are placed on stage noise, in-ears and all that jazz? Would he be lost to TikTok?

For better or worse, Hendrix lived free in an age of danger, and took the guitar to the limit, pushing it with this newfound technological superpower, the Marshall stack, and the supplementary ordnance provided on the floor by Roger Mayer et al – wah, fuzz, Uni-Vibe, all those new toys. And he used them to spectacular effect, turning blues into rock, into a fug of psychedelia.

At times, the whump-whump pulse of the Leslie effect would knock you sideways, but for the most part Hendrix knew when to roll the crazy back and let that phrasing of his, those chord inversions and vibrato speak for itself. His was a guitar sound you heard in color. Oh, he set his guitar on fire? It was was always on fire…

3. Jimmy Page

Years honing his chops as an on-call session musician had prepared Jimmy Page for what was to come, namely being guitarist and producer of the biggest rock band on the planet, a band whose creative ambition matched the scale of their success. 

Like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, Page was an alumni of the Yardbirds, at first on bass guitar, then guitar, briefly alongside Jeff Beck. The signs were there that Page was going to be different breed of guitar player. He used a bow on the guitar. Like Beck, he too appreciated the creative potential of high-volume, fuzz, wah and all the good stuff, and he took those creative epiphanies with them into Led Zeppelin.

Page would be the first to tell you that it was the chemistry between the players that made Led Zeppelin what they were. There were no weak links. That meant anything was possible.

Albums I and II brought riff after riff, Page opening his account with his Telecaster, a gift from Beck, moving to the Les Paul, experimenting with more gear, acoustics, 12-string electrics, Echoplex tape echo, adding more layers, folk and blues brought into rock and all emulsified by his singular vision. And then you have those solos, teetering on the edge, the suspense not killing you but leaving you having on every note to see if he can stick the landing. Spoilers: he did.

4. Eddie Van Halen

We can argue over who is the greatest guitarist of all time but surely none have been more entertaining than Eddie Van Halen, whose hot-wiring of hard rock norms was like a power-up for electric guitar culture, making a spectacle of the instrument that could rival the Super Bowl, Hollywood, the aurora borealis… great herds of wildebeest migrating across the Serengeti.

EVH did all this by restlessly MacGyvering his gear, pressing a Variac into service, monstering a Strat, D-Tunas, double-locking vibratos, just looking for that tone, the so-called Brown Tone. You know it when you hear it: juicy, all harmonics, crunch – again so, so very electric.

He did all this by similarly redrafting the guitar player’s technique, most notably an approach to two-handed tapping that remained exhilarating in his hands even after a generation had rotated it into their trick back. Thing is, no one could quite do it like Van Halen; it always sounded just like him. When all is said and done, that’s what a great guitar player is. They sound like no other.

5. Eric Clapton

The writing on the walls of 1960s London said everything: “Clapton Is God”. Theologically unsound? Sure. But back then Clapton was providing plenty of evidence. He introduced himself with The Yardbirds before leaving for John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers.

The band’s studio debut, simply titled Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton but most commonly known as The Beano Album, remains a touchstone. But more greatness was incoming, and Clapton was in a hurry. He formed Cream with fellow Bluesbreakers alumnus Jack Bruce and cut some of the most classic rock tracks of all time. 

The Marshall stack was expanding the possibilities, and Clapton’s ‘woman tone’ brought the electric guitar – in this instance his 1964 Gibson SG – closer to a soul singer’s voice than anyone had got before. After Cream came the short-lived supergroup Blind Faith, before he recorded his masterpiece, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs with Derek and the Dominos in 1970.

Solo success, addiction and redemption followed. A disciple of the electric blues progenitors, Muddy Waters et al, and of Robert Johnson, Clapton immersed himself in blues history – an education that informed his playing across his career. The vibrato, however, that was all him. And it is godly.

6. David Gilmour

Great civilizations have risen and fallen in the time that it has taken for one of David Gilmour’s notes to decay. It is as though Gilmour’s career has been one long stand against time, a battle to make time itself dance to his tune. Notes are fretted, picked and soar through the firmament, receiving guests in planetary orbit for tea before gracefully making their way back to terra firma. The effect on the audience is transcendent. 

Replacing Syd Barrett in Pink Floyd was no easy task. Gilmour, however, had the vision, the chops, and the proficiency with a Binson Echorec to take the British prog icons’ sound to the next level.

Gilmour’s playing and songwriting nous allowed Pink Floyd to expand into grandiose concept albums without them being leaden by the gravitational weight of their own ambition. Because, of course, it is not just that great Strat tone, carried on the wings of fuzz and echo, it’s the writing, the changes, all calibrated to land an emotional punch, to make us think the big thoughts along the way.

7. Ritchie Blackmore

Hard rock’s own Man in Black, Ritchie Blackmore redefined guitar for a generation. Okay, we are at that spot in the list where everyone is redefining things but, really, he was the one who made the riffs harder and the solos that bit more ambitious with Deep Purple, who looked beyond the Pentatonic shapes and towards classical music for inspiration, classing up the denim-and-leather demographic and expanding its horizons.

And of course, he is a character, too, and in this game that goes a long way. Blackmore might have been a renaissance man who enjoyed a little Baroque ’n’ roll when it came down to what was right there before him on the treble clef, but he was volatile, too. It was often thus, that the geniuses among us have something of the unexploded bomb about their personalities.

Without Blackmore, it is hard to see Yngwie Malmsteen operating out there on the neoclassical frontier. Without Blackmore, it is hard to envisage power metal happening.

8. Alex Lifeson

Rush had many artistic triumphs, but if we take the broad view of their career it was the Canadian trio’s ability to make progressive rock translate to all comers that is most impressive. Quite how they did it is an open secret. Their songs could be Joycean epics, complex, knowing, but they always radiated humanity, and Alex Lifeson’s note choices, his ear for a melody enriched their biggest ideas with hooks that pulled us along for the ride.

With Lifeson on guitar, and the warmth of Geddy Lee on the mic, prog was for all. Or at least pretty much all. Lifeson’s chord choices were inspired, dropping in suspended chords and letting them hang there in the air – an evening with Rush was an indoctrination of sorts into the musical appeal of the F#11, the sus2, and how open strings could transform a chord voicing and deepen the meaning of the song.

Heck, Lifeson is so good, he can even rock a Gibson Les Paul with a Floyd Rose double-locking vibrato. That’s a little like painting the Bentley neon pink, plimsolls with a suit, but go on, Alex, you’ve earned it.

9. Jeff Beck

Yet another genius player to emerge from the Yardbirds to carve out a singular career, Jeff Beck was the guitar player’s guitar hero. He was the player who eschewed the pick, used his Strat’s whammy bar as truly an extension of himself, and spent his career chasing down every dynamic he could find from the instrument.

The guitar was already electric by the time Beck picked it up but there was always the sense that he hacked the grid and upped the voltage, ushering in a new era of high-volume, fuzz and noise, feedback too, without forgetting that it sounded just as good whispering as it did with a shout. Stick on Shapes of Things today and the seminal Yardbirds cut still sounds fresh as a daisy.

Beck would return to it as soon as he left the Yardbirds, reworking it for his solo debut, Truth, then reworking everything he had known on the guitar for a prolific career thereafter. The tributes from his peers since his death on January 10 2023 say it all. He was not just the guitar player’s guitar hero; he was the guitar hero’s guitar hero.

10. Slash

You just could not imagine Slash in a regular nine-to-five, coaching little league, varnishing the fence. If ever there was a man born to be a rock star… Where do you start with Slash? Well, Appetite For Destruction, Guns N’ Roses’ incendiary 1987 debut album is a good a place as any. It still sounds dangerous, bad for the health. 

Of course, GNR is a sum of its parts – Axl straining at the leash, popping veins at the mic, Steven Adler hitting the drums with all he’s got – but Slash’s animalistic style, ripping leads and good sense to know when to pull focus with a big set-piece melody was the main ingredient, and it introduced arguably the last great rock guitar hero.

In many ways, Slash was and is a throwback. He made the Les Paul cool again in an era when hockey stick headstocks gained the upper hand, and he did so with a fake. He was on a different level, rocking back and forth between the major and minor, making a spectacle of rock guitar in one moment, revealing its seedy underbelly the next.

And he’s still doing it. His latest album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, 4, recorded all but live in Nashville’s RCA Studio, retains that sense of danger, an all but impossible feat in this self-aware and sanitized era.

11. Carlos Santana 

Carlos Santana expanded rock’s perimeter. The Mexican-born guitarist arrived in San Francisco right in time to bear witness to the ‘60s pop-cultural revolution. Taking a deep breath of the pungent air, he loosened rock at the hip, introducing percussion and rhythm from Latin America and Africa, and placed a guitar sound at the heart of it that was elemental and unmistakable.

Woodstock ’69 will always be talked about in guitar circles on account of Hendrix’s off-grid excursions with a Stratocaster but consider Santana’s 11-minute jam on Soul Sacrifice, which has become the stuff of legend – perhaps to Carlos Santana himself – as he navigated the alleys of the mind after some pre-show hallucinogenics, but all the while somehow remaining present. Yeah, one foot in this astral plane, the other on the next. That’s how Santana rolls. No one else could have made a record like Abraxas in 1970.

He was and is always looking for more sustain, swapping out his Gibson SG Special – the veteran of Woodstock – for a number of Les Pauls, the Yamaha SG double-cut, before becoming the first Paul Reed Smith signature artist, helping to cement the brand’s burgeoning reputation. 

12. Mark Knopfler

If you take only one thing from Mark Knopfler’s playing style, it must surely be his fingerstyle technique. Though his pick-hand position might appear unusual, Mark is able to control every nuance of his sumptuous tones and Strat cleans with a beautifully sensitive touch. 

Fingerstyle offers unique phrasing options too; the ‘thumb, pull-off , thumb, first finger’ picking pattern of that lick in Sultans Of Swing can’t really be played another way if you want Mark’s feel. 

“With me”, Mark says, “there are two sides to it. Most of the time I just use the guitar as something to help the songwriting. But every now and again, if I’m sitting down and trying to learn something, moving it forward a little bit, you realise the depth of the thing. It’s a whole different thing being a musician from being a ‘guitar player’.”

13. Angus & Malcolm Young

Ever since 1976’s High Voltage landed like a right hook, nobody has done it harder, louder or lairier than the Youngs. There’s a case that AC/DC’s wrecking-ball riff-raff hinges on those world-beating right hands, but you won’t nail the vibe without getting the gear cornerstones right. 

Angus has been an SG disciple since his first ’68, and has used various Standards, Specials and Customs, retiring them when the pickups get waterlogged by sweat. 

“They’re all the basic, stock Gibson pickups,” said his tech Geoff Banks. “He plays on the bridge pickup all the time.” Malcolm generally turned to his ’63 Gretsch Jet Firebird, customised by removing the middle pickups; leaving a solitary ’60s bridge Filter’Tron. 

The classic AC/DC lead sound is built on just a Marshall 1959 SLP 100-watter with the EQ at half-mast and volume cranked.

14. Gary Moore

A powerhouse blues player with a sideline in virtuoso jazz fusion, hard rock and metal, Gary Moore’s sound was so big it is almost hard to wrap our heads around it. He will always find himself on guitar compilations on account of Parisienne Walkways, which was a masterpiece of intonation and sustain, grand and elegant. 

Tracks such as Still Got The Blues and Oh Pretty Woman, that famous two-hander with Albert King, demonstrated how his unerring phrasing and searing tone could give voice to his heartache and pain. 

Moore started out in Skid Row, joining his old bandmate Phil Lynott in Thin Lizzy, with whom he served as an on-off pinch hitter, but it was as a solo artist where we saw the best of him.

Influenced by Peter Green, for whom he recorded a tribute album, Blues For Greeny, Moore would also be custodian of the late Fleetwood Mac blues-rock icon’s 1959 Les Paul Standard, 'Greeny', which now resides in Kirk Hammett’s collection.

15. Billy Gibbons

There is a humility to Billy Gibbons and a low-key cool that suggests he might be tickled but mortified to be in some sort of high-chartin’ best players list. That’s just not how you do things in ZZ Top, that lil’ old band from Texas. Gibbons’ demeanor, his philosophy – all Zen and the art of beard maintenance – suggest that if you are serious about making it as a purveyor of boogie, as a storyteller and chronicler of the American experience, riff-writer extraordinaire, you’ve got to chill, because otherwise all the things you see might set your hair on fire.

Because Gibbons has seen it all, touring with Hendrix with the Moving Sidewalks, having the audacity to perform Hendrix tracks to fill out the set, a feat met with Hendrix’s approval, then building one of the all-time great rock acts with ZZ Top, branching out aesthetically on his solo work. 

As a player it is all tone and touch, knowing when to tickle it and when to hit it hard. Famously, he switched to a set of 7s upon B.B. King’s advice. He wears his slide on his middle finger, which when written down sounds like a metaphor. His 1959 Les Paul Standard Pearly Gates has given us all a Holy Grail tone to shoot for.

16. Duane Allman

The young Allman had greatness thrust upon him after Clapton heard his blistering outro solo on Wilson Pickett’s Hey Jude. Having supplied all the slide and Gibson tones on Derek And The Dominos’ album, Allman played on records by soul stars Aretha Franklin and Percy Sledge. 

Fame beckoned with his own band, and he established himself as the world’s foremost slide guitarist. His style laid the groundwork for Southern rock, influencing every drawl-inflected band from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Black Stone Cherry. He was dead at just 24, but thankfully one of his slide students – a certain Master Joe Walsh – kept his style going...

17. Joe Walsh

Joe Walsh was already orbiting greatness by the time he replaced Bernie Leadon in the Eagles – with James Gang and Barnstorm he had announced his presence as a songwriter, a player, and a tone-smith of some repute. But when you record an album such as Hotel California, putting your own spin on the Eagle’s easy West Coast sound on tracks like Life in the Fast Lane, dueling with Don Felder in the title track’s peerless guitar solo, that seals the deal.

A prodigious slide player, and inveterate modder who would – like Frampton – make the talk box a talked-about guitar effect via the superlative Rocky Mountain Way, Walsh has always been a seeker, chasing down new tones to complement a rhythm style that came naturally to him but remains out of reach of lesser players. His career is marked by acts of casual genius, like finding the riff for Life in the Fast Lane in a “coordination drill”. It’s mind blowing to think that anyone could keep a riff like that as a warm-up.

18. Keith Richards

Aka The Human Riff, Keith Richards needs little introduction. As co-founder of the Rolling Stones, a veritable pop-cultural institution, his story is right there in the songs. 

Using a variety of open tunings, often with only five strings on his guitar, never jumping all over the track if he can help it, Richards style sees him weave in and out of the song, out of rhythm and lead but always in its pocket, his tone analog and warm. 

