Your top 5 writing influences?

[Jaredr24]

Which bands/musicians would you say influence your writing and playing the most? For me I'd have to say:

1. AB
2. Revis
3. Yellowcard
4. Periphery
5. Explosions in the Sky

Seems like all the songs I write sound like a mixture of at least 2 of those bands.

[AllC392Was]

1, Alter Bridge
2. Red

Pretty much it for me.

[austinjhnsn]

Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy
Ben Burnley
Shayley Bourget
Brent Smith (Leave a Whisper days)
Corey Taylor

[Decay]

Well, I'm only a lyricist, so...

Myles Kennedy
Corey Taylor
M. Shadows
Vlado Georgiev
Brent Smith

[Crumbso]

Mark Tremonti - Guitar influence. He basically kicks arse with heavy melodic guitar. A major major influence.

Ian Thornley - Guitar, vocal & lyrical influence. His songs are really grounded in reality.

Van Halen - Guitar (obviously) & trying to inject a sense of fun into heavy music

Queen - Showing the sheer variety within one genre. Freddie Mercury is also up there with Myles in terms of how great a singer/musician he was.

Pink Floyd - Just the sheer beauty and no sense of restriction. I try to learn about atmosphere from them. You don't need speed to be amazing or intense.

[Dolo]

Mark Tremonti - structure of song, rhythm/lead guitar playing
Adam Jones (Tool) - riffs/rhythm guitar
David Gilmour - blues lead guitar
Guys from Karnivool
Dream Theater

[Timotheus]

Alter Bridge - Probably more than I'm aware of, even when I play completely different music
John Mayer
Jeff Buckley
Steven Wilson and his projects
Band members

[TenaciousBe]

When I first started out in music and was learning to play, and had my no-talent butt rock band, I generally tried to emulate a lot of Tremonti's style but failed miserably. As a riff-writer, I ended up sounding much more like Barry Stock of Three Days Grace, circa their first couple albums, or Tony Rombola of Godsmack around their first album - not saying this is how they play, but I ended up doing a lot of Drop D / Open D5, one finger up and down the neck to build simple, heavy chord progressions. Built a little bit from there, but not much. Still don't really have the patience to learn/play much lead stuff. Maybe I should just be in a djent band.

When that band folded and I started doing acoustic singer/songwriter stuff, I stated that I wanted to sound like the bastard love child of Myles Kennedy, Butch Walker, and Christian Wilson (lead singer of defunct Orlando-area band Still Naive from the early 00s). Lofty goals, but I figure if you're gonna aim, aim big! In all reality, I don't know quite what I sound like. Never really been that good with categorizing my own stuff, I figure that's for others to decide. But generally sort of a Rob Thomas, early Train, Goo Goo Dolls (maybe?) sound, simple acoustic chord strumming - still with the acoustic, have a hard time playing anything leadish, or doing much fingerpicking at all if I intend to sing over it. In the last couple months I've really started to listen to a lot of more bluegrassy, NPR-style music (Bon Iver, Old Crow Medicine Show, Avett Brothers, The Lone Bellow, Trampled by Turtles, etc), but it hasn't really changed how I play unless I can find a decent group of people to get a full band together.

[JSlade]

Myles/Tremonti
Steven Wilson
Tool
Opeth
Troy Stetina

Kind of a weird combination, I think.

[mitch103]

Brad Delson (Linkin Park - Rhythm/Songwriting)
Mark Tremonti (Rhythm/Lead playing/Songwriting)
Zakk Wylde (Lead playing)
Stevie Ray Vaughn (Technique)

[Them Bones]

Alice In Chains(each member for each instrument)
Tool(the same)
Creed(97-02, every single member has influenced my writing)
Kyuss
Eddie Vedder/ Soundgarden
Jeff Buckley