Even among virtuoso players, Steve Morse could be considered a daredevil. In following his subversively creative muse through groundbreaking projects in fusion, rock, and metal, Steve has routinely faced down licks other players simply won't touch. Seemingly unhindered by the physical limitations of the instrument, and equally unimpeded by barriers of genre, Steve has forged a distinctively -- to use his term -- un-guitaristic style. His work as the creative force behind The Dixie Dregs reinvigorated the fusion movement of the late seventies with an injection of sounds that was equal parts roots and sophistication. In the process, Steve stole elements of rock, jazz, and bluegrass to create spellbinding unison lines for guitar and fiddle, pianistic one-note-per-string arpeggio figures, and greasy chicken picking guitar grooves. Without the safety net of guitar-approved box patterns and legato cop outs, Steve innovated an approach to right-hand technique that remains the benchmark of dexterity on the instrument. In particular, his approach to alternate picked arpeggios, and other tricky string-skipping motifs, has never been equaled. Since 1994, Steve has applied these talents as successor to the iconic Ritchie Blackmore in the legendary proto-metal band Deep Purple. Steve's iconoclastic compositional and mechanical approaches have helped the band break new stylistic ground, winning acclaim from both critics and long-time Purple fans alike. Not bad for a Dreg.

Watching Mike Stern play, it's clear he has no preconceived notion of difficulty. By any rational calculus of the sophistication of the stuff he attempts, the gusto with which he just goes for it falls somewhere between naiive and downright foolish. In his weekly jam session at New York's 55 Bar, Mike fearlessly reels off one statement after another of beautifully executed bop and rock fusion, glued together with his indelible sense of time, and peppered with his trademark arpeggiated stunners. This is all accomplished with seemingly little heed to the complex mechanics involved, let alone the dangers of attempting such feats in an intimate live setting. Part of this is his upbringing. Cutting his teeth with Blood, Sweat, and Tears in the '70s, and the legendary Miles Davis in the '80s, the nightly baring of one's soul was de rigueur. As Mike tells it, Miles always went for it, and if he missed a note, "he'd just get the next one." Moreover, by cribbing keyboard lines from the likes of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, and horn lines from the Brecker brothers, Mike conveniently sidestepped many of the guitar's weary cliches. Nowhere is this more evident than his masterful command of the flowing line. Mike's gracefully clean picking across abritrary fingerings is the result of years of painstaking transcription from other instruments. And yet his command of the unorthodox mechanics involved is completely natural, seemingly unrehearsed. If you've seen his live show, you know that this spontaneous vibe could not be more congruent with the huge energy of the man himself. And if he flubs a note? As Miles would say, so what.

What do you get when you mix one part Chet Atkins, one part Eddie Van Halen, one part John Bonham, and one part David Copperfield? Possibly the most thrilling concert experience any guitar fan -- or for that matter, anybody -- could have. You may have seen Tommy Emmanuel in his immensely popular YouTube clips, but the sheer amount of excitement the man can generate from a single acoustic guitar really must be experienced in person. In his two-hour live set, Tommy wheels effortlessly from time-honored standards like Chet's Windy and Warm to genre-defying performance art like his own Initiation. In the latter piece, Tommy coaxes an enthralling array of animalistic and meteorological sounds from the instrument with nothing more than a rack-mount delay and his own limitless creativity. By the time he arrives at his entirely guitar-based percussion solo, you'd be forgiven for thinking that his virtuosic thumb picking and flat picking techniques were hum-drum by comparison. Nevertheless, Tommy's right hand is flawless, even if his live show quite literally steals all the thunder. In fact, in the concert I filmed for the Code, Tommy's thunderous performance of Initiation actually blew the bass cabinet in the PA. Thankfully only he and his engineer noticed -- the crowd was too busy applauding.

Frank Gambale may have made paradigm-shifting contributions to the technical development of the guitar, but that's not why you should listen to him. No, that rationale has more to do with his boundless melodic creativity, prodigious harmonic dexterity, indomitably funky sense of time, and unmistakable rich tone. In a way, the indelible stamp Frank has left on the technique of sweep picking is almost a distraction from the sublime musicianship of the man himself. To watch him play is to witness the zen-like dissolution of the mechanical into the musical -- a seamless fabric of sweep, alternate, and legato techniques that give voice to the swinging muse within. Frank's sophisticated blend of mechanical approaches is both awe-inspiring and a textbook example of polished mechanics that is a perfect fit with the film's investigative journey. In the Cracking the Code, we observe in detail the intricate and fascinating ways in which Frank's famed sweep technique lives and breathes in the context of real-world improvisation.

