Suggested Listening

Recommended listening (just put these into the YouTube search).

There are tons more, but these are some of the most influential ones for me.

• Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. I won’t babble on about these types of well known shredders, but these guys were my favourites.

• Guthrie Govan and Mattias IA Eklundh

• Genesis (the older stuff), Spocks Beard and Jolly (check out Firewell by them) for the prog stuff (although Devin has everything from really heavy to really mellow).

• Devin Townsend, Strapping Young Lad, Meshuggah, Scar Symmetry for the really heavy stuff.

• Pat Metheny

• Danny Gatton. A great guitarist, and he had humour.

• Stevie Ray Vaughan (OK, so this is a bit obvious) and Gary Moore. Both did blues, but Moore also did heavy. For more blues, check out Robben Ford or ZZ Top.

• Brad Mehldau or George Shearing for mellow piano stuff

• Mark Murphy for cool jazz vocals (especially the soft stuff)

• Frank Zappa. His catalogue is vast and varied, but IMO it’s all great. He was also a great guitarist.

• Steve Lukather and Jeff Beck. They’re both very tasteful guitarists in their own ways.

• Wes Montgomery for jazz (among others).

• Sissel Kyrkjebo (a great Norwegian soprano).

• Monty Python. We all need comedy.

• Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.

• Jens Johansson and Derek Sherinian for rock and metal keyboards.

• Robert Johnson for really old blues.

• Tower of Power or James Brown for some seriously cool funk. Or Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters.

• Nils Landgren, a great Swedish trombone player who does all manner of funk and fusion.

• Pekka Pohjola. He was a Finnish bass player and composer whose music is hard to categorize. Just check him out. One of my all time favourites.

• Vesa-Matti Loiri. A great Finnish singer, who’s incredibly expressive.