guitar

For those of you lucky enough to get into the incredibly quickly sold-out show at Tricky Falls a while back, you got to hear how these rigs sounded. And apparently, you guys loved it. Even if you didn't get to go, like me, you might find this tour of all the band's gear pretty cool. How do they get the sounds for the songs, what guitars do they use?

Here's a nice video compilation of several of Mark's killer solos all in one place. He rocks several, including "Blackbird", "Wayward One", "Brand New Start", "Buried Alive" and more! This video gives some fantastic close-up work of what he's doing, in case you want to learn what he's playing, or just get a good look.

Not only is Mark a great guitar player, but he surrounds himself with great musicians. Here's a guitar battle with popular vocalist/guitarist Myles Kennedy, from the Alter Bridge live DVD. Not only do you get to see how good Mark Tremonti is, but you really get to hear how good Myles is!

James Hetfield, Mark Tremonti, Eddie Van Halen...meet Tina. She's just 14 and she's already covering Eddie's solo in "Eruption".

This week's shredder is Mark Tremonti. He's a great player, and a fantastic songwriter. He's written huge songs for Creed, Alter Bridge and now his solo band, Tremonti. He's got a great sense of melody and song structure, and on top of that, he's a good singer and an amazing guitarist!

This week, I want to feature the guitar skills of Mark Tremonti. He's kind of an underrated guitar player, since he tends to play more for the song instead of the shred, but when he cuts loose, he can really cut loose! I found these videos a while back, with guitar shred king Rusty Cooley and Mark trading off licks.

Okay, that sounded a little weird. Not actually a part of HIM has arrived, but his gear has arrived. For the first time I can remember in Balloonfest history, one of the bands has shipped their gear to us! Usually we just find scraggly-looking musicians, struggling with gear coming off the baggage carousel at the airport, hoping for either a vegan meal or Whataburger.

Tony MacAlpine is our guitar shredder for the week, and we've seen some old songs, new songs, collaborations and learned a little about one of the premier guitar players out there. If you haven't been aware of him before now, hopefully you've found a cool new guitar player to share with your friends! Maybe you've also found some cool new ideas and licks you can learn from one of his early instruct

What's T-Mac been up to recently? He's stayed really busy musically, and has even toured quite a bit with Billy Sheehan, Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian, playing some serious music for the people. Check out Thursday's shred song for today, Billy Sheehan's "Shy Boy", originally written for Billy's band Talas, and then re-recorded with Van Halen maniac David Lee Roth!

Wednesday on the Shredder of the Week brings us a trip back to big hair and lots of reverb. Guitar master Tony MacAlpine plays one of the songs that he released on his 1987 album Maximum Security on PolyGram...whoa, there's a name from the past, PolyGram. They died a horrible label death...eventually being absorbed into Universal Music Group.

Day two of Tony MacAlpine week features a song from Tony's album Premonition, called "The Violin Song". This is one of the tracks from the album that features keyboard master Jens Johansson. The melody on this one is really good, and grabs you right away. Tony began his classical training at five years old, and trained on classical piano and violin at the Springfield Conservatory of Musi

Some of you might remember this guy's name from the 80's, when the guitar shred boom really began in a big way. Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen really opened the door for a lot of guys to get known widely for instrumental music.