There is new music coming from the Stones. Let’s not eulogize a man while he is still at work, but besides that unimpeachable discography you can stick popularizing the fuzz pedal with the riff to Satisfaction (I Can’t Get No) on his legacy achievements. 

Once upon a time, the Stones were this brand new thing, young and dangerous, but looking back with the luxury of hindsight – and we are all only young once – what they’ve been doing all this time is drilling back through music history, mining old blues, lost RnB and soul for inspiration, regressing to the mean to be an ever more perfect version of themselves, the ultimate rock ’n’ roll band.

19. Frank Zappa

Rock’s mad scientist and savant genius had the iconoclastic wit of a Robert Downey picture and a musical knowledge like, well, like no other. Some orchestrated counterculture. Frank Zappa made an orchestra out of counterculture. He made high art of the gaudy and the ribald. He turned scratchy guitar rock into unsparing and forensic examinations of American society and its discontents. He made composing hip. 

Zappa is not always easy to digest. The audience has to tune into his frequency. Sometimes the reception is fuzzy. Those who approached his canon with an open mind were rewarded with a trip through a singular mind. As Lowell George, Adrian Belew and Steve Vai can attest to, he was just as intimidating as a band leader. But then it takes a certain someone to make a record like One Size Fits All.

20. George Harrison

George Harrison was the coolest member of the coolest band ever. Lennon/McCartney of course has its own pop-cultural gravity – there is no one to match them – but some of the Beatles best tunes came from Harrison, and some of the most interesting guitar playing of the ‘60s and ‘70s, too.

Some of the most selfless, too. His playing stopped when the melody was rendered in full, when the song got what it needed. One of his great talents lay in how he sublimated his technique into material that was readily digestible. The Beatles, of course, were masters of this, of top-tier musicianship and craft that spoke to everyone.

As to the songs, take your pick. Taxman and Hear Comes the Sun show the spiky and the mellifluous side to his playing respectively. But it all comes back to Something, a song Sinatra covered and paid Harrison the ultimate tribute by crediting it to Lennon and McCartney. What a band. What a player.

21. Pete Townshend

The player who launched a thousand insurance premiums as the Who’s propulsive rock style chewed through the scenery and backline, Pete Townshend was the windmilling firebrand who may well have been operating out on this animalistic frontier – all instinct and embodying the very id of ‘60s youth, the ne plus ultra of rebellion – but the brain was whirring all the time.

The Who matched big sounds with big ideas, and Townshend, driven on by the compelling power of a Marshall stack, kinetic and dangerous, was at the heart of it, putting great riffs in timeless tunes. 

22. Lindsey Buckingham

Eight years, nine albums and four guitarists down in their career, Fleetwood Mac would hook up with a player who would accompany the group from the brink of major worldwide success to multi-platinum domination. 

The band’s first release with Buckingham – their ‘White Album’ – would be their first number one, in the USA at least, and the follow-up, 1977’s Rumours, hit the stratosphere all round the planet. 

Favouring fingerstyle over picking, and citing Scotty Moore and Chet Atkins as heroes, Buckingham would steer Mac in a broader musical direction, from pop and rock to folk and more avant garde offerings.

23. Steve Howe

Steve Howe joining Yes in 1970 was Big Bang moment for prog guitar. Its universe expanded, and when its stars aligned all kinds of strange magic occurred. There is a touch of sorcery to Howe’s work.

Renowned texturalist, he makes more out of less, applying volume pedal to accentuate his dynamics. But listen again to iconic works such as Fragile and Close to the Edge. You will hear Howe listening, giving the song just what it needs. He has amassed such a broad vocabulary on guitar that he now tours with a Line 6 Variax and leans on amp modelers to store all these sounds.

We’ll leave you with some advice from the man himself: “I don’t think guitarists should concentrate on being guitarists. They should concentrate on being musicians. Being a guitarist can be a dangerous thing if you just want to race off and steal the show all the time on bended knees with your tiddly tiddly tiddly.”

24. Peter Frampton

Like many players on this Top 100, Peter Frampton cemented his legacy among guitar players by popularizing a sound; who can think of the talk box without the electric presence of Frampton coming to mind? 

He made his name with Humble Pie and the Herd, and played with David Bowie (they both attended the same school) on Never Let Me Down and the ensuing tour. This, said Frampton, made him cool again. But he was always cool, as anyone who owns the his tour-de-force live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, can attest to.

25. Joe Perry

The popular perception is that Joe Perry is the proto-Slash of the early ‘70s: shirtless, legless and elegantly wasted, requiring only a Les Paul and Marshall for his blues-box sleaze. In fact, there are many toys in Perry’s attic. 

In 2008, he estimated his guitar collection at 600, citing his workhorse back then as the one-off ‘Billie’ Lucille semi-hollow, while other treasures include 50s Supro Ozarks for slide, BC Rich Biches and Dan Armstrong Plexis, and the Guild T-250 that was all over Aerosmith’s late-80s comeback albums. 

“For me, a lot of how I write a song or riff comes from the particular guitar sound,” Perry explains.

Also in the running…

Paul Kossoff

AC/DC copied the Free legend’s frenetic vibrato and muscular riff writing, and All Right Now remains a masterclass in building excitement.

Mick Taylor

“Taylor was a very fluent, melodic player,” said Mick Jagger. With wah and slide, he create impressively vocal sounds.

Steve Hackett

Tapping before Eddie and sweeping before Yngwie, the Genesis wizard was also an early adopter of the guitar synth.

Steve Lukather

His easy groove, wild bends and fluid runs made Toto’s guitarist the first call session player of the '80s.

Scott Gorham & Brian Robertson

Thin Lizzy drove the Les Paul and Marshall combination harder than anyone had before, defining the sound and licks of heavy rock guitar.

Tom Scholz

Second only to EVH for defining '80s rock guitar tone, the Boston man invented the gear behind hundreds of hits.

JJ Cale

He wrote Cocaine, originated the Tulsa sound and counted Clapton, Knopfler and Neil Young among his disciples.

Andy Summers

The Police’s songs would have sounded generic without Andy’s innovative add9 voicings and his EHX Electric Mistress flanger pedal.

The Edge

By using delay as an instrument of its own, with U2 he found an entirely new way to orchestrate guitars.

Robert Fripp

Guitar’s premier mad scientist, Fripp has defied convention and influenced every subsequent progger.

Wayne Kramer & Fred 'Sonic' Smith

The MC5’s garage rock kicked out the jams, predated punk by a decade and sounded angry as hell.

Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter

He played on more records than some people own, most notably adding inspiration to Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.

Mick Ronson

Created the arrangements for Bowie’s best material. Find any guitarist in makeup and Ronson is probably the reason they started playing.

Dick Wagner & Steve Hunter

They shook the sound of rock first with Lou Reed, then again with Alice Cooper. Hunter played uncredited for Aerosmith.

Neal Schon

When rock became a speed competition, Schon made solos you could sing. Journey are still on the radio as a result.

Ry Cooder

An undisputed slide master, Cooder’s smoking licks even vanquished Steve Vai in Crossroads. His feel and vibrato are unrivalled.

Andy Powell/Ted Turner

Wishbone Ash did more than anyone to introduce harmony guitars to metal. Their twin guitars gave Iron Maiden their cue.

Jerry Garcia

Garcia idiosyncratically borrowed banjo techniques, leaving behind 22,000 hours of recorded music with the Grateful Dead.

The best blues guitarists of all time

1. Stevie Ray Vaughan 

Stevie Ray Vaughan brought physicality and soul to guitar playing, and he brought it in spades. The soul came through the speaker. The physicality was there for all to see. To watch him play, there were occasions in which SRV would throttle the guitar as though it were an arm wrestling contest at last orders in a Nantucket alehouse. 

His strings were the stuff of legend – 13s? No, 14s; 17s! Heck, some might argue he used piano wire. Either way, he went down the heavy-gauge route and had the dexterity to manipulate them as though they were dental floss. This, the fire in his belly, and the tone-gussying Tube Screamer playing mediator between Fender Strat and amp give him a range of dynamics that few, if any, players could match.

And yet, there was a tenderness to his playing. There are many who argue that his cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing eclipses the original. That’s for debate. What is not is that Vaughan, who was only 35 years old when he died in a helicopter crash, he left an over-sized impression on guitar culture in a short space of time. Just like Hendrix.

His debut studio album with backing band Double Trouble, Texas Flood, remains a blue-chip classic of the genre, and showcases the range of those dynamics. That title track – a cover of the 1958 Larry Davis number – could convince you that the sun never shines on Texas, least not while Vaughan was in it. 

The likes of Pride and Joy and Tell Me demonstrate what he could do with a groove behind him. Sadly, generations won’t get to see him onstage, but so long as sets such as those at Montreux in 1982 are available on YouTube and DVD, more will bear witness to this singular talent.

2. B.B. King 

B.B. King was pure class, from his exquisite licks to his heartfelt vocals. Brought up on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, he was born Riley B. King in 1925. 

King attended various churches, attracted to the blues-tinged gospel songs they sang. His pastor taught him three chords before his plantation boss advanced him the money to buy his own guitar. 

King taught himself to play and by 1946 had moved to Memphis with his cousin, slide guitarist Bukka White. Before long he was playing on local radio and scored a residency at a West Memphis grill. King soon gained his own show, where he was dubbed ‘Beale Street Blues Boy’, shortened to ‘Blues Boy’ and then ‘B.B.’.

At this time he was still playing acoustic guitar, but influenced by his hero T-Bone Walker, King moved to electric. He initially played a Gibson ES-150, then an ES-5 Switchmaster, even a Fender Esquire, before finding the instrument with which he will forever be associated, the Gibson ES-355 thinline.

King named his guitars ‘Lucille’, after a fight over a woman of that name caused a burning oil drum heater to overturn. King ran back into the blazing building to retrieve his beloved instrument, and christened it (and every subsequent guitar) in her honour.

Several elements make King’s style unique. Prior to King, few guitarists used vibrato with such artistry, but he loved the fluttering sound of slide guitarists such as cousin Bukka White, and the powerful quiver created by blues harmonica player Little Walter. So he developed his own, by quickly rotating his finger while holding down a fretted note. 

It made his licks sound more vocal, and set him aside from others. Also, King considered his singing and playing equal partners in his success, so rarely played chords while he sang, instead devoting each moment to a sung or played line, thus heightening each one’s intensity.

In his early years, King followed the five-shape fingerboard template laid down by T-Bone Walker and others, but before long discovered a fretboard position that suited him perfectly. We now call this ‘the B.B. box’. Essentially ‘shape 3’ in the pentatonic scheme, King pivoted his first finger on the root note of the key, on the second string – in A this would be 10th fret.

From here he could easily reach a 5th above (first string, 12th fret), find b5th and 4th one and two frets down, and 2nd, b3rd and 3rd on the second string, 12th, 13th and 15th frets respectively. One string down on the 11th fret was the major 6th, so all these important notes were easily available within one small area – and that’s before we take into account King’s incredible string bending.

When the white blues boom of the 1960s exploded, artists like Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and Paul Butterfield used their success to champion their own heroes. Thus artists like King, who had previously been dubbed “race” acts, gained the mainstream appreciation that they rightly deserved. 

3. Buddy Guy

The world’s greatest living bluesman, Buddy Guy is a master showman and storyteller. He was born in Louisiana, the son of sharecroppers, and would migrate north of the Mason-Dixon to Chicago where he make his name and become one of the foundational giants of the city’s blues scene. Otis Rush invited him onstage to play, and he would learn what works by looking at the audience’s faces. If they liked it, he gave them more. And he would give and give.

He would walk through the crowd, engage with them, then jump off the bar with his guitar so they’d surely remember his name. These tricks he would learn from Guitar Slim. People soon called him the ‘Little Wild Man from Louisiana’.

Guy soon had to find a more robust guitar than the semi-hollow Guild Starfires he played at first. He needed a solidbody, and the Fender Stratocaster became his weapon of choice. His super-juicy tone influenced Hendrix, all the young British dudes – Beck, Clapton et al.

If he heard a horn part he liked, he would try play it on guitar, expanding his repertoire, finding notes that others missed. Polka dots would become a trademark. Only Minnie Mouse wore them better. But no-one puts on a show quite like Buddy Guy.

4. Albert King

Born Albert Nelson in 1923, Albert King stood 6’ 4” and weighed 250lbs. Like B.B. (no relation, although Albert often fudged the reality), was born on and worked on a cotton plantation in Indianola, Texas.

King fashioned his first guitar from a cigar box, with a tree branch neck and strung it with a strand of broom wire. When he finally got a guitar, being left-handed he simply turned the right-hander upside down and played with the strings reversed. He also tuned very loosely – Gary Moore told Guitarist magazine that while working with King he took a sneaky peak and found it to be C# F# B E G# C#.

This down-stringing made his action very pliable. Albert could play a whole lick by bending his top string by a 4th and letting it down to create other intervals. 

After various attempts at a record deal he moved to Memphis and was signed by soul label Stax, with superb house band Booker T & The MG’s. The MG’s backed King on his legendary 1967 album Born Under a Bad Sign which contained the brilliant Crosscut Saw, The Hunter (covered by Free), Oh Pretty Woman (covered by Gary Moore) and the title track (covered by Cream).

Nicknamed The Velvet Bulldozer due to his huge size but sweet singing voice, Albert played simply but beautifully on his 1958 Gibson Flying V. You can hear huge slabs of him in the playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Joe Walsh among others.

5. Joe Bonamassa

You kind of get the impression from Joe Bonamassa that his position as the highest-grossing blues artist of all time is a little embarrassing – thrilling, sure, but it’s quite the affirmation. Perhaps this is why he has made it his life’s mission to widen the blues’ appeal. 

There’s the KTBA blues cruise, the label, the production, Nerdville... But ultimately, Bonamassa leads with his fingers when it comes to advocacy, toting a muscular, pyrotechnic style that not only references the '60s British blues scene, and the pantheon of electric blues greats, and classic rock and prog when the song requires it.

6. Robert Johnson

Arguably no musician has ever been the subject of such incredible mythology as Robert Johnson. Would rock ’n’ roll ever have given us Sympathy For the Devil and Highway To Hell and if not for rumours of Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads? Would metal fans be scrawling pentagrams on guitars and throwing the horns if Johnson hadn’t sung Me and the Devil Blues?

Beyond the incredible imagery, there’s a sophistication and variety to Johnson and his delta contemporaries that modern blues often lacks. The art form is often reduced to endless 12-bars, while Johnson’s own work embraced jazz and country. His blues compositions did not limit themselves to the 12-bar format, and his debut recording, They’re Red Hot, was an uptempo ragtime number. 

