The "Guitar God" Whose Leads Are Hardest To Play

Playing Technique
#1

When I say “Guiat Gods” I’m referring to famous guitarists, let’s say someone who has made the cover of Guitar For The Practicing Musician or Guitar World so at the "barely make it in level base on not being too famous but still at least among the most popular guitarists in neoclassical - Vinnie Moore and Tony Macalpine - and of course Paul Gilbert since he had Mr. Big in addition to Racer X. All those guys had covers and/or songs/solos transcribed in the biggest magazines in America. Macalpine had "Quarter To Midnight " transcribed and Vinne Moore and Paul Gilbert have had several. Michael Angelo Batio is maybe a notch higher in popularity because he’s gained more popularity with his unique, incredible technique and has done thousands of clinics as well as being in Nitro which had an MTV video -Freight Train- something Macalpine didn’t. I don’t know if Vinnie Moore ever had an MTV video.

From there we go to guys like George Lynch, Warren DeMartini, Vivian Campbell (Dio songs), John Sykes, etc.

Then guys who don’t sell out the huge arenas but are very well known names and/or have been incredibly influential - Yngwie, Zakk Wylde, Satriani, and Vai.

Finally the biggest Guitar Gods - Van Halen, Blackmore, Iommi, Page, Randy Rhoads, Dimebag Darrell, Slash, etc.

Ot of all these guys total (not separated by level of fame) name the top three guitarists in terms of having the toughest leads to play excluding guys whose leads that might be hard to play but you just don’t like much.

My top 3 with that criteria in no particular order:

  1. Michael Angelo Batio - Listen to his Time Traveler solo if you’ve never hard it. The solo starts at 3:06 of this song:
  1. Paul Gilbert for leads like Scarified and Frenzy:
  1. Yngwie - for combination of speed, technicality and amazing vibrato and tone. Solo to this Alcatrazz song starts at around 2:50 and I especially like the playing he does with the clean sound starting around 3:43:
#2

Based on what we know now about learning mechanical skills, I think the word ‘hard’ is outdated and we should really think twice about how we use it. Most famous players you can think of are in the ‘easy’ zone with their techniques. They learned these movements at an early age, baked them in, and have been on autopilot for decades. Batio in 2017 looks exactly the same as Batio in 2007 in our footage. Albert Lee straight up said in the interview that he hadn’t worked on technique in 40 years.

If you see a great player doing something really well, there is a good chance they are not breaking a sweat and haven’t in a long time. There might be differences in how long it takes to learn these techniques originally. But even then I would suggest those differences are small in the big picture.

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#3

According to Wikipedia, Batio was born in 1956. so in 2017 he turned 61 years old. Is it any great surprise that a man that age wasn’t marked technically superior to when he was “only” 51 years old?

“Hard” is a relative word anyway. A solo that is hard for some people on this forum may be fairly easy for other people in this forum, while yet other members of the forum may be unable to lay the solo despite their greatest effort!

Since a solo that is “hard” for somebody might be of only moderate difficulty for somebody else, and therefore not an objective standard that applies equally to everyone, I started this thread to see what different people think is hard to play. If it were the same for everyone, there would be no reason to ask would there?

#4

I would just like to say that the Batio solo in the video you posted was INSANE! My jaw is still on the floor.

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#5

Mike wasn’t “superior” because he was already executing his technique. From a learning perspective there was nothing to be better at - all he needed to do was maintain, which he did. And when Mike is in maintenance mode, it clear that it takes little/no effort on his part to play. He just does the movements he has already learned.

We used to think certain lines were “harder”, and you had to “try more” to do them. Now we know that’s not really what’s going on. Certain lines require certain movements. If you know the movements, and have properly baked them in, you can play the line with relatively little effort. If you don’t know the movements, no amount of “trying more” is going to help. You cannot “stringhop harder” and play Molly Tuttle. You need her crosspicking movement and if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. “Greatest effort” will not help you.

A better question to ask is whether or not it is more challenging to learn some techniques initially over others. Maybe! I think we’ll learn more about this over time, as more people try and succeed at learning these techniques. But even then, evidence so far suggests that the differences aren’t as large as the average person thinks. All the players we filmed learned their techniques early and relatively quickly. Then they stayed in maintenance mode for the remainder of their playing careers.

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#6

I know! That has got to be one of the hardest MAB solos to play if not the hardest MAB solo of all.

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#7

When I think of something that is “hard” as far as transcribed guitar pieces from a well known guitarist are concerned, I look at the sheer number of times that person has been INCORRECTLY transcribed…and for me, that has to be Van Halen. Almost no player other than Hendrix has been studied and transcribed so often, but unlike Hendrix, Van Halen has almost never been correctly transcribed and his whole technique is almost universally misunderstood.

Just about all of Hendrix’s catalog has been almost totally accurately transcribed…Andy Aledort especially and a few others have really gotten his material transcribed with an incredible degree of accuracy and detail. Many will argue that it is impossible to get anything 100% correct and I agree. But after studying Van Halen for decades and looking at just about every officially published transcription and investigating as many online tutorials and covers that I’ve been able to find, discussing his playing with others in forums and discussing Van Halen with other guitarists in person, there’s just a profound vacuum of misunderstanding when it comes to his playing specifically. Is it in the speed or fluency zone of Batio, Gilbert, Macalpine, Sykes. etc…? Clearly not…but Van Halen’s playing is incredibly nuanced and just plain not understood even with decades of published transcriptions and lessons, both in print and online.

