Yeah some of those metal guys have amazing endurance.
An Analysis of Frank Zappa’s playing would be cool.
-OR!
How about Dweezil Zappa?
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Guthrie Govan A+++ Not much else has to be said.
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I’d love to have Dick Dale on the show. He’s a good example of how an elbow based mechanic can be controlled and smooth!
…also because I want to see Troy have to deal with the fact that Dick plays left handed with a right-handed string system.
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Check out dane Uffe Steen! Tasty, tasty player who does the left handed, strung for a right handed player-thing…
Ralph Towner. He’s a fingerpicking player but he’s been completely smoking me out of the water lately.
He’s getting way up there in age but still touring and releasing records. Would be great to get up close and personal and talk about his approach to the fretboard and technique.
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Ulf Wakenius anyone? 
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George Bellas is the man.
Phil Sayce. Great blues shredder and seemingly humble guy
He has taken the SRV thing up a few notches. We have already had metal/jazz/bluegrass…maybe some modernized blues now??
I think he lives right across the border in Canada?
some interesting thumb mechanics here?
some active 2 way mechanics?
In any case im sure we could glean some pentatonic insights. I mean, if Eric gales was considered then Phil should be a no brainer
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The mayhem reminds me of Mahavishu and other mclaughlin stuff, those 70s gigs were much more than just playing, the whole attitude was different with scofied etc.
You know who’s amazing and doesn’t play with a pick? Chris Zoupa, he’s the best shredder I’ve seen who uses his nails as a pick. It would be fascinating to see him under the spotlight, even though the chances are extremely remote.
I can’t be arsed to read all 200+ posts in this thread right now (sorry), but I do want to advocate for a Tosin Abasi interview. Monster player, does a bunch of different right-hand things (see “thumping”), and it’s not immediately clear to me what his overall picking setup is (although he does do a lot of things that are pretty clearly at least USX-playable).
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Haha no worries, when a topic is this long, hard to expect people to read every post.
I’ve actually been keeping a doc listing all the names mentioned here and updating occasionally to keep track of who’s most frequently requested.
So far (counting all posts before this one):
- 177 unique players (!)
- 67 with at least two mentions
- 12 with at least five mentions
Players who have come up 5+ times in this thread so far: Guthrie Govan, Tommy Emmanuel, Rick Graham, Frank Gambale, Brett Garsed, Paul Gilbert, Andy James, Al di Meola, Jason Richardson, James Hetfield, Joe Satriani, Dweezil Zappa
Feel free to continue posting suggestions, everyone!
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Need some more people to suggest Chris Poland, stat.
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That’s an interesting statistic. I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned John Petrucci.
Yeah me too, I’d say overall he’s one of the ones we hear most often! Guessing some people don’t bother mentioning ones here that seem either too obvious, or likely out of reach.
In my opinion, the players listed here who would most likely be willing to participate are Dweezil Zappa, Paul Gilbert, Jason Richardson and Tommy Emmanuel. Maybe I’m wrong, but I could swear I saw some Tommy Emmanuel footage on Troy’s old site years ago.
Dweezil would be a cool player to listen to talk about picking.
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For sure We actually have been in touch with Dweezil a bit (no interview planned yet but we connected via Instagram and Troy went to his show in NYC). Would be great to sit down and film something with him at some point.
And yes, there is some Tommy Emmanuel footage in the Cracking the code archives. That’s from quite a while back—on our list to revisit and see what we can do.
The others, definitely on our list as well, we’ve reached out in the past but haven’t connected yet so we’ll have to try again soon.
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Sorry I didn’t read through all 289 responses. Forgive me if they’ve been stated. In no particular order.
Pat Metheny-
Vai and/or Satch- though every time I hear them discuss “technique” it gets awfully esoteric.
George Lynch
Trey Anastacio- weird choice but I think he’s a monster player and would be down to talk about his technique
Plini
Pete Thorn
Ty Tabor