Playing unaccompanied allowed Johnson and his contemporaries the freedom to play with time and tempo, and his songs have odd-length bars in unexpected places. With his singing and slide playing, he even explored microtonality in subtle ways that Jeff Beck and Derek Trucks are showered with praise for achieving today.

Musical immortality is mostly about having great songs. Beyond the legend, Johnson’s name still looms so large because he wrote tunes that slap. Dust My Broom, Crossroad Blues and Sweet Home Chicago are the blues’s biggest standards.

The Rolling Stones covered Love in Vain and Stop Breaking Down, Led Zeppelin had Traveling Riverside Blues and The Lemon Song, while Steve Miller and Duane Allman both took a bite at Come On in My Kitchen. Guitarists like Ike Turner and Chuck Berry evolved Johnson’s template into rock ’n’ roll, and from that came a slew of hits. 

It’s not quite right to give the credit solely to Johnson. Delta blues musicians shared their creativity with each other more freely than today’s copyright-driven music industry.

Johnson’s music carries plenty of influence from his and forebears and peers, some of whom are now forgotten. Johnson might be the most important musician in the development of 20th century popular music, but he’s also emblematic of dozens of black folk musicians who developed the genre without the pay or credit they deserved.

Still, if you want to learn acoustic blues fingerstyle, Johnson’s turnarounds are still the benchmark. If you want to play slide, you’ll need to learn his licks. And if you’re writing songs, you can only hope to capture an element of the human experience so profoundly as he did.

7. Rory Gallagher

The Irish guitar maverick would stand astride the boundaries of blues and rock, showcasing a virtuoso electric style – and a sound – that would resonate through popular culture. Brian May started using a Rangemaster treble booster through a Vox AC30 on account of him. 

Gallagher made his name in the early ‘70s with Taste, later going solo, and adhering to the cardinal rule of blues that it must be authentic. On that score, he would give the blues a Celtic flavor, drawing influence from skiffle and folk. 

He was nifty with a slide, on acoustic, whatever. You just had to give him a guitar, then pray for its finish. He was hard on them, as his heavily weathered Strat could confirm.

8. Muddy Waters

Six-time Grammy winner McKinley Morganfield ruled the Chicago blues scene from the mid 1940s on. Moving from Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1941 and switching from acoustic to electric guitar two years later, Morganfield (now Muddy Waters) assembled a band of the finest players in town, including Little Walter (harmonica), Otis Spann (piano) and Jimmy Rogers (guitar). 

Live, Muddy’s band was a powerhouse. Jimi Hendrix found it terrifying – “I first heard him as a little boy and it scared me to death,” quipped Jimi, who took a famous Muddy lick and turned it into Voodoo Chile. Muddy’s playing was almost primeval. 

Bluesman John P Hammond stated, “Muddy was the master of just the right notes; profound, deep and simple.” Although he wrote songs, he is mainly remembered for covers that became the definitive versions, such as Rolling Stone (from which both magazine and band took their name), Got My Mojo Working, Mannish Boy, and Hoochie Coochie Man. 

Muddy was rarely seen without his red Fender Telecaster, on which he mostly played slide and the occasional riff, but his legend and musical influence remain almost unequalled. As B.B. King put it, “It’s going to be years before people realise how great his contribution was to American music.”

9. Johnny Winter

Johnny Winter was born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1944, and grew up with music all around him. He started cutting records age 15, and got his big break in 1968 when Mike Bloomfield invited him to play in New York, Columbia Records paid attention and gave him a record advance. His debut album, 1968’s The Progressive Blues Experiment, showed which way the wind was blowing.

Winter would enjoy a prolific career, making the angular silhouette of the Gibson Firebird his calling card – most notably his 1964 Polaris White Firebird V – but so too his slide chops and fierce attack, the flurry of triplets and double-stops. Like many blues players of his age the influence of Muddy Waters was writ large in his style. Winter would repay the favor, jamming with Waters and producing three studio albums for him.

10. Freddie King

Of the legendary ‘Three Kings’, Freddie was the youngest and most raucous. His guitar style was fast and ferocious, with huge string bends and vicious vibrato, his vocals almost guttural in their delivery. 

Born in Gilmer, Texas in 1934, Freddie learned guitar from age six, but moved to Chicago while in his teens. Freddie would sneak into the blues clubs and watch legends like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and T-Bone Walker. He took onboard their stagecraft, marvelled at their musicianship and determined to make it big, just like them.

But after continual rejection by Chess Records on Chicago’s South Side he finally struck a deal with Federal Records on the city’s West Side, where a hipper blues scene was burgeoning. Freddie became a hit in the clubs here, and his first single for Federal would become a standard – Have You Ever Loved a Woman, later a staple in Eric Clapton’s career.

Freddie influenced a raft of later white guitarists, like Clapton, Peter Green, Michael Bloomfield and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His instrumentals became legendary – Hide Away, The Stumble and San-Ho-Zay, among others – and he will also be remembered for having one of the first mixed race bands. Freddie was hard working and hard living, and died of pancreatitis, aged just 42.

Also in the running…

Samantha Fish

With her four-string cigar box guitar, Fish evokes the rawness of early bottleneck recordings, plus punk levels of aggression.

Peter Green

No other British blues boomer matched Greeny’s subtlety or his precise bends. His dynamic control evoked an aching longing.

Elmore James

By pioneering electric slide guitar and loud, dirty amplifiers, James gave us Dust My Broom, and the blues-rock blueprint.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Long overlooked, it’s now recognised Tharpe turned Gospel into rock ’n’ roll. Her electrifying performances inspired Chuck Berry and co.

Jeff Healey

With guitar flat on his lap, the blind Healey found new levels of control over bends, slides, and vibrato.

John Mayer

Proving that blues can still sell, Mayer puts Hendrix and SRV vibes into memorable pop songs, breaking the 12-bar rut.

Derek Trucks

His mastery of microtonality – the pitches in between the frets – plus glorious phrasing makes Trucks’ slide playing uniquely compelling.

Gary Clark Jr.

Wisely chosen to pay tribute to BB King at the 2016 Grammy awards, Clark is authentic without just rehashing the all old stuff.

Early innovators

1. Chuck Berry

Neither bluesman, entertainer nor country boy, Charles Edward Anderson Berry fused all three personas into a rip-snorting style that formed the very language of rock guitar as we know it today. It’d be easy to see Chuck Berry simply as a flamboyant character from the early rock ’n’ roll days – the duck walk, the chunky boogie rhythm and those signature doublestop introductions. 

But there was much more to it. We often view players from that era in terms of being a ‘beginning’. Without Chuck Berry or Duane Eddy, there could never have been a Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen, and so on. As it turned out, Chuck was particular about his gear too. Of all the guitars he used in his lifetime, two are predominant: the Gibson ES-350T and ES-335. 

In 1955, coinciding with the release of Chuck’s first single, Maybellene, a thinline version of the 350 – the ES-350T – was born into the new age of rock ’n’ roll (although it’s alleged that the actual guitar used for the recording session was a Gretsch Duo Jet). Chuck has been pictured with both the P-90 and humbucker versions. The release of the ES-335 in 1958 was the same year that Chuck had further hits with Sweet Little Sixteen, Carol and, of course, Johnny B. Goode.

Another thinline model, but this time with a double cutaway, the 335 took full advantage of the nascent humbucking pickups as well as offering added access to the guitar’s upper register with its 19th-fret neck joint. If you’re dead set on authentic Chuck Berry tones, it’s just got to be Gibson!

2. Hank Marvin

As The Shadows’ King Of Twang, Hank Marvin was Britain’s first guitar hero of the electric era, inspiring a generation of players with single-coil tones as springy and lush as a manicured lawn. 

Speaking to Guitarist in 2017, Hank said: “My reference points were the human voice, various jazz sax ballads with a strong melodic content and guitarists like Les Paul. The human voice and saxes usually had a vibrato that I emulated on the Strat, helping the notes to be more expressive.

“My sound and style more or less happened by accident; the combination of the Strat, the AC15 amp, which soon became the AC30, and the echo box sort of pushed me in a direction, and who was I to argue?”

3. Les Paul

Already a star when he invented the solidbody guitar (there’s a reason Gibson wanted his signature), Les was a virtuoso jazz and country performer. By inventing multitrack recording – discovering delay, flanging, and phasing en route – he provided the equipment for everyone following him. His dense layers of harmonised guitars anticipated Brian May. 

Decades before Paul Gilbert and Bumblefoot, Les recognised that fast guitar could be funny, using tape speed for both musical and ludicrous effects. Stars like Zakk Wylde lined up to perform at his infamous New York club nights, only to limp offstage after being schooled by the master.

4. Scotty Moore

Winfield Scott ‘Scotty’ Moore III can lay a very good claim to the title of Most Important Guitarist That Ever Lived. Influenced by the country jazz picking of Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, he conspired with a young truck driver called Elvis Presley to create a new strain of white blues called rockabilly. 

Backing the 'King Of Rock 'n' Roll', Scotty Moore had no shortage of admirers, from Keef to Page, Beck and many, er, more.

5. Buddy Holly 

Rock ’n’ roll was well established in the 1950s – Ike Turner, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard all had hits – but white audiences had largely rejected it. Buddy Holly presented blues, rock ’n’ roll, and country licks in a package the ‘suits’ would put on American television.

Regardless of the questionable values of the marketing machine, Holly and his Stratocaster were immediately popular. Iconic even. His strummed open chords on [1957 single] Peggy Sue were easy to play, embodying the “I can do that!” spirit of early rock ’n’ roll.

And his lasting influence? The Beatles’ name was a deliberate nod to Holly’s band The Crickets, as they and hundreds more sought to imitate him. Holly tragically died only two years later, aged 22, having changed music history in his short time on earth.

Also in the running…

Chet Atkins

Almost his every touch displayed astonishing technique, but if you didn’t try to play his toe-tapping tunes, you’d never know.

Merle Travis

Do you have an entire technique named after you? Country, folk and rockabilly would all be unimaginable without Travis picking.

Carl Perkins

He fused country and blues, wrote Blue Suede Shoes and recorded the definitive version. Rockabilly guitarists still learn all his licks.

Bo Diddley 

The ‘Bo Diddley rhythm’ has been used by Guns n’ Roses, George Michael, the Stones, U2 and hundreds more.

Duane Eddy

When someone asks for a ‘twangy’ guitar sound, they’re (perhaps unknowingly) the latest to be inspired by Eddy’s tone.

Link Wray

Wray – and his knackered speaker – invented distortion. Think about that and be thankful next time you plug in your guitar!

Dick Dale

More than just the Pulp Fiction connection, Dale brought new scales to rock, while his unbelievably physical attack inspired SRV.

James Burton

The Elvis sideman took what Merle Travis and Carl Perkins started, stuffing the King’s songs with tasty guitar licks.

Maybelle Carter

This chord-melody country pioneer was a leading star of the Grand Ole Opry, which inspired every subsequent country star.

The best metal guitarists of all time

1. Tony Iommi

There could be no one else at number one. Tony Iommi created metal from the ground up, taking rock and blues as raw materials, drawing a songwriting logic and atmosphere from early horror cinema, and writing some of the best riffs – and, ergo, the best songs – in metal history. Black Sabbath, the opening track from the band’s eponymous debut, served as the perfect introduction – this was rock’s turn to the dark side. It was doom metal before we had the words to describe it.

And Iommi famously did so through injury, drawing inspiration from Django Reinhardt to overcome a machining accident on his fretting hand. One of his strategies was to use lighter strings, and to tune down, the latter a move that shifted the band’s sound downwards, further away from the heavens.

With a Gibson SG Special, a Dallas Rangemaster and a Laney backline, Iommi changed the course of rock history, riff by riff. Black Sabbath started heavy and turned progressively heavier, arguably finding their range with the breakdown riff of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. But there was light and shade in there, too.

Once Sabbath hooked up with Ronnie James Dio, Iommi would give his writing a metallic polish, a subtle stylistic shift to match Dio’s vocals. His lead playing is underrated; the riffs might land on the grid but there is an unpredictability to Iommi’s solos that belies a jazz sensibility.

2. Dimebag Darrell

Dimebag’s ferocious lead technique was a full-frontal assault that drew as heavily on blues as heavy metal. His penchant for the lead work of rock and metal giants such as Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads was combined with his own unique take on the humble pentatonic scale. 

Although favouring extreme techniques such as wide, aggressive vibrato, whammy bar antics and huge squealing harmonics, Dimebag was always in control of his sound; no mean feat when dealing with large amounts of distortion and boosted treble.

He initially favoured tuning to an ‘in between’ point roughly 0.6 of a semitone below standard tuning. Later on, he used D standard (DGCFAD) and drop C (CGCFAD), which allowed wider bends and more aggressive vibrato in his lead playing.

3. Randy Rhoads

Randy Rhoads was just 25 when he lost his life in a plane crash in 1982 but he left quite the legacy. He was supremely gifted, book smart but not ostentatiously so, and would deftly introduce the highfalutin grandeur of classical music into popular metal compositions.

He would pioneer the asymmetrical V, working with Grover Jackson on what, posthumously, would become on of the most popular metal guitar designs ever. And more than this, the hot-shot guitarist from Quiet Riot would be the one chiefly responsible for resurrecting Ozzy Osbourne’s career after his acrimonious departure from Black Sabbath. In Rhoads, Osbourne found his white knight.

As Paul Gilbert once said, Rhoads played like he was battling a dragon; Rhoads was slight, and the guitar just looked so big on him. But he would always, somehow, have it under his spell. He made the impossible possible, like when he would gentrify metal for dramatic effect with Revelation (Mother Earth), giving the Prince of Darkness an almost Beethoven-esque epic to work with, to show his range. 

In uptempo rockers such as I Don’t Know and the ubiquitous Crazy Train, he would spin pure spectacle from the guitar, then turning on a dime, would imbue tracks such as Suicide Solution and Mr Crowley with fatalistic gravitas. Ozzy was the entertainer par excellence; Rhoads supplied him with the material, the fireworks, the magic.

4. James Hetfield

The doyen of down-picking, the riffmaster supreme, Hetfield is the combustion engine that drives that unstoppable and unlikely phenomenon that is Metallica. Unlikely? Sure it is. Just listen to the ferocity of Hetfield’s tone on Kill ‘Em All, the brittle and hostile atmosphere of …And Justice For All, or the straightforward pummel of Master of Puppets bookends Battery and Damage Inc. None of this suggests ‘stadium rock’, Jimmy Kimmel, superstardom.

