I'd like to find music that won't distract me when I'm doing tasks. Vocals pull too hard on my focus, and I end up vascillating between work and tunes; resulting in epic time suck. I'm currently listening to Mozart's violin concertos, which works beautifully, but is about as energizing as Nyquil.
This is a thread I started awhile back, may have some good recommendations for you and perhaps others can contribute more recent suggestions: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/progpower-usa/510593-metal-instrumentals.html Lately I've been listening to a lot of David Valdes (instrumental shredder), especially his album IMHOTEP, but you may be looking for something different than the guitar overdose stuff
I've always been a big fan of Mark Wood who plays an electric violin. He has several CD's out, Voodoo Violince is my favorite. Monkey Bats and The Howling are awesome tunes. I can't find The howling on youtube which is my favorite song but heres a substandard quality video of Monkey Bats so you get an idea of what he's like. (Actually I found a copy of the song on Bandcamp at http://markwoodmusic.bandcamp.com/track/howling-2 you can also hear samples on the amazon.com page [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Voodoo-Violince-Mark-Wood/dp/B0014D5KQG/ref=sr_1_3_title_0_main?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1405265315&sr=1-3&keywords=mark+wood[/ame] Guitarist are a dime a dozen, you can go with the old standby's like Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malsteen, Eric Johnson but personally I'm a big of fan of Danny Gatton. He plays more bluesy rock.
Check out the Canadian band Pomegranate Tiger. Their debut release "Entities" absolutely slays! http://youtu.be/9mYqA-CclI8
I own a lot of instrumental albums (I was a MAJOR fan of Shrapnel records back in the day)....hands down, my favorite albums were Marty Friedman's "Dragon's Kiss" and Jason Becker's "Perpetual Burn". Greg Howe and Tony Macalpine are also favorites of mine.
The only instrumental band that I have ever been tempted to book at the festival because it's just awesome:
Wow. Normally instruments do not do much for me as I like to follow the story/lyrics. But this is an 'awesome' musical story. Will check them out.
I'm not sure how to categorize this let alone pronounce it, but Koyaanisqatsy is pretty epic. Lots of proggy stuff, symphonic elements and some crunchy guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-YVJPeXKqE
I can't post videos from my phone, but you might want to check out Points North. They aren't really metal, but rather hard rock influenced heavily by Rush. They are all instrumental. The bass player on their first album was Damien Sisson (of Death Angel) and their current bassplayer is Uriah Duffy (Whitesnake).
I can't remember if this band was on one of the sampler discs a few years back or whether they just placed an ad in the PP program, but Noumeno is a good proggy instrumental metal band to check out. I agree with the Joseph Magazine recommendation too.
Loving this thread and all the great recommendations. However, If I need to get things done, I prefer Tangerine Dream synth music. Joe Satriani is my go-to for guitar style stuff....it's not too overly busy, nice melodies, great production. Some of the fusion things are just too over the top distracting for me to concentrate on the matter at hand, but great to listen to.
CANVAS SOLARIS from Georgia. I put out two releases and Ken at Sensory/Laser's Edge released 3. all amazing.
