Top 5 Guitarists Who Have Influenced You? :O

[zgov]

James Hetfield
Jerry Cantrell
Dimebag
Stephen Carpenter
Mark Tremonti (his AlterBridge and solo material)

Man Ive always told people that I wish creed alter bridge and marks solo stuf was just instrumental I love his style just hate his vocalists lol I definitely give him respect

 

[Curt]

Not in order...

Dimebag - My first major influence

Chad Ginsburg(CKY) - An early influence. he is a lot more technically proficient than his work with CKY would suggest.

Bjorn and Jesper(In Flames) - I know that Jesper left, but those two are the players whose influence shine through the most in my playing.

John Petrucci - I picked up a lot of technique while learning his solos

 

[bondmorkret]

Tough. Changes a lot, but in recent years:

Allan Holdsworth
Greg Howe
Rick Graham
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Tom Quayle

 

[CharlesTbastard]

Well,im prolly a lil older than most here.so...

Joe Perry. The first 4 aerosmith records have so much attitude and cool loose playing.made me wanna play.

Ace Frehley/Paul Stanley.as a youngster,my fav songs.i had to learn toplay them.still like to get drunk and jam some old kiss tunes.

Hanneman/king.i never heard anything like it til i heard slayer.at first i couldnt understand wtf they were doing.but it sure was evil.

Steve Vai.
Paul gilbert
YNgwie.
And now ive been so into Loomis,Merrow and Ola.along with Pat Obrien.

Dave weiner,dean cascione and carl roa are also big influences.

 

[Carrion Rocket]

Marty Friedman
Rob Marton
Balsac The Jaws of Death (AKA Mike Dirks)
James Hetfield
Rob Barrett

 

[rythmic_pulses]

My influences date back to a time where my tastes evolved gradually
staring out with:

Mick Thompson: Sheerly because of his stage presence and right hand speed, one of the first guitarists I looked up to, probably one of the few guys who can make string noise sound great in a composition F.E Disasterpiece, plus he can fair shred when he wants.

Stephen Carpenter: He opened up my mind to a lot of new chordal ideas that I wouldn't have normally used if I hadn't heard such abstract chord structures in his music , When Girls Telephone Boys is an example of these abstract chords at work.

Kirk Hammett: Back when I was into thrash, this guy was my hero, I like a lot of his earlier solo work, even if it was all speed trickery/wah and not great technique, the song And Justice For All... has my fave solo in it by him.

Igor Omodei: Out of all Modern Prog, Uneven Structure are my favourite, all the melodies this guy throws out are absolutely insane, not to mention the simplicity of some of his work even transposes as quite technically demanding, Plenitude is one of those tracks.

Fredrik Thordendal: He got me to get my Rhythm hand as tight as it is now, not to mention showing me that Allan Holdsworth style stuff can be used in metal too, his solos are just the strangest thing I've ever heard, Elastic is my fave song by them, it's just everything I want from Meshuggah in one song, brutal riffs, a weird solo and that elongated AAHHHHHHH!!! that Jens does so well.


A lot of you won't agree with my choices, but that's okay, haters gonna hate and all that jazz.

 

[ridner]

Dimebag Darrell
Tony Iommi
Kirk Windstein
Pepper Keenan
Terrance Hobbs

 

[New Age Moron]

James Hetfield
Allan Holdsworth
Joe Satriani
Tommy Emmanuel
Steve Vai

 

[Don Vito]

1) Alexi Laiho. COB was the first metal band I got into cause their music felt more than just noise to me back then. The melodies, harmonies, simple catchy power metal riffs and fast solos with mostly only scale runs and sweeps, dunno, I always liked that.

2) Jon Nödtveidt. Dissection got me into black metal, and they're still my fav BM band. The tremolo picked riffs come out as melodic black metal, again guitar harmonies but not the same as COB, more cool stuff for my ears . Also, his use of acoustic parts is just hnnnnnngh. And the fact that it's black metal and therefore doesn't rely only on power chords but on many different sounding chords is a great way to arrange sounds in my head.

3) Jari Mäenpää. I just listen to a lot of early Ensiferum and Wintersun, and for the most part my fav songs are the simplest ones. They're fun as hell to play, they're catchy but not technical, melodic, heavy, folk all over the place, I think I like the mix of folk and melodic death metal. As for the Wintersun part, Sleeping Stars 'nuff said.

4) Peter Tägtgren. Dude's just a fucking legend. He does everything and he's good at it. He says himself he "can't play his instruments" (quoted from their DVD) but he still creates great ambiences and stuff, the songs are catchy and he just lives the fun out of his life even if he doesn't try to be the fastest guitarist ever. Very inspiring, considering most of my favourite guitarists are very technique-focused.