Of course, the Black Album inaugurated that chapter of Metallica’s success, and made Hetfield a household name. The through line, however, is unimpeachable songcraft, much of which rests upon Hetfield’s rhythm style. He plays lead on Nothing Else Matters, but you wouldn’t get your people to call his people and ask him to play a guest solo. Hell no, that’s like asking Federer for a round of golf. No, Hetfield is the rhythm king, the G.O.A.T., all riffs and song structure. He’s the engine, but he’s the architect, too.

5. Mark Tremonti

The man, the myth, the Tremonti, the player whose Roman candle lead guitar lights up the Alter Bridge canon… There is an argument to be made that, pound for pound Tremonti is the ultimate all-rounder. Here he is hanging out on the Metal Top 10 when, on another day, he could probably be a rock player, or in an alternate universe, perhaps in the blues. 

At least, we can hear all of these elements in his playing, all of these flavors are in the pot, sauced with a high-gain tone that could only be described as boutique. PRS all the way, baby.

With Myles Kennedy, he has formed a sort of creative hive mind, like their cerebella are connected to the cloud, making Alter Bridge a dynamic, box-office proposition, a blue chip premiere metal act who might pin you to the wall with a riff but have the humanity and good grace to lift the soul with some huge melody. Tremonti’s ear is well attuned to both.

6. Dave Mustaine

Irascible, complex, brilliant, there is no one quite like Dave Mustaine. His origin story as a bona-fide metal icon is as though it were scripted by William Goldman. It goes a little something like this; he joins Metallica in ‘82, gets kicked out in ‘83, is not very happy about this, and on occasion over the years he will mention this, but he takes that almighty funk and forms Megadeth – the ultimate state-of-the-art thrash metal band.

Technically audacious, sauced with Mustaine’s sulfurous temperament, Megadeth became a repository for some of thrash, nay, metal’s most enduring anthems, with Rust In Peace (1990) a landmark release.

Megadeth would become a proving ground for metal’s best players, with Mustaine recruiting so well you’d swear his middle name was Randstad. Chris Poland, Marty Friedman, Chris Broderick and his current lieutenant, Kiko Loureiro, are all supremely gifted. But they all play off this Mustaine fellow, whose animalistic lead style typifies his incorrigible nature.

This is the man who relearned the instrument from the start after injury, who wrote and recorded his latest album while receiving treatment from cancer, and when he is on his game his riffing patterns are like a HIMARS strike.

7. Zakk Wylde

Zakk Wylde’s CV as a top-tier practitioner of metal guitar takes some beating. Here’s the guy who burst onto the scene in ‘87, all fresh-faced and often in a bowler hat, heir to Randy Rhoads’ throne as he replaced Jake E Lee as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist, and over the years he has transmogrified into the ursine biker shredder and frontman of Black Label Society, now sitting in for the late Dimebag Darrell as Pantera tour again.

He’s also started his own gear company, Wylde Audio, teaches on his Berzerker Guitar Camp via Riffhard. But what of his playing? Well, a former GW columnist, his leads are lit up with high-gain, throaty wah, and a fierce alternate picking style that suggests he prepares for showtime with a nutritious protein shake laced with hydrocarbons.

8. Adrian Smith

With Iron Maiden’s guitar talent having long formed a trident with Dave Murray and Janick Gers, assessing each player on their own merits almost feels inappropriate when what we are hearing from each is in service to the whole.

But there is a common theme to Iron Maiden records; the best tracks have Adrian Smith all over them, and they make metal guitar a renaissance activity, light on its feet, foregrounding melody above all else. That perhaps comes from Smith starting out as a singer – sometimes it pays for your guitar’s phrasing to take its cues from the human voice.

9. Synyster Gates

Avenged Sevenfold’s success rests upon the cavalier genius of Synyster Gates, a player who draws influences from across the board and applied them to a style that was 100 percent entertainment. John Williams, Mr Bungle, Danny Elfman, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, “classical cats and then jazz guys like Allan Holdsworth” all figure in the mix. 

But it’s where he takes those influences; inventing scales to complement those already canonized, having that his expansive guitar vocabulary readily accessible, sometimes on shuffle, just to see what comes loose. 

10. Glenn Tipton & KK Downing

You can have the argument over who was the finest guitar duo in the history of heavy metal but after debating of the merits of Hanneman/King, Hetfield/Hammett, Murray/Smith et al, it all comes back to Judas Priest’s Tipton and Downing. None more influential. None more effective.

Their sound was a durable yet precious alloy, hard rock hardened and burnished over years at high volume into an instantly recognizable brand of British Steel, pure total metal.

Also in the running…

Jeff Hanneman & Kerry King

Together they set the bar for speed and brutality in riffing. King’s dissonant, chaotic solos match Slayer’s songs perfectly.

Nuno Bettencourt

While others imitated Eddie, Nuno took his ideas to new places. His devastating syncopation gave Extreme funk where their peers had none.

Ace Frehley

Every American rocker’s childhood hero, Ace gave Kiss an endless supply of repurposed Chuck Berry licks. And he could FLY.

Wes Borland

One of the few truly innovative post-Korn nu metallers, his Limp Bizkit work used tapping, whammy and 7-strings creatively.

George Lynch

The Dokken man mastered playing ‘wrong’ notes the right way in a metal context. His sideways vibrato was much imitated.

Devin Townsend

With one of the most devoted fanbases on earth, few musicians have produced a back catalogue so varied, creative or extreme.

Mikael Akerfeldt & Fredrick Åkesson

It’s rare to find chops and melody together in such abundance as on Opeth’s albums. Their tone and vibrato are killer.

Jim Root & Mick Thomson

Nu metal albums used computer editing to place every note millisecond perfect, but the Slipknot pair have the tightness to reproduce it live.

Munky & Head

The first band to realise 7-string guitars’ metal potential, Korn ushered in the sound of the 90s.

Brent Hinds & Bill Kelliher

As well as making terrifying rhythms sound easy, the Mastodon duo bring classic rock tone and licks to metal.

Fredrick Thordendal & Mårten Hagström

The djent innovators revolutionised ideas of how heavy it’s possible to be, with rhythms so complex many fans still don’t understand them.

The best shred guitarists of all time

1. Steve Vai

In two interviews, with Guitarist and Classic Rock, the virtuoso talked gear and guitars, revealed the secrets of his creative process, and discussed the art of shredding...

My First Love

“Once I saw a guitar for the first time at the age of five, I immediately knew the infinite nature of the guitar’s ability to be expressive. It was this beautiful thing.”

Inspiration

“If I have to sit down and write a new song I’m usually not very good at it, but when I pick up the instrument, something will always come out and I’ll document it. I’ve got thousands of ideas and thousands of boxes of DATs.

“Sometimes you just know that something’s coming and there are many different ways in which I’ll catch an idea. Sometimes I’ll do it by just singing straight into a microphone, or I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a piece of paper and a guitar; if you don’t document those moments of inspiration you’ll never remember them!”

Perspiration

“The song Oooo [from 1999 album The Ultra Zone] was one of those where I felt I had to get to a guitar real quick. So I picked up the first guitar I saw – a Bad Horsie JEM that was tuned down to C – and I just started playing that song. I got through it fairly cryptically by just playing and hearing a melody – it’s all ear – and I ran to the nearest cassette player, which was playing all weird, and got it down. 

“Then I put it on the shelf and I didn’t come back to it until two years later. You see, every Christmas, I document all the little ideas. I heard that again and I thought, ‘I have to do this song now or I’m gonna explode’. It took me four weeks of 16 hours a day to complete it.

“Whenever I use the Whammy, I try to do so creatively. Most people just go ‘weee-wahhhweee-wahhh’. I’ve been experimenting a lot with stompboxes, but it’s funny – you get one of those boxes, and for a time it’s one of the greatest sounds you’ve ever heard, but after a while it’s like, ‘Whatever...’”

My Ibanez JEMs

“I pick up on other guitars and I try to play them, and it’s like, urgh, you know? I always go back to Evo, which is my main JEM, but I did use a Strat-type guitar that Ibanez built me. I went out looking for Fenders but nothing excited me, and the thing is you can spend a fortune on an old guitar, but it’s not necessarily gonna sound good. So they made three of them and we worked on it until it sounded great: more Stratty than a Strat... Oops!”

Shredding

“I’m having a blast on the track Jibboom [also from The Ultra Zone], and being able to play the guitar like that is so liberating. I piss myself when I play that song! Sometimes I like the idea of the guitar being handed to you on a silver platter; there’s nothing in its way, there it is, balls to the wall.”

My Trademark Sound

“I know what it’ll sound like if I put eight guitars on a melody in the treble pickup position with an amp that’s in the closet, and if they all hold out certain notes, mixed with vocals that are pitched along with a synthesizer sound. I mean, there is an element of experimenting – I’ll futz around with some sounds here and there – but I pretty much approach my music as a build: it’ll start out simple and just evolve. 

“Often I’m surprised how it comes out because it’s better than I thought. That said, nothing’s off the cuff, absolutely nothing. I’ll know exactly what it’s going to sound like before recording and the torture is knowing it and being inundated with the pressure of making it real.”

Lydian Flavours at the Heart of the Vai Sound

“The most important thing to remember when you’re playing modally is what the atmosphere of the mode feels like to you. What it sounds like is one thing, but what it feels like – the quality of that mode, that’s when you’re owning that mode. Look at it as an open field. One thing I like to do in Lydian is play every note in the scale except that raised 4th until the last note or close to! That will change the whole atmosphere.”

2. Yngwie Malmsteen

Yngwie talks his influences

“Here are some pieces that are good to, maybe not learn, but certainly draw inspiration from. For instance, Nicola Paganini’s 24 Caprices – and the ones in particular are 5, 16 and 24. Seriously, when you hear 5, you will think, ‘Oh fuck, Yngwie really ripped this shit off !’ Any piece of Bach’s music I listen to makes me feel miniscule... It’s so humbling. If I could bring any musician back from the dead, it would be him.”

3. Joe Satriani

Satch outlines one of his many trademarks: pitch axis

“On Not of This Earth, the E bass note comes in and puts the first chord in either E major or E Lydian. The next chord moves to E minor. The third chord moves it back to E major/Lydian and the fourth chord moves to E Mixolydian. The melody over the top reflects the changing keys. All the time the bass note is just playing an E note and it creates this funny vibe. 

“You can also do it with a bassline that changes slightly. With Jupiter in Mind [Crystal Planet, 1998] shifts between E Dorian and E Lydian. The bass riff stays basically the same, but the intervals are adjusted to reflect the change in key. It’s pitch axis, but stepping up the quantity of notes.”

4. Paul Gilbert

Paul says… Look at intervals like colours

“Lately, I’ve been improvising and have found it’s really important to know the language of intervals, which is the relationship between each note. If you look at the pentatonic scale, it’s important to know how each one relates to your key centre. Find out where your 3rds are all over the neck; don’t think of them as ‘C’ or whatever – think of them as your minor 3rds. 

“Those become your colours, and soon you’ll find there’s your blue, there’s your yellow and so on. Improvising is so important for creating melodies. It’s a bad habit for guitarists to simply just play scales in order; it’s much cooler to hear melodies with wider intervals.

“A good example of this would be The Beatles’ guitar solo on the song Birthday: the first two notes are a 5th apart. I would never have thought of that in a million years – guitar players naturally would go to the scale in order. It almost sounds like Ray Charles once you start connecting all the dots, so I’d say knowing your intervals is incredibly important.”

Take Paul’s advice and identify the intervals to breathe new life into this well-used scale.

5. John Petrucci

John’s ‘Hit and Miss’ philosophy: introducing the feeling of speed to your practice routine

John has a clever way of building speed – he calls it his ‘Hit and Miss’ philosophy. The idea is that you play faster than you are really capable, and, rather than thinking about hitting each individual note, you think about generally keeping your hands in sync. As John says: “I wouldn’t recommend you do it all the time, but it’s a useful tool and you can gain a lot of speed from it.” 

Try applying John’s ‘Hit and Miss’ method to a favourite shreddy lick. Play for a couple of minutes at warm-up pace, then finish off by blasting through your lick at high speed. Even though at first you’ll probably miss more notes than you hit, the point is to let your hands experience the ‘feeling’ of moving fast. At some point your hands will hopefully synchronise.

6. Buckethead

It’s anyone’s guess why Axl’s choice to replace Slash was someone who could perfectly imitate an 8-bit video game, but it was guitar’s gain as this enigmatic maestro shot to prominence. After Vai, Morello, and Satriani, listeners could be forgiven for thinking they’d heard everything the guitar could do. 

Buckethead showed they were woefully mistaken. Some of his ideas are more novel than musical, but others, like his legato licks performed while barring harmonics with the picking hand, have real applications. The influence of his teacher Paul Gilbert is often visible, but Buckethead is among the last true innovators.

7. Guthrie Govan

A shred phenomenon he may be, but Guthrie prefers to wax lyrical about ‘feel’

“The older, wiser player knows in an intuitive way that it’s the quality of the playing that counts. But if you are a beginner who’s looking to derive enough joy from the instrument so that you’re still pleased to see it the next time you practise, you need a mixture of those core values and things that are a little bit exotic or exciting. I think there’s a real value in learning the ‘forbidden mode’. When I was a kid, I didn’t actually care about soloing. 

“Everything I did in those days was easy rhythm, lots of I-IV-V songs, for which I’m profoundly grateful, because if you are focusing on that type of music it’s not hard to play it, it’s only hard to play it well. Something I figured out a long time ago is this nebulous concept of ‘feel’ – how you play something; the dynamics, the timing and all the subtleties.”

8. Jason Becker

Perpetual Burn – Jason’s three biggest tips

1. Listen back to your playing

“There are so many fantastic guitar players out there and I just love seeing anyone with passion for guitar. I guess the most common thing is that some of them haven’t put enough time into developing their vibrato and bends. It is good to record yourself so you can see where you need to improve. Listen closely to your favorite players and try to see how far off you are – that’s exactly what I did. It is so much fun when you start to see yourself getting better and better.”

2. Think about note choices

“I have to admit that I haven’t cared or thought about this stuff in so many years. If I kept it in my mind, I would probably always be depressed! But I liked to mix up note choices and octaves in arpeggios. 

“I might start with a low note, and then instead of playing the 3rd on the same string, play the 3rd an octave up, and then a lower 5th. It has been so long since I have thought about intervals like that, but my teacher Dave Creamer was a master of this kind of stuff. Him and Marty [Friedman] would often break scales into patterns of five or seven, which sounds really cool.”

3. Learn to break the rules

“What felt like the most groundbreaking lesson was something that Marty taught me, and that was once you’ve learned some theory, it’s more fun to break the rules. We would make up weird harmonies that made no theoretical sense, but we liked how they sounded, so thus it was good. If something is ‘wrong’ but it sounds interesting or funny, then it still can be good!”