Jimmy Bruno's relentlessly pulsing melodies recall a time when harmony and rhythm were inextricably linked, so much so that it's practically impossible to listen to him -- accompanied or otherwise -- without at least one finger or foot tapping along in time. This is true even at moderate tempos, when Jimmy's indefatigable swing becomes more of a stately sway, never losing its urgency amidst his frequently dizzying harmonic excursions. Powering all this is a commanding blend of alternate and sweeping techniques that is uniquely tailored to the kind of intervallic lyrical ideas that flow so effortlessly from his fingers. When Jimmy related in our interview the seemingly incredible fact that he had never really used the box-position blues scale, it was only further testament to the scant role that licks and patterns divorced from both tempo and chordal structures would ever play in his creative voice. Simply, the man just does not know how to be un-musical. That this fact might make Jimmy a jazz purist says more about jazz than it does about Jimmy: great musicianship never goes out of style.

Behind some of the biggest names in country and rock is one of the biggest names in country guitar. A session player and sideman since his teens, Albert Lee's talent took center stage in the early '70s as lead guitarist in the seminal roots rock group Head, Hands, and Feet. One part Doobie Brothers, one part Stanley Brothers, the short-lived HH&F nevertheless supplied enough spiritual grist for generations of alt-country rockers. A key ingredient in this was Albert's groundbreaking sound -- an effortless fusion of picking, slides, bends, and rolls that evoked country while embracing the energy of rock. Albert's HH&F country-rock showpiece Country Boy was a huge crossover hit when it was covered by flatpick legend Ricky Skaggs in the '80s, introducing the toe-tapping virtuosity of bluegrass to a wider commercial audience. Meanwhile Albert's ever-expanding list of fans grew to include notably non-country luminaries like Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen, both of whom have shared the stage with him. Indeed, few players can claim so much admiration from so many musical quadrants -- fitting for a country player who was born in England, raised on rock, and who has called the rolling hills of California his home for the majority of his highly influential career.

Recorded in 1986 and released in 1987, Star Licks' Master Session: Michael Angelo was the first serious example of what would become a golden age of instructional shred guitar. Followed shortly by Paul Gilbert's Intense Rock for REH Video and Vinnie Moore's Advanced Lead Guitar Techniques for Hot Licks, Mike's Master Session matched them both with an impossible display of chops that, from an instructional perspective, could only be called ironic. This was the guitar equivalent of a Schwarzenegger movie, a full-on assault of 24-fret scale runs, six-string sweeping, single-note-per-string alternate picking, and over-the-neck and double-guitar daring. Mike's more student-friendly but no less terrifying follow-up was the acclaimed Speed Kills, for Metal Method Productions, and it too was augmented by the flights of ambidextrous fancy that have since become Batio performance hallmarks. But throughout both videos, and throughout Mike's trailblazing career as band member and solo artist, it's his remarkable right hand that steals the show. Quite simply, Mike is the owner of one of the most mechanically efficient alternate picking techniques on the planet. From his unique bridged-wrist motion, to his elegant approach to string switching, Mike's alternate picking innovations are a tremendous gift to players everywhere, and a milestone in the history of virtuoso guitar.

Texas-based guitar prodigy Rusty Cooley is a leader of a new wave of shred innovators, the moto perpetuo of the band Outworld, and a technical omnivore in the best sense of the term. He freely mixes alternate picking, sweep picking, and legato techniques in his playing, and is in this respect a true bearer of the masters' torch. In addition to being a monster player, Rusty is a perennial student of the guitar with an open mind and extensive library of videos of his own. He readily accepted the challenge of being filmed, interviewed, poked, and prodded. The result of this experiment is a fascinating compilation of live-action and slow-motion footage of one of the most devastatingly fast and accurate pickers ever to terrorize a fretboard.

