Just thought of another. I would never recommend this to anybody, but I know your picking technique is unnatural beyond sensibility, so I'll say it anyway: King Crimson: Fracture. I've listened to this song so many times, but never really appreciated the insanity of it until I tried to play it. Sure, it sounds absolutely beautiful (in the darkest way possible), but I would consider it one of the most difficult songs to play that I've ever seen. It's funny, because the left hand technique is pretty simple (though unorthodox, since it has a lot of whole tone scale melodies), while the right hand is flying around non-stop. At inhuman speeds....I mean, I've heard many a good sweep picker in my time, but never any who have pulled off anything as complex(picking-wise) as this. Fucking Fripp. One day he'll be revered for guitar playing as Bach or Mozart were for composition.
Mayberry's Finest said:
I think Tender Surrender or Blue Powder absolutely put to shame FTLOG.
Well, I'd say Tender Surrender is on par with FTLOG in terms of musical greatness, but I don't ind it to be nearly as challenging to pull off. I don't find Blue Powder as good as those two, but it definitely has some fiucking hard whammy dives and rises to try and emulate. I gotta get a floyd rose some day, instead of my damn customized fixed BC Rich bridge. I only got it fixed recently, and ironically, just after that, I started realizing how important subtle(and not so subtle) whammy phrasing can be to a songs feel.
So yeah, if you want to work on your whammy bar technique, blue Powder is a good route to go. The other Vai songs use it, well, but in a much more subtle way. And as far as I'm concerned, well-performed subtlety is much more difficult than fucked-up-madness (ala-Kerry King, or Vai's wilder stuff)
have fun