9. Eric Johnson

Have a peep at Johnson’s live rig from the 2010 Experience Hendrix tour

10. Michael Angelo Batio

Three tips from the face-melting, double-necked axe toting shred pioneer

1. Make your weak hand stronger

“A lot of people don’t know that I’m left-handed, though I play right-handed guitar, but it actually worked out well for me for the first couple of years when I was learning, because I had to think of ways to make my weaker hand stronger with specific exercises. It wasn’t easy!”

2. Economy of motion

“What I still focus on, after all these years, is absolute economy of motion with my picking hand. I try to move it as little as possible from the elbow to avoid placing too much stress on my arm above the wrist. If you take care of those physical parts of your body you’ll find that it helps the rest of your technique, believe me. A lot of players don’t realise how crucial that focus is for the whole of your guitar playing.”

3. Try different genres

“I’m known for playing fast, and a lot of people expect very fast playing from me every time I play live. But I play in other styles too, and I’ll play them despite the pressure to just stick to fast playing. Right now I’m starting to learn a bit of bluegrass country picking because it’s a real challenge. A lot of shredders move away from rock and into jazz because the theory behind jazz is so much more challenging, but at the moment I’m enjoying the different sound and feel of country.”

Also in the running…

Tosin Abasi

Abasi throws unexpectedly complex chords into his visceral 8-string riffing, then turns around and perfectly executes slap bass licks on guitar.

Steve Morse

Most shredders would not even attempt Morse’s fearsome alternate-picked arpeggios. His artificial harmonic melodies are equally scary and beautiful.

Jeff Loomis

While others battled with 3- and 5-string shapes, Loomis swept effortlessly across seven strings, dazzling with extended range arpeggios.

Richie Kotzen

By 19, Kotzen had mastered every contemporary shred technique. He quickly tempered this with Hendrix-like soulfulness before losing his plectrum.

Greg Howe

With palm-muted pull-offs, hammer-ons from nowhere on descending arpeggios, and inventive tapping sequences, Howe changed the legato game for everyone.

The best alternative and indie guitarists of all time

1. Johnny Marr

The most influential guitarist of his generation on his evolution from The Smiths to Electronic and Modest Mouse, and why the shortest solos are the best. As told to TG’s Henry Yates

The Early '80s

“Guitar culture had many crimes and criminals. There was some good stuff, but the art of the song had disappeared. Pop had become very manufactured. Rock was about virtuosity, and machismo was lurking everywhere, or else it was about ‘groove’, which often implies a fear of chord changes. I’ve tried to wipe out the memories of poodle-cuts, but The Smiths was definitely a reaction.” 

To Solo or Not to Solo 

“When people talk about a ‘guitar solo’, they’re generally talking about a pentatonic break in classic rock, and it does imply a certain thoughtlessness and showboating. But actually, when I think about it, it can be an opportunity to do something beautiful, interesting or violent. There are plenty of guitar breaks that I absolutely love, like I Can’t Explain [The Who], or The Last Time by The Rolling Stones. They’re interesting because they’re little 10-second bursts of pop art, and when I have done solos that’s been my approach.”  

Layering 

“One of the most insanely layered (Smiths songs) was Hand in Glove, which I think had 16 guitar tracks. This Charming Man has seven or eight. It’s gratifying that people are still working out those little bits and pieces that are on top, because it was worth me taking the time. These days I’m able to do it more with one part. I’m more technically proficient, I guess.”  

Recycling

“The Headmaster Ritual is interesting. It’s in open D with a capo on the 2nd fret, and it’s a combination of two riffs: one from before I joined the band, and another bolted on when I got this burst of inspiration a year later.”

Tapping

“Modest Mouse is my most mind-bending playing. It was like being thrown in the ocean. If you listen to Invisible, it’s crazy-busy and sounds like five guitars but it’s just me and Isaac Brock bumping into each other! On Fly Trapped In a Jar, people who don’t know me personally would be surprised to hear me playing that stuff. I play a tapping riff on Little Motel... The evidence is there!”

Evolving

“I’d have to live several lifetimes to be as good as I want to be. I once read an interview with someone who said you get to a certain point and never get any better. Playing guitar has always been the thing I love most in life, and that sounded like such a sad state of affairs. Luckily, that hasn’t been the case for me. I don’t think it ever will be.”

2. John Frusciante

From alt-rock to funk, Frusciante’s input helped take RHCP to a new level of stardom

Line-up changes can signal life or death for a band, but over their three-decades-plus career, the Chilis have always bounced back from personnel shifts with a new dynamic and refreshingly accessible sound. 

Numerous guitarists have stepped in throughout the years to tour and record with the band, but, with John Frusciante back in the fold since December 2019, we’re seriously looking forward to the next album. 

In the Mother’s Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik era, Frusciante would often eschew the Chilis’ trademark pure, hard funk 16th note rhythms to play with a raucous, grungy alt-rock edge.

3. Jack White

One of the biggest songs of its time saw guitarist Jack White’s guitar tuned to open A. You can play the mega-easy verse riff in any tuning, really – it’s in the chorus where open A comes into its own. Those slide guitar lines wouldn’t be possible in standard tuning.

4. Tom Morello

Tom tells us how to take the power back by making the most of our old gear…

“I was about 26 when I made that first Rage Against the Machine record, so I did have some experience behind me. In my late teens and early 20s, I really chased tone. I wanted to sound like Randy Rhoads or Nuno Bettencourt or Eddie Van Halen or Andy Gill, but I couldn’t make it sound like those guys. 

“I couldn’t afford any other gear, so one day I must have spent about five hours with my amp trying to make it sound the best that it could, marking all the settings as I went. It was a conscious and life-changing decision: ‘I’m not going to worry about tone ever again!’

“Instead, I’d just focus on creating music with the tone that I had and thought, ‘Okay, it looks like I’m stuck with this tone, so what kind of music does this tone make?’ All you have to do is listen to something like Led Zeppelin’s The Ocean. The greatest grooves, the greatest riffs, heavy as can be... And played on a Telecaster?! Gain does not equal heaviness. A huge riff doesn’t need gain, it needs deep groove and the right notes.”

5. Jonny Greenwood

It’s hard to play like Greenwood and it’s even harder to write like him. His parts aren’t confined to conventional shapes and patterns, so he produces arresting and unexpected sounds. 

His most famous four seconds – the percussive stabs before the chorus of Creep – began as his attempt to ruin a song he hated, and ended up making the track. 

For the rest of his career, he has been similarly fearless about shaking things up. He experiments freely with avant garde, modern classical and jazz influences, always either sidestepping clichés or recontextualising them so they sound fresh again.

6. J. Mascis

The Dinosaur Jr. man talks us through his favourite pedals

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff

“This one was made in 1976. I don’t know how much it’s worth, maybe up to $1000. It’s probably the most important pedal on my board because it’s where my distorted sound starts. I might add stuff on top of it but, the Big Muff is always in there. I got this on our first American tour in 1987, from a pawn shop in Arizona. Before that, I was using a Deluxe Big Muff, and for a while I used both – but as it turns out I liked this one better.”  

Tube Works Real Tube Overdrive

“This is responsible for my main clean sound... It only has a little bit of drive dialled into it. I can turn down the volume and it still sounds really good. I like doing that so when I turn on the Big Muff it gets louder... Though with four amps, it’s always loud!” 

Electro-Harmonix Mistress Flanger 

“This was the first flanger I ever bought and I guess I love it because it sounds more extreme than most of the others I’ve heard!” '

7. Kurt Cobain

Three lessons that Kurt’s playing style and songwriting has taught us

Fill space and add tension by using chromatic notes

The Bleach album has a raw, high-energy punk-rock feel as delivered in songs such as Mr Moustache via Kurt’s constantly aggressive pick attack, developed with chromatic passing notes and palm-muted single-note riffing. ‘Chromatic’ simply means that some of the riffs are semitone-based runs, taking in notes from other keys and thus sounding less centred around the root note. Chromatics are a great way to generate a feeling of unease and unpredictability in your riffs. 

Use softer dynamics to put focus on the vocal 

Nevermind is full of dynamic shifts, often using clean guitars and a thinner arrangement during verses. This puts the focus on the vocals and leaves plenty of room for overdriven, powerful choruses. Lithium establishes this in its opening four-chord progression that ascends for the first three chords and descends on the last one (a pattern also used on Polly). Drain You and Smells Like Teen Spirit are similar but the third chord descends, instead of the fourth. 

Employ dissonance to grab attention 

The intro to Serve The Servants sets the tone of angst and unrest that permeates In Utero, thanks to the grating dissonance in the guitar and bass. This puts the listener on edge at these points and leaves a sinister undertone when returning to the more conventional verse and chorus sections. For an additional jarring effect, Cobain often ends phrases of the vocal melody with a note that clashes with the guitar chord he’s singing over.

8. Matt Bellamy

Muse’s Matt Bellamy has long been famous for his tech-loaded, forward-thinking approach to the electric guitar. 

Need proof? Just check out his collection of Manson guitars where you’ll find features like the Roland GK MIDI pickup system, built-in effects pedals, LED lights, Fernandes Sustainer pickups, ribbon MIDI controllers, Kaoss pad controllers and plenty more. 

Despite the high-tech sonic influences, Matt’s love of traditional classical music permeates Muse’s, er, musical output – and the harmonic minor scale is a great spot to get started.

The guitar parts in tracks such as Plug In Baby and New Born show Matt’s love of classical music. These lines tend to use arpeggios based within the harmonic minor scale (1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7). We’ve used Am and G#dim7 arpeggios mixed in with other melody notes from the key for a typical classically influenced sound.

9. Graham Coxon

The Blur six-stringer and solo artist on his unique, unconventional lead playing

Despite being one of Britpop’s most recognisable guitarists, Blur’s Graham Coxon has never enjoyed playing by the rules. 

As Coxon tells TG: “I was listening to [2012 single] Meet+Drink+Pollinate the other day and had a mini-revelation that I do sort of booby-trap my own lead lines. But maybe that’s my skewed idea of melody. I couldn’t play scales and things. 

“I think I’m more in the free-jazz world when it comes to lead playing, and I play physically. I like the sound of a guitar being thumped! I’d hear other people making rock albums that sounded really polished, but my records always sound like me: slightly shambolic and about to break. I cover my lack of technical ability with weird noises!”

10. Josh Homme 

As it turns out, no one really knows how Josh Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen dial in their sound. The QOTSA brain trust keeps its own counsel on gear and tone. 

But this much we know: Homme is a vintage gear aficionado, favouring guitars by Ovation, Maton and Motor Ave. He loves Ampeg’s VT series combos. Having played a Maton MS500 in the No One Knows video, we’d bet one would have been in the studio, too. 

He’s a neck pickup guy but his tone is never muddy. There’s plenty of low-end, some overdrive crunch and a saucing of fuzz. Pedals such as the Stone Deaf PDF-1 add the dirt, the likes of the Fulltone Fat-Boost hold it together. Probably. Homme tunes down to C, so using a heavier gauge of string (0.011s should do it) will help those riffs cut through.

11. Jerry Cantrell

Unchained... The grunge and metal pioneer’s playing secrets unlocked

Though known as grunge pioneers, Alice In Chains are heavily influenced by metal and hard rock, with a sound that sets them apart from the loud-soft cliches of some other early-90s alt-rock acts. 

A big feature of Jerry’s playing is dissonant harmony and a fondness for that staple metal scale, the Phrygian mode – take a listen to the main verse riff in Would? for an example. Try out our riff to get a little of Jerry’s magic in your playing.

There’s a great mix of some of Jerry’s favourite chords here – F#7add11 and E5dim will help you capture some essential AIC harmonies. Alice In Chains employ odd time in tracks such as Them Bones; count an eighth note pulse to keep time with the unusual feel of our 3/4 and 4/4 time change.

12. Billy Corgan

Corgan created guitar armadas, placing up to 40 guitar overdubs on a single track. These stuck out in an alternative scene that was competing to make the most lo-fi album. The Smashing Pumpkins’ defiantly massive orchestrations were inspired by the shoegaze scene and unfashionable pomp rockers like Queen and Boston. 

He fully harnessed the Big Muff fuzz’s potential to create a wall of noise, and like his heroes Cheap Trick, created a sound that was equal parts rock fury and pop magic. When metal was a dirty word, Corgan embraced Sabbath and Van Halen, revealing an artist always unafraid to be himself.

13. Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo

One of New York’s most celebrated alternative bands, Sonic Youth championed alternate tunings for new alternative generation…

Speaking to Guitarist in 2015, Moore said: “When Sonic Youth first started, I didn’t feel like I needed to be at any level of playing to do what we had to do. Lee [Ranaldo] was more accomplished. 

“He had actually been playing guitar in a way where he could work his way around a fretboard fairly well, but I was just instantly like, ‘F*ck it, I’m just going to put a drumstick under the 12th fret! We kind of started f*cking around a little bit with stuff on Confusion Is Sex [1983]. 

“And a lot of that was just based on the guitars we were using, like one just had four tuning pegs on it and four low strings. It wasn’t until after that that this tuning of F# F# F# F# E B happened, and that was the first real tuning that was sort of notated. 

“I immediately started writing songs in it, like Brave Men Run and Death Valley ’69. Then we refined how things worked and worked with other tunings. Lee would either do something that was in unison or he would do something of his own invention that was complementary. It wasn’t discussed. It was just the way we were doing it.”

14. Kevin Shields

The original exponent of the giant pedalboard, the My Bloody Valentine guitarist has more tones at his feet on any given gig than anyone else has in their career. 

Shields held onto his Jazzmaster’s tremolo arm constantly, meaning the chords slid in and out of tune as he strummed. The result, known as glide guitar, gave voice to the disaffected mood of British youth who felt equally unrepresented by the Conservative government and by mainstream rock. 

Shields’ enormous, dissonant sound birthed the shoegaze scene and inspired the likes of Billy Corgan and Butch Vig, producer of Nirvana’s Nevermind.

15. Nick Valensi & Albert Hammond Jr.

Just when we needed it most, the Strokes made guitars raw again. Their debut arrived amid a sea of nu metal so overproduced it was difficult to detect human involvement. 

The Strokes captured the excitement of five kids in a garage discovering rock ’n’ roll, and spawned an entire scene of bands called ‘The ...s’. Even shock rock godfather Alice Cooper was inspired to return to his garage rock roots. 

The Strokes’ guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. had great interplay, each playing different parts to create a bigger whole without compromising their immediacy. Three chords, loud amps and total honesty win every time.

Also in the running…

Alex Turner

His lyrics may overshadow his playing, but the Arctic Monkey’s spikey guitar lines communicate his sentiments equally well.