It happens that one of the most humble souls in virtuoso guitar is also among the most humbling. Scotty Anderson could make almost anyone want to put it in the case, but you'd never hear a boastful word from the man himself. Given the immensity of his talents, his humility is downright astonishing. Scotty's multi-genre mastery began with a love of Chet Atkins and flowed through bop masters like Tal Farlow and Joe Pass. What results is a surprisingly smooth blend of western swing, rockabilly, and jazz -- a rootsy assemblage of flavors that is as apple pie as it is haute cuisine. In melding these diverse elements, Scotty developed an equally opportunistic array of mechanical techniques from the worlds of fingerstyle and picking. Utilizing a shaved-down, thin-gauge thumbick, along with the index, middle, and ring fingers of the right hand, no string on Scotty's Telecaster is safe. Scotty simply dominates the instrument, effortlessly moving from fingerpicked arpeggios to alternate-picked bop lines to finger-picked three-note-per-string scales in the context of a single run. The incredibly tasty sounds that emerge from this combination have to be heard to be believed. I caught up with Scotty at Bert Elliott Sound in Atlanta during the tracking of his latest record, and personally sampled some of the sensational flavors the modest master was cooking.

Imagine you're a college student. Now imagine your midterm is a recital in which you will perform your own meticulous transcription of a classic Yngwie solo. Are you at the Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft, Wizardry, and Shred Guitar? No, you're at Boston's famed Berklee School of Music, taking a seminar in advanced metal techniques. And, of course, your professor is none other than resident metal guru Joe Stump. When your day job involves giving away all your secrets to a small army of hungry shredders, you better do your own homework. And Joe is a supremely practiced player. The only thing more pronounced than Professor Stump's New Yawkease is the effortless fluidity with which he blazed through over an hour of neoclassical mayhem beneath the ShredCam's 500-watt halogen. Nary a sweat was broken, and few, if any, licks needed a retake. Impressive. Check the accompanying clip for a buttery smooth series of ascending mixed-minor economy picking runs. Note that these runs both end andbegin on downstrokes, with little perceptible gap in between. Clearly Joe's major was minor.

A bluegrass competition veteran at the ripe old age of 25, Carl Miner placed second in the famed National Flatpick Championship in Winfield Kansas when he was only sixteen, won it a year later at 17, and placed second again in 2007. This seeming step back from the top of the victory podium belies the inherently problematic nature of artistic competition: Winfield judges, who listen in by microphone from a sequestered location, are saddled with the frequently arbitrary task of narrowing a 40-person field over the course of nearly six hours of playing. It's also an injustice to the invariably greater harmonic wisdom that comes with experience. For the 2007 competition, Carl put together a program that displayed exactly such wisdom by including, among other things, an elegant bluegrass reworking of the 1924 Gershwin classic Oh, Lady Be Good. In light of the staunchly traditionalist sensibility of the Winfield festival, the choice of a song made famous by Fred Astaire and Ella Fitzgerald was as unlikely as any competitor could have made. And yet in Carl's hands it became an apt vehicle for his consummate blend of lyricism and athleticism, both evocative of its jazz roots and deferential to its bluegrass context. And for that reason it was easily the most sophisticated musical performance of the day.

One of the brightest lights among the modern gypsy jazz stylists is French transplant Stephane Wrembel. Raised on rock 'n' roll but steeped in the gypsy ambience of his hometown of Fountainebleau, Stephane brings an imposing physicality to the time-honored gypsy technique. He applies the gypsy pick model -- a concise system of mechanical principles nearly unchanged for a century -- with devastating efficacy to the aggressive scalar, arpeggiated, and chromatic runs that are the genre's hallmarks. Passed down through generations of master players, the technique owes its popular recognition to the efforts of gypsy icon Django Reinhardt. Much like Yngwie fifty years later, Django embodied not only a new standard of virtuosity, but the ethos of an entire musical genre. He was as much a member of the gypsy school as he was its greatest exponent, and through his numerous representative compositions, he became a tectonic force in disseminating the uniquely standardized gypsy mechanical model. Stephane, along with bassist Jared Engel and washboard wizard David Langlois, delivers an interpretation of the Reinhardt canon that is tasty and melodic, and pulsing with the street-smart funk of his adoptive Brooklyn turf.

