Tony MacAlpine

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.

Earlier this year, these four amazing musicians got together and did a show for a drum showoff thing, and they filmed it for a DVD. They've recently gotten back together for a tour in Europe where they're playing some of the most amazing stuff for people.