Noel Gallagher

Perhaps only George Harrison has recorded more solos you can whistle...

Stone Gossard & Mike McCready

With their ingenious twin guitar parts, the Pearl Jam pair achieve sounds their heroes like Hendrix couldn’t achieve alone.

John Squire

90s England didn’t produce many guitar heroes, but the Stone Rose was one in the tradition of Beck and Page.

Bernard Sumner

Thanks to his work with Joy Division and New Order, there isn’t an indie kid in the UK he didn’t influence.

Kim Thayil & Chris Cornell

The Soundgardeners set themselves apart with unique tunings and somehow making riffs in 5/4 and 7/4 sound catchy.

Robert Smith

Goths, indie kids and alt-rockers try and fail to imitate him, partly because he purposely detunes his guitar by ear.

Dave Navarro

The 90s alternative scene wasn’t big on solos, but Navarro kept the fire burning with Jane’s Addiction and RHCP.

Peter Buck

The greatest non-Liverpudlian ever to plug a Rickenbacker into an AC30, Buck’s parts have distinguished REM’s catalogue.

Adam Jones

A stunningly creative and original part writer, Jones is known for his inventive use of delays and odd time signatures in Tool.

Stephen Malkmus

If only rock critics had voted, Malkmus would have dominated this poll – his band Pavement defined 90s US indie.

James Dean Bradfield

The Manics’ frontman gave us rock n’ roll and low-slung Les Pauls when such things were thin on the ground.

Black Francis & Joey Santiago

The Pixies basically invented a new chord progression, the mediant major, unheard in alt-rock before but now inescapable.

The best guitarists in the world right now

1. Nita Strauss

Nita Strauss is the very definition of a guitar hero in the modern age. In 2018, she joined the likes of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani in having her own signature Ibanez model – an achievement that made her the first female musician ever in its history to have done so. 

Similar things can be said about the Pandemonium DiMarzio pickups that come fitted on her JIVA axe, a feat she also holds close to her heart having idolised many of the company’s virtuoso endorsees. None of this would have happened if it were not for her dizzying technique and hard work ethic, which has seen her play guitar alongside artists as diverse as Alice Cooper and Demi Lovato.

2. Erja Lyytinen

A top tip from the Finnish blues maestro who spoke to TG in our April edition

“I’ve always loved Albert King’s overbends and experimenting with those sorts of sounds – like bending a whole step up, then come down slightly a microtone, go back up to the first note and repeat that a few times! It’s a great exercise and once you’ve mastered it, it can make the world of difference to your sound.”

Some things never change. Since the dawn of electric guitar-based blues, string bends have been a staple soloing technique – and Erja has a full arsenal of chops. Here in our Lyytinen-style, lick you can hear how bending gradually higher up the fretboard builds the excitement.

3. Mateus Asato

Electric guitar has always been an ensemble instrument, and there are few classic recordings where it appears unaccompanied. Brazilian YouTube sensation Asato exploits the electric guitar’s potential as a true solo instrument. 

Often accompanied only by shimmer reverb and delay effects, he takes the chord-melody principle Hendrix started with Little Wing and takes it to lengths perhaps even Jimi wouldn’t have imagined. 

As with the legendary Chet Atkins, the technique on display is astounding but not ostentatious because it always serves the music. Whether on covers or original compositions, his groove, dynamics, and depth of emotion are compelling.    

4. Plini

He’s received accolades from iconic shredders, but the Aussie prog wizard had chords on his mind when he spoke to TG... 

“One chord I use way too much is the major 9th. For example, try fretting the 7th fret on the G string, 5th fret on the B string and 9th on the E – so you get the root, 2nd and major 7th. There’s the weird dissonance to those notes; it’s happy but it’s not cheesy happy... It’s an intelligent, happy chord! 

“Another type I use could involve the 6th fret on the D [string] with the 5th frets on the B and E strings, muting the G string. Raising that 6th fret note one semitone up gives it a nice resolution. There are various tonalities like that which I enjoy implementing. It’s the same concept with my lead playing; I like to take a note that isn’t quite the one you want it to be... It might be next to it.”

5. Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram

The future of blues is safe in the hands of this young talent

Hailing from Clarksdale – the birthplace of blues heroes Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters – this talented young guitarist has been making a name for himself since he appeared on Eric Gales’ 2017 album Middle of the Road. Despite only being 16 at the time of recording, his contributions for the track Help Yourself were delivered with the conviction of an old blues master.

A fierce soloist, Christone also knows how to lay down a solid shuffle riff – an essential part of the blues. Our classic riff is based around the bottom three notes of an E chord, but the surrounding notes make it sound authentic.

6. Tim Henson & Scott LePage

Two of the most technically-capable players of today say they're inspired by simple melodies and having fun

Tim Henson: “I like to write hooks, so sometimes the melodies are simple, which is great, because that’s how it gets stuck in your head. I flex on the inflection of each note. Rather than the amount of notes, it’s how I play each note, so doing a different set of techniques per set of notes keeps the phrase interesting.”

Scott LePage: “Don’t just run up and down scales because you think that’s the answer. If you don’t like playing guitar, you don’t like playing guitar; but if you do, then have fun with it.”

7. Jason Richardson

The All That Remains technician on the subject of arpeggios

“I exclude barring from virtually all triadic shapes when playing ascending and descending arpeggios on every part of the fretboard. I feel that omitting barring helps tremendously in eliminating any possibility of two notes ringing together while moving from note to note through the arpeggio shapes. The literal definition of an arpeggio is a ‘broken chord’, so none of the notes are supposed to ring simultaneously.”

8. Ichika Nito

Anyone who had their mind blown by Eruption in 1978 should be equally amazed that it ultimately led to Ichika Nito. With his sparkling clean tone and sophisticated chord voicings, Nito is in another galaxy from Van Halen, but he expands the possibilities of finger tapping just as Eddie did. 

He often plays the instrument more like a piano, reminiscent of '80s genius Stanley Jordan. Like Mateus Asato, Ichika is rarely seen with a pick or a backing track, and his flawless technique is made even more apparent by his exposed clean tone. He shows that virtuoso guitarists can make original, beautiful music.  

9. Nick Johnston

The Canadian solo artist on his preferred techniques

“The first thing that attracts me to a player is the touch. It’s their vibrato, the sound of their hands. It’s not about how much technique they’ve developed, or what they can do with the guitar. It’s more about notes, pitch, harmony, songwriting, and melody. 

“It’s the stuff that you don’t develop in the first 10 years of playing guitar. It’s the stuff that takes a lifetime. I use some legato lines, hybrid picking stuff, some of the bending stuff. I watch [myself] back and it’s like, ‘Oh sh*t, I’m doing that again!’

“I like to take a note that’s not in key, just so there’s a bit of tension, then bend it up. Like, I’ll take the b5, bend it to [the] 5. Basically, I like to take stuff that’s not in [key], and bend it in. With legato, I like string skipping stuff. I do a lot of stuff with the volume knob and pickup slider – the guts of the guitar.”

10. Yvette Young

Another player tearing up the rulebook and taking influence from different instruments

“I never really listen to guitar music, so I only listen to bands and composers. My piano upbringing – the two-handed tapping I play, I approach the guitar just how I’d approach writing polyphony on a piano. I started playing the way I play because I didn’t have a band; I just wanted to sound as full as possible by myself. I think a good melody is eternal. People have just gotta write good riffs and think about tones that aren’t total cheeseballs. Something that’s catchy – we all like catchy shit!”

Also in the running…

Misha Mansoor, Mark Holcomb and Jake Bowen

The Periphery trio harness complex chords and rhythms to show 8-strings are no gimmick.

Lari Basilio

Lari throws technical brilliance into melodic passages without sacrificing tone or musicality.

Ana Popovic

It’s rare a blueser can show such technical proficiency without compromising feel, but Ana rivals Robben Ford and SRV.

Sarah Longfield

Any normal human would be satisfied with one decent fretting hand. Sarah’s utterly clean two-handed technique is just greedy...

King Solomon Hicks

The blues has a fourth King, and he’s a 25 year-old from  Harlem.

Trailblazers

1. Prince

The Purple One’s ambition knew no bounds, just as he refused to be restrained by any one genre. An underrated guitarist as well as a songwriter-extraordinaire, here are five things you can learn from his sensational playing

There’s a famous Clapton anecdote; you’ve probably heard it. Slowhand was said to have been asked, ‘What’s it like to be the best guitar player alive?’ To which he responded, “I don’t know, ask Prince.” 

But did he ever actually say that? Well, no, he didn’t. But the fact a completely fabricated quote (that’s also been attributed to Hendrix on Rory Gallagher) has been widely accepted speaks volumes about Prince Rogers Nelson, whose sudden death on 21st April, aged 57, shocked the world. 

In response, Clapton would pay real tribute to the late legend for pulling him out of depression in 1984 when he saw Purple Rain and was instantly re-inspired. Many were introduced to him by the title track, but the few interviews he gave rarely focussed on his musicianship, especially a guitar approach that brought a remarkable Hendrix fire to his facets of James Brown funk and Little Richard showmanship. 

He always played plenty of guitar, but was highly proficient in a number of instruments; a 19-year-old Prince played everything on his 1978 debut, For You.

“The key to longevity is to learn every aspect of music that you can,” he said in 2006. Prince certainly learned his lessons well, but let’s celebrate one thrilling aspect of Prince that is often overlooked; why he should be remembered as one of the greatest guitar players of all time.  

Develop Talent With Hard Work 

The idea that all Prince’s achievements were as effortless as his cool are a myth. Yes, he was clearly a naturally gifted musician and songwriter but he never stopped working on his craft, which is why he will be remembered as one of the greatest live showmen of all time. 

He put painstaking hours in behind the scenes on the world’s stages and in his Paisley Park studio; he confirmed there’s vaults of unreleased recordings, and there’s even reports of him arriving to shows hours early in the 90s to personally set up the sound. 

As his career progressed, his shows became looser and his musicianship became more of a showcase of his theatrical abilities, with two shows a night not uncommon as the diminutive dynamo moved from arena to intimate late-night club. It was a reflection of a player who never stopped learning, and teaching others in the process, with his last live band, 3rdeyegirl, seeing him play rockier guitar again, too. 

“One thing that I’ve learned from Prince is his amazing work ethic,” his bandmate Donna Grantis told TG. “Always doing your best. I think that’s a huge thing. I think, always giving your all, and putting the art first. It’s the dedication and the passion and the talent, all together. Just being so prolific. It’s really a way of life.”  

Be a Slave to the Rhythm 

Prince was funky from the start; he wrote his first song at age seven, and it was called Funk Machine. He was also a student of the Grand Master Funkateers; Brown, Bootsy, Sly, Clinton – while naming Sonny T (former New Power Generation guitarist), Tony Maiden (Rufus) and Ike Turner as key influences. 

And this is the key to his DNA as a player; his masterful rhythm playing is what really set him apart. Being Prince, he had a distinct approach and opinion on the matter... 

“I’m always trying to work in the bass notes when I’m playing funk rhythms,” Prince told Guitar Player magazine in a rare guitar chat back in 2004. “It’s the same way that Freddie Stone [Sly And The Family Stone guitarist] would always play the same parts as [bassist] Larry Graham, but just a tad higher. 

“Kids don’t learn to play the right way anymore. When the Jackson 5 came up, they had to go through Smokey Robinson and the Funk Brothers, and that’s how they got it down. I want to be able to teach that stuff, because kids need to learn these things, and nobody is teaching them the basics. 

“See, a lot of cats don’t work on their rhythm enough, and if you don’t have rhythm, you might as well take up needlepoint or something. I can’t stress it enough.” 

Make Your Solos Fly

Prince could certainly shred with speedy runs, but if you haven’t watched the YouTube clip of him stealing the show in 2004 from Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Steve Winwood with his Hohner T-style on an two-minute extended outro in While My Guitar Gently Weeps, do so now. 

It’s one of the most glorious moments of his live blend of taste and heroics that hasn’t been taken down from the site. 

When Prince went off on a pentatonic rock solo, it was pure emotional expression being mined with a Santana-level vibrato (Prince was a huge admirer of the early Santana records especially), and he understood the power of holding a sustained note for the emotive shot to the heart. 

But his energetic improvisation was always anchored in the hooks reflected in his approach to vocal melody construction. “Guitarists should listen to singers for solo ideas – especially women singers,” he told Guitar Player in that 2004 interview. “Women haven’t had a chance to run the world yet, so you still hear the blues in their singing. Try to play one of the runs that Beyoncé or Ella Fitzgerald does and you will surely learn something.” 

Groove Through the Genres 

Prince was completely committed to his creativity; he founded his own Paisley Park Studios and estate in the city of Chanhasen, Minnesota as a base to develop his music (it was also the site of his death). 

By 1987’s Sign O’ The Times, he was ready to showcase his most chameleonic and arguably finest work with the double-opus touching on a wide range of styles; pop, funk, soul, jazz (his parents were both jazz musicians) through rock, psychedelia and even electronic sampling on If I Was Your Girlfriend. 

He could be brilliantly sparse with his blues (the politically-fired title track’s tasty licks), add the perfect riff and melodic leads to drive his anthemic pop sensibilities (I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man), hold down taught James Brown-esque funk (It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night) and take a surprising diversion into raw overdriven rock (The Cross). 

And that was just one of nearly 40 studio albums, although be warned; his jazzy departures on 2001’s The Rainbow Children and instrumental excursions on 2003’s N.E.W.S. and Xpectation are not his best work by any stretch. 

The Band Help Maketh the Man 

Like all great showmen, Prince understood that his talent needed the right band around him to really shine live. Though he’d frequently track instruments himself in the studio, he carefully chose and nurtured the best to back him onstage. 

It began with The Revolution, the backing band he formed in 1979. Dez Dickerson was his guitar wingman until the 1999 album (he supplied the stunning solo for Little Red Corvette) when Wendy Melvoin took over until 1986’s Parade and the folding of the Revolution (since Prince’s death they have announced their intention to reform and tour in his honour).

After that came The New Power Generation. Prince was always notably supportive of female musical talent, none more so than his 2014 four-piece, 3rdeyegirl, which featured guitarist Donna Grantis, drummer Hannah Welton and Danish bassist Ida Kristine Nielson.

“One of the main ones that comes to mind is committing and playing with a tremendous amount of conviction,” Donna told TG of what she learned from Prince. “Playing always from the heart and with a great amount of purpose. He’s an incredible soloist and just a master rhythm player as well…” Knowing when to take centre stage and when to let others shine is something we could all learn to do.

Also in the running…

Bob Dylan

By popularising simple and effective ways for acoustic guitars to accompany vocalists, Dylan has influenced every songwriting strummer and fingerpicker.

