Playing Style
Tipton is known for his complex, sometimes classically-influenced solos, and he has a unique guitar-playing technique. Many of his solos are very difficult to transcribe, and his playing is notable for his double lead guitar trades with fellow Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing. Tipton's solos have maintained a consistent style for most of his career, but he has continuously incorporated new techniques into his playing over the years as he has developed as a guitarist.
In contrast to Downing, Tipton's solos tend to feature a more melodic, legato sound, making use of harmonic minor scales, Aeolian mode, pentatonic scales and techniques such as sweep-picking arpeggios, legato picking, tremolo/alternate picking, hammer-ons and pull-offs, and the solos often showcase both accuracy and aggression. However, like Downing, his playing sometimes emphasizes speed rather than precision, and Tipton has been known to occasionally use pinch harmonics and dive bombs in his solos. Tipton also has a trademark 2-strings bend/whammy dive screams for ending the solo, as evident in solos like All Guns Blazing, Heavy Metal, Demonizer, Bullet Train and Ram It Down. In 1978, Tipton began to incorporate tapping into his playing, which Downing promptly did as well. In the mid-1980s, both guitarists started to use the complex technique of sweep-picking, which can be notably heard on the title track of their 1990 album Painkiller. Both have continuously used these techniques ever since. His style is drenched in blues-based phrasing. His vibrato is medium speed, medium width — similar to Peter Green's. In 1997 Tipton released his solo album Baptizm Of Fire, featuring a host of well-known musicians including Billy Sheehan, Cozy Powell and Don Airey, among others where he showed his technical guitar playing abilities by composing one of the most intense and complex guitar work of his career. Despite being largely ignored by the mainstream music press, it is considered a modern classic by many music experts.
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