Jason Becker

• Clarity over thickness — Becker's gain is high but never muddy; forward midrange is essential
• Active pickups or high-output humbuckers for the articulation the tone requires — single coils won't track fast lines cleanly
• Vibrato is wide and fast — classically trained, every sustained note gets controlled musical vibrato, never static
• Harmonic minor scale is home territory — E harmonic minor underpins most of Perpetual Burn
• Boost the mids on the amp EQ — not a scooped metal tone, it's a singing, present midrange
• Alternate picking at slow tempo first — Becker practised every sequence perfectly at low speed before increasing
• Study 'Air' and 'Mabel's Fatal Fable' for harmonic sophistication — the technique serves composition, not the reverse
• Let the cranked tube amp add natural compression — Becker's sustain comes from amp response, not a compressor pedal
• Learn Paganini's Caprice No. 5 alongside Becker's compositions — Becker transcribed and learned Paganini directly, and his scalar run shapes and arpeggio patterns are often direct adaptations of Paganini's violin writing applied to guitar; understanding the source makes the guitar adaptations much easier to internalise
• Becker's phrasing includes musical rests within technically demanding runs — not every bar is filled with 32nd notes. Practise inserting deliberate spaces into fast lines to create the compositional breathing that distinguishes his playing from players who simply run scale patterns continuously without musical purpose
• The Carvin X100B gain structure runs the preamp hard into a hot output section — compensate with a modern high-gain amp by setting gain at 7 rather than maximum, which leaves dynamic headroom for the pick attack to create slight variation in saturation level. Maximum gain collapses the dynamics that give the tone its punch
• Two-hand tapping on Becker's "Altitudes" requires that both hands tap with equal volume and velocity — the tapping hand is often quieter than the picking hand for most players, which creates an inconsistent melodic line. Practise tap-pull-off sequences with a metronome, and use a volume meter to verify that tapped notes are equal in level to fretted notes

Jason Becker played a Carvin DC127 through a Carvin X100B and Marshall JCM800, producing neoclassical shred of extraordinary emotional depth. His career was cut short by ALS in 1990, but the recordings he left — with Cacophony and on Perpetual Burn — remain the most harmonically sophisticated shred albums ever made.

Jason Becker was a shred prodigy with Cacophony and David Lee Roth who was diagnosed with ALS at age 20. Paralysed and unable to speak or move, he has continued composing music through a eye-tracking system, becoming one of the most inspiring figures in guitar history.