Tommy Emmanuel

Recognised by his peers as the world’s greatest fingerpicker (and equally gifted with a pick), Tommy’s recordings overflow with musicality.

Albert Lee

It’s surprising the world’s best country picker comes from Herefordshire. His pedal steel impressions and lightning runs are even more surprising.

Nile Rodgers

Le Freak, Let’s Dance, Like A Prayer, Get Lucky. Rodgers is the sound of electric guitar in pop music.

Steve Cropper

Cropper co-wrote and played with soul greats including Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, inventing genius economical riffs all pro guitarists should try to learn.

The best punk guitarists of all time

1. Johnny Ramone

Every new electric guitarist should learn a Ramones song, but some people mistakenly think this means his style is easily replicated. Few realise Johnny produced that tirade of powerchords using all downstrokes – even live, when the Ramones often played at adrenalin- (or substance-) fuelled tempos far in excess of their albums. 

The sound is wildly aggressive in a way that down-up alternate strumming can’t match, and it directly inspired the rhythm styles of '80s thrash and '90s pop-punk, and any song that makes use of a regular eighth-note powerchord part carries Ramones DNA.

2. Steve Jones

Some of Steve’s best playing with the Sex Pistols was on debut single Anarchy in the UK. In 2012, Steve told TG...

“We banged it out in rehearsal while John was in the corner figuring out the words. I like the fact that it has two guitar solos. Out of all of the Pistols singles, that was the slowest. If you wanted to attach ‘punk’ to it, it’s not a fast track; it’s laid-back, almost like Booker T & The MGs. 

“There are loads of [guitar] tracks on that – I don’t even remember how many. I used one of those MXR Phase 90s on one of the rhythms as well. At the time, [producer] Chris Thomas kept telling me to tune up and it drove me mad, but looking back I’m glad he did and I’m glad we spent time on it. I think that’s what makes the Pistols album different from The Clash or The Damned. We didn’t just go in and crash, bang, wallop.”

3. Mick Jones 

A punk-rock innovator who refused to be painted into a corner

Punk guitar solos, like punk songs, have to walk a fine line: they need to be melodic and simple without being cheesy, and they need to have teeth. Many punks eschew them altogether, but Jones’s tough Les Paul licks kept a place for string bending in the synth-dominated early '80s. 

He drew on Carl Perkins’ rockabilly trickbag but also soaked himself in ska and reggae, making way for future genre crossovers. With The Clash, he expanded the boundaries of punk to help make room for the post-punk scene, and then continued to explore new territory with Big Audio Dynamite.

4. Ian MacKaye & Guy Pucciotto

The Fugazi guitarists inspired one of most dedicated fanbases in the world. Many punks talked the DIY talk, but these two lived their principles. When Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun offered them a blank cheque to sign the band, they told him where to go, instead reaching arena status on their own terms and keeping ticket prices to a target $5. 

This complete lack of pretension translates to their guitar playing, which has the kind of tightness and anger that only comes from playing 1000 toilet-circuit gigs. Every upcoming punk band draws on the Fugazi sound and ethos.

5. Billie Joe Armstrong

Keeping punk alive for the masses to this day

Billie Joe Armstrong sure knows how to make guitars sound big! Even shred god Paul Gilbert described him as one of the best guitarists in the world for his blistering downpicking, and his mastery of palm-muting and powerchord riffing rivals even thrash-metal giant James Hetfield. 

A couple of picking and fretting tricks will help you play like the pop-punk great - see below.

Billie holds his pick at an angle between his thumb and index finger, not quite flat on the pad nor on the side. Attacking the strings at about 30 degrees gives Billie an aggressive tone and reduces resistance so he can play faster.

When fretting octave shapes with their roots on the fifth string, the tip of Billie’s index finger brushes (or ‘stubs’) the sixth and fourth strings just enough to mute them. Perfect for solos like American Idiot.

Also in the running…

Ron Asheton

He formed the Stooges with Iggy Pop, giving him a better claim than most to having invented punk.

Joan Jett

Jett’s power chords and anthemic songwriting paved the way for women in punk rock.

Tom Verlaine

‘Punk virtuoso’ might sound like an oxymoron, but Television’s frontman incorporated avant garde influences to prove punks could play.

Greg Ginn

Black Flag’s founder was pivotal to developing hardcore and post-hardcore, bringing to punk jazz influences, breakbeats and, most shockingly, playing slowly.

Johnny Thunders

Not many people can say they influenced The Smiths, Guns n’ Roses and The Sex Pistols, but Thunders can.

Chris Stein

Blondie’s six-stringer expanded his palate by drawing on reggae, disco and punk simultaneously.

David Byrne

Talking Heads were so experimental there was barely a sound they didn’t try, starting new wave in the process.

Geordie Walker

Equally a hero to the metal and industrial genres, Geordie gave Killing Joke haunting arpeggios and remains a cult figure.

Rowland S. Howard

The goth genre might never have been born without this top Jazzmaster exponent and his band, The Birthday Party.

John McGeoch

McGeoch’s un-guitarlike sound landed him gigs with Magazine, PIL and more.

Andy Gill

The Gang of Four founder’s influence dwarves his sales. REM, Nirvana, RHCP and Franz Ferdinand owe him a great debt.

The best acoustic guitarists of all time

1. Bert Jansch

Folk-blues pioneer Wizz Jones shares his memories of and reflections of the influential virtuoso

In the mid-'60s, it was Jansch’s folk and blues contemporaries in London, such as Roy Harper, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn, Ralph McTell and Long John Baldry who were the first to be mesmerised by this outrageously talented young troubadour from Edinburgh. 

Then Paul Simon, Pete Townshend, Nick Drake, Jimmy Page and Neil Young all latched on to Bert’s genius during the remainder of the '60s. In more recent decades, Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler, Beth Orton, Graham Coxon, Pete Doherty and Jonathan Wilson have all heralded the enduring influence of Jansch’s timeless music on their own work. 

“I think the big thing that he did more than anything was to bring traditional Scottish, Irish and English music into the modern world,” Wizz enthuses. “Bert had this wonderful stark way of doing it, and it was so revolutionary at the time. And, later on, he very much influenced the American scene somehow. 

“There must have been an American release of a sampler record later on, and it really influenced all of them. We all thought that they were playing American music, but in fact it had a real English/Scottish slant to it.” 

Incorporating jazz inflections into his arrangements was another innovation that Bert Jansch wowed admirers with, both in his solo work and his years with jazz-folk- blues group Pentangle, who formed in 1967. 

The five-piece consisted of bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Terry Cox, vocalist Jacqui McShee and the twin guitars of Jansch and John Renbourn, with whom Bert had already recorded extensively. 

“Davey [Graham] to some extent had started the idea of infusing jazz guitar into acoustic folk guitar, but Bert took it a step further,” explains Jones. “He used to spend hours and hours working out amazingly complex arrangements of a song using inverted chords that he’d discover and invent himself. 

2. Richard Thompson

Fingerstyle guidance from a true great

“If you just strum chords, there’s a whole world that you’re missing. Fingerpicking is a great way to develop your fingers. I think one of the best places to start is with what’s called ‘clawhammer’ style. A good basic example is Peter, Paul and Mary playing Puff The Magic Dragon. 

“The guitar part is a clawhammer guitar part, so you’re playing the bass strings in a kind of alternating pattern and putting a melody over the top, and there’s a certain syncopation between the two. It’s like many things that you learn that sound hard at first, but you just slow it way down and slowly build it up to speed. In a few months, you’ve expanded your horizons and you’ve got a whole new set of possibilities.”

3. Joni Mitchell

Interested in open tunings? Check out Joni Mitchell...

Few guitarists have made open tunings such an integral part of their playing style as the Alberta, Canada-born singer-songwriter. Joni is reported to have used over 50 different tunings over the course of her career. 

Coupled with regular use of a capo, Joni always manages to make her guitar parts sound creative and, well, difficult. Not necessarily difficult to play, but by ditching the well-known chord shapes and stock phrases of standard tuning it's tough to get your ear around those magical sounds. 

Try out these tunings from some of Joni's biggest songs.

1. Open E (E B E G# B E)

Open E with a capo on the 2nd fret will give you the tuning for Joni’s big hits, Big Yellow Taxi and Both Sides Now.

2. B F# B E A E

The strings are tuned to a B7sus4 chord here. It’s also the tuning Joni uses to play The Magdalene Laundries.

3. C G D F G C

Another unusual tuning outlining a sus chord, this time Csus2sus4. Dial this one in to play Joni’s Hejira.

4. Nick Drake

Critics praise Drake for his somber and beautiful lyrics, influenced by his love of poets like William Blake and W.B. Yeats. But according to his friend and collaborator Robert Kirby, these lyrics were crafted to fit the moods dictated by his music. 

It wasn’t that Drake found the perfect musical accompaniments for his feelings; those haunting and heartbreaking sounds were his feelings. 

He wrote guitar parts that sounded like loneliness, and they speak directly to his listeners. His unique sounds came from tunings he discovered himself, allowing chord voicings with multiple adjacent notes, impossible in most common tunings.

Also in the running…

Paul Simon

Crafting Fingerstyle parts that propelled his songs with Art Garfunkel to greatness, Paul Simon has since become a magpie to folk music of all cultures.

John Renbourn

Collaborating with Bert Jansch and Pentangle, the UK solo acoustic guitar pioneer opened up new tunings alongside medieval and jazz influences.

Ed Sheeran

Boosting acoustic guitar sales everywhere, Sheeran has made loopers an essential accessory and confirmed the guitar’s continuing relevance.

Ben Howard

With his unusual pick-and-go technique, eclectic tunings and partial capo, Howard has a distinctive sound that is deservedly acclaimed.

Michael Hedges

Enormously inventive musician whose two-handed, percussive approach transformed modern acoustic technique. His star fans include Pete Townshend and Steve Vai.

The best jazz and fusion guitarists of all time

1. Django Reinhardt

Countless players of all styles have cited Django as an influence, from Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Beck, though it’s among the Gypsy communities of Europe that Django truly lives on. Exactly how he managed, with a badly injured fretting-hand, to play such incredible lead lines is still the subject of debate. 

Frankly, it’s mind-boggling - and his intensely swinging single-string solos, near impossible chromatic runs encompassing the entire range of the guitar neck, incredible arpeggio leaps across the fretboard and fearsome rhythmic drive have had musicians’ jaws on the floor ever since. 

Mere hyperbole? Certainly not! Together with violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Django was instrumental in developing the vocabulary of the entire gypsy jazz genre. 

Django almost exclusively used a 1930s Selmer-Maccaferri guitar, set up with light gauge ‘silk ’n’ steel’ strings (0.010-0.046) and featuring an internal sound chamber to enhance projection. 

His own Selmer, serial number 503, is on display at the Museum Of Music in Paris. Only a few dozen other examples survive and today fetch astronomical sums! 

2. Allan Holdsworth

Playing tips from the fusion genius who influenced the likes of Satriani and Zappa

The power of four… 

“When I practise scales I will play four notes on one string. If I’m playing a C major scale, starting on F, I’ll play the F, G, A, and B on one string and the C will be on the A string, and so on. Because I found not only was it good for my hands but it was really good for interconnecting things. 

“I didn’t want to end up playing in positions like you’d see guys playing, and every time it was a different chord their hand would be in a completely different position, and I wanted to eliminate that completely. 

“So I always practised playing scales in every position and I looked at four notes per string as a way of connecting positions together.” 

Achieving pure legato... 

“I never use pull-offs because I don’t like the sort of ‘meow’ sound they make with the string being deflected sideways. So I kind of tap the finger on and lift it directly off the string. I practise trying to make all the notes play the same volume or even some of the notes I’ve hammered, louder than the notes I’ve picked. 

“So you can place an accent anywhere you normally would if you were using a pick. I’ve got better at it now and when I listen to it I can pick up what’s going on and I think it’s harder to tell now what’s picked and what isn’t. But basically I wanted to make a note I’d hammered louder than a note I’d picked.”

3. Wes Montgomery

Thumbs Up! Putting a finger on Montgomery’s amazing playing technique

The most significant part of Montgomery’s playing style was his preference for using his thumb instead of a pick. And it gives a tone far thicker and warmer than any plectrum can produce – though you’ll be sacrificing speed for tone. 

Montgomery elaborated on this by explaining that it was quieter when practising at night; that he kept dropping picks, and felt that he was more ‘in touch’ with the guitar without one. Regardless, it’s amazing how agile Wes could be with the thumb. 

Although he played mainly with a legato style – with lots of slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs – he was able to play upstrokes for fast, single-note lines as well as fast tremolo passages on octave and chord runs. He’d also execute swift arpeggio runs in a ‘sweeping’ style. 

Some of this can be explained by the fact that he was double-jointed. Even so, it remains impressive that he was able to create a classic, distinctive tone with just a guitar, a lead, an amp and his thumb!

4. John McLaughlin

Back in 2016, the fusion pioneer talked gear with Guitarist. Here’s the lowdown on the tone

“I’m using three kinds of tube preamp, depending on what sort of mood I’m in. The old one is a Mesa/Boogie V Twin, which I really like because I used to play Mesa/Boogie amps back in the '70s and '80s. Then I have a [Hermida Audio] Zendrive2; this has one valve in it. 

“The last one is a Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic and this album [2015’s Black Light] has been recorded with the Seymour Duncan from start to finish. I use a Line 6 wireless system [Relay G30], which is the best one I know. 

“I go straight into the tuner and from the tuner into the preamp, whichever one I’m using, and from there it goes into an MXR [Carbon Copy] Delay – I really like MXR for quality – and from that into an MXR Stereo Chorus, and that’s it. Then the output goes to the monitors and to the front of house.”

5. Larry Carlton

The session ace and Steely Dan regular gives his tips for developing your musical ear

Learn jazz standards...

“For me, it started by learning standards. I remember that when I would learn a four-bar phrase from a Joe Pass record, I’d then go back and learn the chords that were happening underneath it, not just the solo. Then I had the opportunity to analyse it: why could he play those notes against that chord? I think it’s important that once you learn the solo, learn the chords, then think about why that could happen.” 

Use simple clusters of notes...  

“That’s the motif approach of making a small statement and then developing that statement. It always shows up in my solos. I haven’t abandoned it but I am not really aware of it. To me, that is just the musicality that comes out of me. Play something and wait a second. If nothing else comes, imitate what you just did. It is a patience thing.”

Also in the running…

Pat Metheny

Since deciding it was rude to copy Wes Montgomery, this giant has continually expanded jazz vocabulary in harmony and instrumentation.

George Benson

Watch Benson sing his guitar lines while he improvises: this is an outrageous musical ear and unfailing sense of melody.

