Customer Reviews

Yngwie J. Malmsteen's - Rising Force: Guitar Recorded Versions, with Notes & Tab

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Yngwie Malmsteen's first album, note by note. A classic of neoclassic rock and metal, a masterpiece. Contains big part of all his techniques and some extraordinarily nice melodies and harmonies, "easy" to learn with tabulature. A must for every rock and metal guitarist!

This is a great book. Its a great way to pick up Yngwie's picking and sweeping style. Great exercises for more dexterity as well. The material in it is hard, so I recommend you buy "Speed Mechanics" by Troy Stetina, before you try Yngwie's stuff. Have fun.

Okay, so why do I specify the "US" in my title, well because the Japanese had been transcribing Yngwie from his days in Steeler and Alcatraz, but America didn't really become hip to Yngwie until the release of Rising Force. Before then he was more like an underground cult figure than a major international artist, which he became after Rising Force.

I can remember as though it were yesterday the release of this book so many years ago. Finally, all of us guitar players trying to figure out how Yngwie did it, long before Youtube, Windows Media Player, the Internet, and all of the other wonderful resources guitar players have these days, had a book to learn from. Transcribed by none other than the great Wolf Marshal. I knew about Wolf from his days as a transcriber for Guitar for the Practicing Musician, and his transcriptions were always cleaner and more accurate than the rest. You could tell Wolf was simply on a different level from the other transcribers working for the magazine at the time. Of course now Wolf is legendary in the guitar world, but back then he was hardly the name he is now. Still, those of us who knew about were even more excited the book was transcribed by him. I remember the countless hours pouring over the songs, doing my best to get them up to speed with the record, and usually failing. I would follow the transcriptions note for note, including the suggested fingering for solo's. It is only now many years later, as a much more advanced musician, and years of studying Yngwie's technique that I can pick out the various errors in the book.

So much of the suggested fingering is flat out wrong, or at least not the way Yngwie plays it. The arpeggios are tabbed incorrectly, especially the arpeggio work for the interlude of As Above So Below. Plus when you slow the songs down you will hear various passages transcribed incorrectly, not just the fingering, but the actual notes (see the transcriptions for Evil Eye and Far Beyond the Sun for examples of passages transcribed incorrectly). If you know how to read music I would suggest going that route, as the notation is more correct generally than the tablature. If you can't read music notation, the tab will work, but as always with any guitar tab book, it is also best to slow the song/solo down and listen to it with your own ears. It also helps to study the artist and learn how he does the things he does. Knowing the techniques the artist uses and how he does what he does will make learning songs that much easier, and more accurate.

Much credit to Wolf for wading out in the waters alone, he was really the first guy to transcribe Yngwie. And while his work for Rising Force was okay, it got much better on subsequent releases (Marching Out and Trilogy), after Wolf had more time to study Yngwie's technique. Even they are not 100% correct however, but better. This is definitely a three star effort however, and a good way to learn the songs off the album, with the caveat you learn Yngwies way of playing, and listen to the songs slowed down for verification. I would also suggest instead of just being a tablature only guitar player, to learn to read music and understand theory. While it's not essential to read music to become a great guitar player, the best guitar players do have a basic understanding of theory. Some guitar players think learning music theory will stifle their creativity, wrong! Learning the language of music will do the opposite, it will allow your true creativity to shine through. Just ask Steve Vai about that.

Wolf Marshall's tabs are dead accurate. The only thing to be aware of is that sometimes Yngwie plays the same notes, but only differently than the book instructs. The two most obvious things are thant Yngwie doesn't use the whammy bar that often for the super high bends, but his fingers. (Scalloped fretboards make bending a helluva lot easier!) Also, Yngwie doesn't use economy picking for three note per string scale runs, but rather straightforward alternate picking.
All that aside, this is still the best tab you'll find for the Rising Force album; it even includes the bass lines! Highly recommended.

this album is one of the best instrumental shred albums in my opinion and this tab book is a very good and accurate way too learn all the great songs for this album.. Bottom line buy this book if you want to learn these songs accurately and increase your playing skills, because anyone can interpret these songs and make them their own and replace the hard licks in these songs with their own licks and all that is very very good for developing creative skills but if you want to learn technique and get some different patterns down your belt I would suggest learning from this book deff worth the money

For the most part a great book to learn malmsteen. i don't think that the book is perfect to how malmsteen actually plays (vibratos and other expressions) the songs, but it's only with minor things. i would have liked it if there was a few pages in the beginning explaining malmsteen's style and giving performance notes for every song. but for the price this book is at, it's a helluva lot better than trying to learn the album by ear!

Malmsteen is the MASTER of THE ELECTRIC GUITAR on EARTH.
This is his MASTERPIECE.

Nice music, but this transcription is extremely inaccurate. Maybe Yngwie could spend like a few minutes checking the accuracy of things that bear his professional name and impact on his image as a professional? Hal Leonard why did you put out a book with zillions of mistakes? Have you no shame?

Look man: Yngwie uses left hand for vibrato, virtually never the bar -as is notated half the time. Wide vibrato is not oscillation between half steps with a tie inserted! What about having the artist sit down and play it slowly for a video camera. Are you guys so hard up, you have to GUESS all the notes, or did some computer program try to write the book? And another thing, adding comments like: Stately, With Feeling, or Echo Deviced Used. . . does not make you sound thorough, it merely further illustrates that your company places no value on excellence and misses the point. We can hear echo! We want to accurately know where the notes are. There are no indications of picking or fingerings, only fretting (which is probably whatever their computer HAL guessed at).

Also, artists such as Vai and Malmsteen: you should go after these companies. You complain about P2P sharing and revenue loss, but what about YOU going after these companies for price fixing and sloppy arrangements which cheat US!?

What an amzing guitar player. Arpeggios and sweeps galore. How do you say his name, again?

Mother Freegin' awesome! (DETH TO THE UNJUST!