That said, I know my friend Bill and myself have devoted a lot of time and effort in studying Van Halen and a guy working at Guitar World who has a limited amount of time to get a transcription turned in for a deadline just does not have the time (or likely the will, even with an infinite amount of time) to really get it right, so extremely flawed transcriptions get published and are then taken as gospel for decades. So “hard” is still a relative word…most shredders think Van Halen’s playing is easy. I would say it is like anything else…if you look at it on a microscopic “CTC” level, it is easily understood. But only a few have really cared to examine Eddie’s playing to that degree and because of that, his music remains “hard” for most.

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#8

I think sometimes for a lot of players, something I have noticed from years of teaching, it is not always the technique that is most challenging…it can be more that a player’s phrasing is what people struggle with. Take Eddie’s phrasing for example…I hear very few people who play his stuff really nail that fluid, relaxed way of playing in the cracks of the beat he has. I think after all the years of listening to him, it is his phrasing that has influenced me the most and not the more obvious things he is known for.

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#9

I feel like in general for most players things like Andy Wood or Steve Morse’s stuff would be hardest to play as opposed to a lot of the one way pickslanting stuff from Yngwie or even 2way stuff from say Gilbert because these guys are picking every note during some of these one note per string runs that are just insane. I feel like generally something that would be considered tough for most guys would be playing that as opposed to say sweeping an arp. I don’t want to speak for everyone but this is just based on myself and what I see. These player’s licks are like tongue twisters for my fingers. Especially the ones that roll and reverse the pickstroke order each time through.

#10

For whom? Andy or Steve?

Again, for whom?

Going back to Troy’s response, once you have those motions you have them. I guess we could ask Steve Morse what the hardest Yngwie song is for him, or ask Yngwie what the hardest Andy Wood lick is for him, but the words hard or easy are going to be relative to your ability or inability to do the motions rather than there being some universal scale applicable to anyone.

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#11

I’m just speaking in regard to my own experience and all of the other guitar players I know and have seen personally. There are a bevy of players who do not know about cracking the code, and as a result many have not necessarily figured out one of the most frustrating parts of guitar with a pick: how do you alternate pick these fast lines that have random numbers of notes per string without feeling stuck? This was the whole thing that cracking the code solved in the first place which is proof in and of itself that this is/was a problem.

With that in mind, one figures out when they first delve into CtC for the first time that they generally have a primary pickslant and, as a result, they find certain licks easier to play than others. In general, from what I have read on this forum, the most mysterious of the licks for a majority of players appear to be ones that involve crosspicking. There seem to be less crosspickers than one way or even two way pickslanters (again this is just my observation and not claiming to be a fact) even though crosspicking can be considered 2wps. As a result of this, I would say in my opinion that, based on the question the OP asked, the most challenging licks would most likely be those that are crosspicked. Then I figured that Morse and Wood and also Miller were guys that were at the forefront of that style and technique.

This has been true in my experience for example the Yngwie and EJ stuff can very easily and for UPWS players these licks could simply have the pickstrokes reversed and be played with the same effortlessness. 2wps complicates things a bit more, however once one learns to switch between the two slants it becomes doable. Conversely, crosspicking requires additional movements and work to get the technique down and to play the licks up to the speed of say Tumeni Notes. What do you guys think?

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#12

“Cherokee” or “How High the Moon” from Joe Pass Virtuoso. How many players out there can handle those single notes runs and those chords changes? They fly by as almost fast as his picking.

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#13

Bill_hall, you are correct about Eddie’s phrasing! And the funny thing is that sooooo much of Eddie’s phrasing and specific licks come directly from live Cream era Clapton…Eddie went out of his way to mention his note-for-note study of Clapton in just about every interview he’s ever given.

And Ian…Pass is one of my favorite players of all time. Probably one of the most “complete” players ever, if that makes any sense. He had it ALL.

#14

While Troy raises a whole bunch of good points…

…I’m going to have to say Shawn Lane, for the sheer number of (very talented) guitarists I’ve heard saying they think he’s on a whole different plane than anyone else.

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#15

You may know the basic motion to use the pick but are you guys suggesting that just because someone knows the correct motions he must therefore also have equal proficiency in using those motions as every other guitarist? Not a chance.

That’s part of why some solos are harder for some people than others even if they know the correct motions. They don’t all execute them with the same speed,accuracy, consistency, etc. Then you have the left hand abilities which vary widely from one guitarist to the next in terms of their legato playing , vibrato, etc.

#16

Hmm, I think the question “hard for whom” is an important one. Still I remember Paul Gilbert saying, that Scarified is “hard” for him to play and he has to “work out” a little, if he has to play it.
Of course every guitarist has some things that feel natural to him/her, although it would be hard for others to learn the same thing.
Still I think there are licks, that are harder to learn for most guitar players, no matter what technique/movements are necessary to play them.
String skipping arpeggios in 16ths at 210 bpm are for sure “harder to play” than 1nps-sequences at 170bpm. With “harder to play” meaning harder to figure out and learn a way to make them playable. So I think the inital question should be “answerable” (if that is a word).

Thomas

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#17

I read an interview with him where he said similar things about the difficulty of the speed of the first extremely fast part of Frenzy - the fast muted picking on the low strings. He was only 19 when he recorded that and still it’s tough for him to play that part up to speed.