Some of the coolest guitar songs are instrumental guitar tunes, which shine with their composition and ingenuity without the need for any lyrics. These epic compositions evoke amazing feelings and satisfy the guitarists intellectually with their inspirational licks, harmonies, melodies, and solos.
I tried to create the list as a mix of timeless classics of renowned guitar players and new amazingly-talented guitarists that became famous with social media like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. You can listen to any of them to get some inspiration and have fun with their jaw-dropping skills
Entre Dos Aguas – Paco De Lucia
One of the most important guitarists ever is Paco De Lucia, who creates unbelievable sounds with the nylon strings of his classical guitar. His technical capacity is unmatched, and he is one of the best songwriters as he builds amazing musical sentences. He is the master of telling a story with his instrument.
Entre Dos Aguas is one of the most famous tunes of the virtuoso guitarist. And this version, with the other two virtuosos, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola, is one of the best live guitar performances ever recorded.
For the Love of God – Steve Vai
The student of the grand master Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, is one of the most famous electric guitar players ever. The three-time Grammy Award winner has great knowledge of musical theory and attention to detail, creating very unusual harmonies and licks that are pure magic.
His most popular song is probably For The Love Of God, in which he solos beautifully on top of great arpeggiated progressions.
For the Love of God Guitar Tabs,
Apache – The Shadows
The iconic cowboy guitar song Apache by the 60’s guitar band The Shadows is another timeless classic song. The wild west-style song has amazing clean guitar tones with simple yet highly melodic guitar lines.
The clean guitar’s tone with reverb is simply impressive, and is a great instrumental guitar song for any intermediate guitarist to play and enjoy.
Classical Gas – Tommy Emmanuel
Tommy Emmanuel is one of the most unique guitar virtuosos with his peculiar style and experimental playing. He impacts listeners’ lives very deeply and enhances the music art with his innovative approach to the instrument. He mixes lots of genres in his music and creates unusual patterns with his acoustic guitar.
In this song, Classical Gas, you can feel everything I mentioned as Tommy flows from country and folk style to more Paco De Lucia realms and more classical styles, as well as modern percussive acoustic guitar playing.
Always With Me Always With You – Joe Satriani
One of the grand masters of electric guitar, the teacher of teachers, is the virtuoso Joe Satriani. Many famous guitarists today, like Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett, Andy Timmons, Alex Skolnick, and many more, are his students. He has been awarded for Grammy 15 times and sold more than 10 million albums worldwide. He is the best-selling instrumental rock guitarist of all time.
He collaborated with many rock stars like Mick Jagger and bands like Deep Purple in his career. His playing style is complete as he is a master of all techniques, including legato, two-handed tapping and arpeggio tapping, volume swells, harmonics, and extreme whammy bar effects.
This piece, Always With Me Always With You, is a more humble tune where Joe Satriani hangs around great melodies with a beautiful clean tone, creating amazing guitar passages instead of shredding his way through and showing off his skills.
Always With Me, Always With You Guitar Tabs
Wave Of Synergy – Angel Vivaldi
One of the newer guitar virtuosos is Angel Vivaldi from U.S.A. He is a highly prolific guitarist, who is known for his amazing guitar skills, many EPs and albums, as well as cinematic music videos.
This instrumental rock guitar song, Wave Of Synergy, is a killer song with amazing rock guitar riffs and heavy tones. Angel collaborates with Andy James, another virtuoso guitar player in the song, while the duo throws around amazing tapping partitions and rock-solid guitar licks.
Technical Difficulties – Racer X
Another super-skilled virtuoso guitar player is Paul Gilbert, who you might remember from the heavy metal band Mr. Big. He is considered one of the best shredders of all time as he is known for his highly technical fast playing style.
Technical Difficulties is one of his greates works with his heavy metal band called Racer X. The song has great heavy metal riffs and a shredding solo that shows all the skills of Paul Gilbert.
Rebel Rouser – Duane Eddy
Known for his twangy sound, Duany Eddy is one of the iconic rock and roll guitarists of the ’50s and ’60s. He sold more than 12 million records in 1963, and Rebel Rouser was one of his best tunes. He influenced many guitarists with this tune, including George Harrison, Hank Marvin, Bruce Springsteen, and Mark Knopfler.
Ghost Of The Mountain – Justin Johnson
Justin Johnson is an amazing country-rock-blues guitarist of our time. He is one of the most vital guitarists of this generation, as he creates amazing acoustic and electric blues-country guitar partitions.
Ghost Of The Mountain is a great song where he shows his skills with a slide and fingerpicked arpeggiated liens with a double-bass Travis picking pattern.
Ghost Of The Mountain Guitar Tabs
Let It Be – Mateus Asato
One of the most talented guitarists today is the Brazillian virtuoso Mateus Asato, who became famous thanks to his videos on Instagram. After that, he toured with countless pop stars and became a signature artist of Suhr guitars.
His playing consists of his own fingerstyle method of picking, which heavily relies on hybrid picking. He likes to create unique jazz progressions, and he uses double stops and complex single-string and chord slides very often.
Asato does not have many instrumental full tracks as he collaborates with different pop stars and artists mainly. But, he has some, in which he shows his purse skills and creativity. This one is his take on the great Beatles tune, Let It Be. He makes it so jazzy with hints of soul. He is called a neo-soul guitarist, and that is for a reason.
Eruption – Van Halen
Probably one of the most iconic guitar solos ever is Eruption by the great Eddie Van Halen. It is the solo that made tapping famous among guitarists, and his tone became a classic after the song.
Eddie Van Halen uses many iconic techniques in the song, like two-handed tapping, gonzo whammy bar dips, and artificial harmonics. It is truly an iconic epic rock tune that makes the guitar erupt like a volcano.
Before The Beginning – John Frusciante
John Frusciante is known for his playing style with amazingly melodic great sounding lines full of emotions before The Beginning is his tribute to the Maggot Brain of Funkadelic, as the songs resemble each other strongly.
The song is quite slow-paced with long-lasting sentimental bends and slides as well as the unique pickings style of John. Also, hats off to John Frusciante’s tone on this one, as it is one of the sweetest tones he ever created, in my opinion.
Before The Beginning Guitar Tabs
Little Wing – Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble
Little Wing is one of the legendary rock songs with great rhythm and blues inspirations. Stevie Ray Vaughan took the song to create an instrumental masterpiece with his great technical ability and unique Texas blues style, which won him a Grammy Award as the best instrumental rock song of the year.
Manhattan – Eric Johnson
Another well-known guitar virtuoso is Eric Johnson, with his jazz-rock fusion style. His playing style is very chill but highly technical. Another aspect Eric Johnson shines is his wonderful tones. He surprises every time with the amazing tones that he gets from his Strat.
Manhattan is a great guitar piece in that Eric plays great jazz fusion chord progressions with his inspirational clean tones.
Ocean – John Butler
John Butler is an American-Australian, highly talented acoustic guitarist who impresses audiences with his technical percussive style and the amazing compositions he makes. He reached number 1 on the Australian charts many times with his band John Butler Trio.
Ocean is one of the works of his solo career. The song has a beautiful melody before leaving place to a more percussive peak, where Butler uses many techniques like two-handed two-string tapping and percussive skills.
Conclusion
While there are countless amazing instrumental guitar songs that I could not add to the list, everyone would agree these tunes are some of the best ones. I tried to pick tracks from different genres and different artists as much as I could while building the list for you to explore different players and their approaches to music. So enjoy this guitar journey around the world of virtuoso players!