5) Dave Mustaine. He's a beast on guitar, not only when taking drugs. Some of his songs are seriously tough as fuck to learn ("Tornado Of Souls" vocals/guitars = fffuuuuuuuuuu) but the riffs are just damn catchy. I usually don't focus a lot on RIFFS themselves, much more on the ambience, melodies, solos, lyrics... but Megadeth riffs are just kickass and when i'm just noodling around, I often end up playing Mustaine riffs. just nice !

This, excluding Mustaine.

Alexi Laiho is still my favorite guitar player. His melodies are so catchy and amazing. Jon also has a really good ear for epic melodies.

 

[patdavidseven]

Satriani
Hetfield
Petrucci
Grohl
Tremonti

 

[crg123]

Steve Vai - Actually inspired me to play guitar. The ending seen from the Crossroads movie did it haha
Andy LaRocque - King diamond/ his with on Individual thought patterns with Chuck (Don't think anyone mentioned him yet)
John Petrucci
Chuck Schuldiner - Death/ Control Denied
Michael romeo - Symphony X

Honorable mention: Misha Mansoor Periphery and Tosin Abasi who have influenced my playing the last two years. Tosin was the one who encouraged me to experiment with 8 strings. The other guys are my foundation and are forever major influences though.

 

[lawizeg]

Chris Letchford
AJ Minette
Julian Rodriguez
Tosin Abasi
Misha Mansoor/Mark Holcomb. Mark Mansoor.

 

[ZachK]

Prince
Jim Root (Slipknot/Stone Sour)
Josh Homme (QOTSA)
Paul Quinn (Saxon)
John 5 (Rob Zombie/Marilyn Manson)

 

[Matthew]

Rivers Cuomo- I was huge into Weezer when I first picked up guitar and Cuomo is a pretty skilled songwriter.
Daron Malakian- SoaD was my other favorite when I first started and Malakian's tight rythms and simple yet interesting clean/acoustic parts(soldier side and roulette come to mind) provided some great inspiration and learning tools.
Claudio Sanchez/Travis Stever- The way they work together is just magical. I began to take guitar seriously after hearing IKSSE:3 for the first time.
John Petrucci(and the rest of DT)-The most inspiring on the list for me; I didn't know what prog was until I forced myself to tolerate LaBrie's vocals and listened to a whole DT album.
Joe Satriani- I started with Satch after I really got into guitar. This lead me to Vai and even JP after watching a G3 DVD. My favorite piece of his is Searching.

 

[GizmoJunior]

Jimmy Page- I always remember listening to Led Zeppelin with my dad when he would drive me around as a kid
Tosin Abasi- His techniques are just flawless and inspire me to work harder
Michael Keene- I really like how he overall influences The Faceless and how he writes everything.
Marc Okubo- He is extremely creative and uses so many beautiful chords. Not to mention he's the only guitarist.
Joe Cocchi- Whenever I first started getting into metal I heard Within the Ruins. It blew my mind because I'd never heard anyone play like that. They just have their own sound and its amazing.

There are many more that influence me but these are my top five.

 

[Dawn of the Shred]

Changes every month or so but right now they are.
Dimebag- always my number one. Then
2. Paul gilbert
3. Peter joseph
4. Ola englund
5. Keith merrow

 

[bigredmetfan]

1. James Hetfield
2. Tom Morello (sooooo many broken toggle switches
3. Dino Cazeres
4. Stephen Carpenter
5. Some of my friends/past and present guitarists members that push me to play better and inioncorporate there styles

 

[s2k9k]

Nuno Bettencourt
Dimebag Darrell
Head/Munky
Stephen Carpenter
Steve Vai

 

[Asrial]

Okay, I've grown a little older and a little grumpier since last time I wrote here about influences. So take 2.

1) Devin Townsend
Got me converted to open C tuning. It's a damn fine tuning.

2) Brian Welch, AKA "Head"
This is more of a songwriters influence, but yeah.

3) David "Maxim" Micic
Yes it's djent, but his musical progression in his works are stunning to me.

4) Dino Cazares
Maybe he's not the biggest shredder, but when it comes to rhythm playing, that's the guy I'm looking to play like. Just fucking tightness.
(Special honorable mention to Ola Englund, but I haven't heard of him until fairly recently...)

5) John Petrucci
Do I need to say more?

 

[DrMachino]

1) Steve Vai

2) Fredrik Thordendal

3) John Petrucci

4) Misha, specifically from the recording section of this forum

5) Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring from between the buried and me