Inspiration - Yngwie Malmsteen
 

As you may tell from the album title, this album has song covers from a few number of artists that have influenced Yngwie Malmsteen (Jimi Hendrix, Uli Jon Roth, etc.) in his playing. I must say, he did a very good job on them. The main problem is what he loves doing with the songs, and that is incorporating his shred into all of the songs; however, he does such a nice job to keep the shred sound like the rest of the song. For example, Spanish Castle Magic is a blues song, but he added shred to it, but then again he made the shred sound as bluesy as possible. Bottom line is that Yngwie made extraordinary covers and even added his own playing in it while still keeping the feel of the song the same.

If you enjoy the classics and shred, check this album out. Or even if you the classics but not shred or vice-versa, still check it out, because it's worth it.

so being bored and feeling a little masochistic today i did a search for malmsteen covering spanish castle magic. there's only a live version on youtube (i won't embed it since it makes the site load slow).

YouTube - Yngwie Malmsteen - Spanish Castle Magic

the band only seems to know how to groove in default 80s cheese metal but whatever this is about guitar. in the same way that discretion is the better part of valor restraint is the better part of the blues. overplaying EVERY single lick possible in the solo and trying to offset it by overextending a single bend doesn't make up for his lack of tact.

he almost had me fooled for the 2nd solo though, he started out decent enough but quickly went back into his comfort zone of playing way too many notes. granted hendrix embellished his solos live but he still let the music flow through him as opposed to maintaining rigid control through overplaying.

i understand he's all about shredding and jerking off is tons of fun but it does get old after a while.

in his defense i'll say that his take on hendrix is better than winger's cover of 'purple haze'

Yes, Yngwie did and still does a lot of shred, but he improves daily. For example, his blues is gradually decreasing in speed and focusing more on the feeling and melody. Young Yngwie was all about the speed, but the more he plays and the older he gets, he starts to understand more about what he's playing and contemplates what will go well with what. Yngwie, like wine, gets better with age.

Yngwie is pretty f*cking amazing in his technique. I'd certainly consider him the best in his field.

But then again, I'm not a big fan of "his field".

Jeez, is he still going? I hated his style when i was a kid but that was 20 years ago! i will give the vid a watch to see what he is about now.

Nope. It was tolerable enough until the solo, then he started fret wanking again and bored me. Was that Joe Lynn turner on vocals?

Yeah it was

I remember that because a guy I went to school with used to play that video EVERY break time :mad:

Sounds like a twat then!

His acoustic material is actually pretty good stuff. If you like neo classical.