Marshall Harrison is an amazing fusion player from Houston, Texas who wields a facile command of a wide range of techniques to coax elegant, liquid, almost pianistic lines from the instrument. He is an archetype of the modern guitarist, choosing seemingly at will between alternate picking, sweeping, chicken picking and legato mechanics. A self-described "lazy" player who strives for, and achieves, a striking economy of motion in his sweep picking, he is nevertheless quite the aggressive and clean alternate picker as we'll see in the film. Check the attached clip, wherein Marshall lays down a virtuosic version of the Paul Gilbert Lick played starting on an upstroke. He drives this headlong into a flawless example of 3nps descending sweeping, and caps the phrase with an enigmatic modal legato statement. Is it something in the water down in Texas?

The difficulties imposed by playing with a pick are universal, and challenge all guitarists, regardless of musical style. A couple detours to visit with ace players from other genres to proves this point. Bluegrass master and former National Flatpicking Champion Orrin Star rips through some hot fiddle tunes on his vintage 1962 Martin Dreadnought. Orrin's use of alternate picking to play one-note-per-string arpeggios at blistering speeds is generally unheard-of in rock. But it's common in bluegrass, where it is known as "cross-picking". An analysis of Orrin's formidable picking and cross-picking chops reveals, not surprisingly, the same set of right-hand motions we find in shred.


Just as the arrival of the compact disc in the '80s turned master-quality audio into a reality for the average household, the arrival of the VCR launched a golden age of guitar instruction by transforming the living room into something resembling a classroom. Followed in the '90s by the DVD, and soon thereafter by the internet, the rapid proliferation of digital media has enabled the instantaneous, global dissemination of highly specialized technical knowledge in ways that would have been purely fantastical to our cassette-rewinding forbears. So in addition to live interviews, The Code also includes a probing analysis of landmark guitar instructional releases whose incalculable influence on the technical development of the instrument parallels that of the artists who created them.

None other than John McLaughlin has donated select footage from his incomparable 2004 DVD This Is The Way I Do it. Deftly melding John's consummate musicianship with his long-standing love of technology, This Is The Way I Do It was hand-crafted by John to exploit the unique features of the DVD format to the fullest pedagogical advantage. In particular, John sagely utilizes an often sorely-neglected component of the DVD specification -- multiple camera angles -- to provide a user-selectable view of both fretting and picking hands. Combined with painstakingly notated on-screen transcriptions of the disc's numerous improvisational segments, John's superbly prescient move to include clear right hand coverage makes This Is The Way I Do It a solid platform for observing his famous command of pick mechanics. The result is a fascinating deconstruction of the master's incredible picking hand that even he may not have envisioned. John, just wait until you see this!

Courtesy of Warner Brothers Publications, the Code also includes footage from pioneering instructional releases in the history of rock and metal. In that history, one name needs no middle initial: Yngwie. Yet despite his immense influence on successive generations of rock guitarists, mechanical details of Yngwie's revolutionary style are often misinterpreted. Through a critical look at Yngwie's 1991 REH instructional video, Yngwie Malmsteen, we clarify how important techniques like alternate picking, sweeping, and legato interact in the unorthodox mechanical model of the genre-defining master.

Though Paul Gilbert may be best known for his hits with Mr. Big, it is his 1987 REH instructional video, Intense Rock, that may be his most enduring contribution to the guitar. Filmed at the tail end of the Racer X years, it is among the most influential examples of three-note-per-string playing ever committed to video. And if you've ever tried to alternate-pick a three-note-per-string scale across all six strings, ascending and descending, at high speed, you know how hard it is. Almost twenty years after Intense Rock was released, those difficulties remain as real as ever. In Cracking the Code, we'll take another look at the daunting challenges imposed by alternate pick mechanics.

I'm Troy Grady, and Cracking the Code is the story of how I conquered picking technique, from confident Van Halen acolyte, to humble supplicant at the altar of neoclassical virtuosity. As so often happens in life, we must descend to ascend, and it wasn't until admitting utter defeat at the hands of Rising Force that the secrets of plectrum dominance began to unravel. Twenty years, several thousand hours of practice, and one slow-motion camera later...