Shawn Lane

He could play faster than anyone, but wisely remembered to include rhythm and tunes. Guthrie Govan and Paul Gilbert were awed.

Frank Gambale

Sweep-pickers the world over owe a debt to Gambale’s videos. His prolific output includes six albums with Chick Corea.

Fans of French guitarist Stephane Wrembel’s series of tribute albums to his idol, Django Reinhardt, have reason to celebrate: Earlier this year, he released a fourth edition of Django-inspired recordings titled - quite conveniently - The Django Experiment IV. 

This coming January, right on schedule, he’ll release The Django Experiment V. When asked if he considers this latest volume to be the conclusion of the series, Wrembel laughs and says, “Oh, no. The last one will be when I die.”

During his career, Wrembel has released a host of albums that span genres such as jazz, blues, rock and flamenco, and he’s been an occasional collaborator on film scores for director Woody Allen, including 2011’s Midnight in Paris.

But he’s continually come back to his biggest muse as a source of inspiration, and when he says he expects to do “30 or 40 more” Reinhardt-infused records, people should take him at his word. “Django gives me an anchor,” Wrembel says. “I can do other things and put out different records, but every year I can come back to Django. It’s a cyclical thing, and there’s something almost transcendental about it; I don’t even think about what I’m doing. There’s no reason this can’t go on and on.”

Wrembel, who now lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, grew up in the same town where Reinhardt once lived (Fontainebleau, France), and he recalls the late guitarist’s music as something of a constant presence. 

“You’d go out to pubs or restaurants, and there would be somebody playing Django,” he says. “It was always sort of there.” But Reinhardt wasn’t Wrembel’s first musical love; as a teenager, he was consumed by rock guitar. “David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Summers, Frank Zappa - those were the big guys for me,” he says. “I loved their energy and sophistication, and that stayed with me through the years. Even if I’m playing classical music, I try to put rock energy into it.”

It wasn’t until he moved to the States to study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music that Wrembel fell under Reinhardt’s sway. Transcribing classical and jazz compositions led to him writing out Django pieces, and in short order Wrembel came to understand the music that was always part of his DNA. “Django kind of bridged the worlds of classical and jazz, and that became the foundation for modern guitar,” he says. “Transcribing his music made me want to explore it further.”

Famously, Reinhardt had full use of only his left index and middle fingers following a fire that burned more than half his body. To replicate the late guitarist’s technique as authentically as possible, Wrembel learned to play his songs with the same two-fingered fretting approach. 

“You really understand Django’s genius that way,” Wrembel says. “It’s as if you see the guitar at its core, its root foundations. From there, everything unfolds like a spiral. Then when you go back to playing with four fingers, it’s like you’re playing another instrument.”

On The Django Experiment IV, Wrembel and his longtime collaborators - Thor Jensen (guitar), Ari Folman Cohen (bass), Nick Anderson (drums) and Nick Driscoll (saxophone and clarinet) - cut only one tune written by Reinhardt (Nuages); the bulk of the disc is comprised of jazz and blues songs that band members called out on any given recording day.

“That’s where the ‘experiment’ part of the title comes into play,” Wrembel says. “No matter what type of song we’re cutting - whether it’s something kind of film noir or even if we’re doing a version of Mongo Santamaria’s Afro Blue, we translate it to Django. His essence is in the room. It’s almost like, ‘How would he have played it?’”

When it comes to his guitars and gear, Wrembel has one adage: Keep it simple. For years, he’s played two Bob Holo-designed acoustics, each outfitted with a Stimer magnetic pickup from the 1940s (“They’re the same pickups Django used; they have so much character”) and an Ischell acoustic pickup, that he runs into a combination of an AER Compact 60 amp and a small Fender amp (“I don’t know which one it is; I got it for $100”). 

That same philosophy extends to recording: Don’t mess with a good live take, and if a track contains some stray noises or string buzzing, so be it.

“We live in a time where everything is disgustingly clean,” Wrembel says. “People make music that is so polished. There are 500 edits in one song, and it sounds like elevator music. 

We put the headphones on, and we play live. If the amp sounds dirty, leave it in. String noise? So what? You want to hear the life in a track. Listen to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. In the beginning acoustic solo, you hear noises on the strings, the fingers moving around. That’s life. It’s reality. When you cut that out, you’re left without the physical aspect of what a musician does, and I just won’t have it. Not in my music.”

In this clip from our recent interview with the amazing Joscho Stephan, the jazz master offers a fascinating study in two iconic styles of arpeggio playing.

In the left corner, weighing in at nearly 85 years of historic influence, is the classic "Gypsy" style of Django Reinhardt. With its signature flexed wrist and wide, swinging downstroke attack, the Django style is instantly recognizable in its mechanical ingredients, even among non-aficionados. And it represented a watershed moment in 20th-century guitar technique, by providing the speed and power necessary to allow the guitar to step the from the back row of the bandstand into the limelight of modern lead playing.

In the right corner we have the turbocharged sweep approach of Yngwie Malmsteen. Malmsteen's influence in popularizing the concept of connected pickstrokes for rapid arpeggio playing across the strings is felt every time an aspiring 21st-century rock guitarist heads to YouTube and types "sweep arpeggios" into the search box. And yet, when viewed in slow-motion, the similarities between the Malmsteen and Django approaches are obvious.

Both systems rely on the downward angled, or "downward pickslanting" pick attack, which allows the pick to flow over the strings in the ascending direction. And because of this, both systems run into a roadblock when faced with descending arpeggio passages where the pick can't flow so easily. The Django solution is multiple downstrokes, with a rotational lift in between to reach the next lower string. The Malmsteen solution is counter-intuitive: double upstrokes, separated by a pull-off.

What the Django approach offers in power and clarity, the Malmsteen approach offers in speed and fluidity. More fascinating is how Stephan developed them. Was he a dedicated transcriber of both Gypsy and neoclassical metal masters? Hardly. As Stephan relates, the Malmsteen approach was simply a happy accident, stumbled across by relentlessly experimenting with different right hand approaches.

Time and again in our interviews with elite players, what's amazing is not so much that they can play impossible things, but rather the impossible ease with which they can discover easy ways of doing so without anyone else pointing the way.

Troy Grady is the creator of Cracking the Code, a documentary series with a unique analytical approach to understanding guitar technique. Melding archival footage, in-depth interviews, painstakingly crafted animation and custom soundtrack, it’s a pop-science investigation of an age-old mystery: Why are some players seemingly super-powered?

Tommy Emmanuel has premiered the music video for his new single, "Djangology."

The song is taken from Emmanuel's upcoming album, Accomplice One. A duets album with an impressive guest list that includes Jason Isbell, Mark Knopfler, Ricky Skaggs and Rodney Crowell, among others, Accomplice One is set for a January 19 release via CGP Sounds/Thirty Tigers.

"Djangology"—which was recorded live at Abdala Studios in Havana, Cuba, with Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo—is a tip of the hat to one of Emmanuel's biggest influences, legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

"In 2016 I did a guitar camp in Havana with Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo," Emmanuel said. "We worked up an arrangement of this famous Django Reinhardt song. We took all our guitar students to Abdala Studio to witness the recording as part of their education. You wouldn't know it but there were over 80 people sitting quietly in the room as we recorded this track live. A big thanks to Frank and Vinny for bringing this beautiful song to my attention."

"Tommy is very curious and eager to learn new songs," Vignola added. "When I played 'Djangology' for him, he fell in love with it. Tommy is a complete musician. Although he doesn't need anyone else, he certainly is a fabulous accompanist. A real professional."

You can watch the "Djangology" video above, and preorder Accomplice One here.

For more on the album, check out our recent interview with Emmanuel, as featured in the January 2018 issue of Guitar World.

Get ready, guitar fans. Django, a new film about gypsy jazz guitar legend Django Reinhardt, is headed your way. The film, which stars Reda Kateb as Reinhardt, plus Cécile de France, Beata Palya and BimBam Merstein, opens January 5 in New York and January 19 in Los Angeles.

It was directed and written by Étienne Comar and adapted from Folles de Django by Alexis Salatko. All the music in the film is performed by the Rosenberg Trio.

The film focuses on the guitarist in 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Paris. At that point, Reinhardt was at the pinnacle of his art; the brilliant and carefree guitarist played to standing-room-only crowds in the city’s best venues. Meanwhile, his gypsy brethren were being persecuted throughout Europe. His life took a turn for the worse when the Nazi propaganda machine decided to send him on a German tour.

"For a long time, I wanted to paint the portrait of a musician at grips with the torments of existence," Comar says. "When I was about 40, I plunged back into music by participating in a rock band with some friends, and what an experience! I loved it. I had forgotten how easily you canisolate yourself from the outside world when you’re playing music. All of us were at rather complicated times in our lives, and we got ourselves out of those complications by having fun playing music together. The time and space of musical creation is a drug that literally grabs hold of you.

"And then I thought of a discussion I had as a teenager with my father, who was a greatadmirer of Django. While he was a young man during the war, he listened to music and forgot about the German occupation [for] as long as a record, or the dance, lasted. And then there was my young nephew, who was learning guitar and began playing numbers by Django like crazy. I figured that trans-generational music like that, with its charm and immediate pleasure, possesses something bewitching, vital and salutary. All of those were reasons that made me want to plunge into the life of Django Reinhardt."

It turns out Reda Kateb, who had some experience with the guitar before shooting the film, was fine with merely "pretending" to play like Reinhardt while other guitarists provided the actual music.

"I played gnawa percussion, a kind of big metal castanets and the guembri, a traditional three-string instrument, a kind of traditional bass," Kateb says. "So I had already been messing around on strings, but without ever having worked at it as seriously as I did for this film, which was a kind of prolongation of my development as an amateur musician.

"So I took some guitar classes with a very good professor, a good pedagogue, who began with some easier pieces, like some of Bob Dylan’s stuff. When I worked on other films, I would keep my guitar in my dressing room and practice. Django was always with me. But even with 20 years of preparation, I would never have been able to play like him.

"It was the great guitarist Stochelo Rosenberg who recorded the numbers in the movie. Christophe Lartilleux stood in for me during closeups on Django’s hands. My job was to pretend, and at the same time to feel those pieces inside of me. I had played and listened to them so much, that I knew when the melody went up or down, and all the breaks...I interiorized the role with my fingers and ears more than with my head!"

Be sure to watch the film's official trailer above. For more information about the film, including screening dates and more, visit django-film.com.

Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of two new tracks by gypsy jazz guitarist Stephane Wrembel.

Below, check out "Douce Ambiance" from The Django Experiment I and "Heavy Artillery" from The Django Experiment II. Both albums will be released March 3 via Water Is Life Records.

The new discs primarily feature Wrembel’s interpretation of the songs of legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt—including the two songs below—plus a handful of original compositions by Wrembel and others.

“Twenty-five years ago, I spent many years with the gypsy masters, patiently learning their craft the traditional way," Wrembel says. "It's been a long journey touring the world and experiencing the NYC jungle's energy. I spent the last 15 years composing and touring, playing my own music.

"TheDjango Experiment is a re-exploration of my roots as a gypsy jazz guitarist [and] a tribute to Django Reinhardt, revisited with a new sound and years of integration of new musical informations…sort of Django meets NYC, meets the world. It is actually extremely traditional and extremely non-traditional at the same time. What's important is the use of colors and sounds over his music that has not been done before.”

Both albums were recorded at Windmill Agency Recording Studio in Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania, by Wrembel with Thor Jensen (guitar), Ari Folman Cohen (bass), Nick Anderson (drums) and Nick Driscoll (saxophone, clarinet).

If you like what you hear, note that the release of new albums coincides with the Django A Gogo Music Festival,which will take place this Friday, March 3, at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Wrembel will perform at the event, along with Al Di Meola, Stochelo Rosenberg, Larry Keel, Ryan Montbleau, David Gastine, Nick Anderson, Thor Jensen, Ari Folman Cohen and Nick Driscoll.

For more about Django A Gogo (and to buy tickets), head here. For more about Wrembel and his new albums, visit stephanewrembel.com.

Gypsy-jazz guitarist Stephane Wrembel—who was recently featured as one of GuitarWorld.com's Seven Contemporary Jazz Guitarists Worth Checking Out—is releasing two new albums March 3 via Water Is Life Records.

The albums—The Django Experiment I and The Django Experiment II—primarily feature Wrembel’s interpretation of the songs of legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, plus a handful of original compositions by Wrembel and others.

Wrembel, who is from France and lives in New Jersey these days, got a major boost from Woody Allen when the filmmaker used Wrembel's song, "Bistro Fada," in his successful (and pretty damn good) 2011 comedy, Midnight in Paris. You can watch Wrembel play "Bistro Fada" below.

Subsequently, Wrembel was selected by composer/producer Hans Zimmer to perform at the 2012 Academy Awards as part of his All Star Band. Wrembel has contributed music to two other Woody Allen films, plus commercials and TV, and now he has a Clio Award (and a Grammy Award) under his belt.

The two Django albums were recorded, mixed and mastered by Eric Ritter at Windmill Agency Recording Studio in Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania. Wrembel was joined in the studio by longtime collaborators Thor Jensen (guitar), Ari Folman Cohen (bass), Nick Anderson (drums) and Nick Driscoll (saxophone, clarinet). Both albums feature original artwork by Wrembel.

“Twenty-five years ago, I spent many years with the gypsy masters, patiently learning their craft the traditional way," Wrembel says. "It's been a long journey touring the world and experiencing the NYC jungle's energy. I spent the last 15 years composing and touring, playing my own music.

"The Django Experiment is a re-exploration of my roots as a gypsy jazz guitarist [and] a tribute to Django Reinhardt, revisited with a new sound and years of integration of new musical informations…sort of Django meets NYC, meets the world. It is actually extremely traditional and extremely non-traditional at the same time. What's important is the use of colors and sounds over his music that has not been done before.”

The albums' release coincides with the Django A Gogo Music Festival, which will take place March 3 at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Wrembel will perform at the event, along with Al Di Meola, Stochelo Rosenberg, Larry Keel, Ryan Montbleau, David Gastine, Nick Anderson, Thor Jensen Ari Folman Cohen and Nick Driscoll. For more about that, head here.

For more about Wrembel, visit stephanewrembel.com.

These videos are related to the February 2012 issue of Guitar World. For the full text and tablature for the column, you can pick up the issue of newsstands now or in our online store.

In this month's "Hole Notes," Musician's Institute instructor Dale Turned takes a look at artistry of guitar great and inventor of "gypsy jazz," Django Reinhardt. Because his famed quintet, Hot Club of France, didn't have a percussionist, the rhythmic patterns and chord choices in Django's unique brand of jazz were of paramount importance.

Part 1

Part 2