Neo-classical metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is heavily influenced by classical music. It refers to very technical playing, consisting of elements borrowed from both classical and heavy metal music. Yngwie Malmsteen, the most notable musician in the sub-genre, contributed greatly to the development of the style in the 1980s. Other notable players in the genre are Jason Becker, Shawn Lane, Paul Gilbert, Jeff Loomis, Ron Jarzombek, Tony MacAlpine and Vinnie Moore.

Neo-classical metal takes its name from a broad conception of classical music. In this it is a concept distinct from how neoclassicism is understood within the classical music tradition. Neoclassical music usually refers to the movement in musical modernism in which composers gained influence from the Classical period. This period roughly spans the years from 1750 to 1810 with the best known composers of strictly classical music including Mozart and Haydn and also Beethoven during the early part of his career before he laid the musical foundations of the Romantic movement in music. The Classical period was a time in which rigidly structured musical forms such as the sonata, symphony and string quartet were developed. Musical neoclassicism developed roughly a century after the end of the Classical period and peaked during the years in between the two World Wars. It was a reaction against late 19th and early 20th-century Romanticism as embodied in the works of composers such as Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler who had stretched both musical language and musical form to produce massive works where the limits of tonality were broken. Neoclassical composers include both Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith.

Jeff Loomis (born September 14, 1971) is an American musician, best known for his role as lead guitarist in the progressive metal band Nevermore.

Loomis got his first instrument at nine or ten years old, but didn't start practicing seriously until around the age of 15. As a teenager in Wisconsin he played in a handful of cover bands and three death metal bands before joining more established bands. At the age of 16, Loomis won Wisconsin's Guitar Wars contest.^{[citation needed]}

He was auditioned for Megadeth (during the So Far, So Good...So What! era) at the age of 16, after their lead guitarist Jeff Young was fired from the band. After they played a few songs together, Dave Mustaine, the band's frontman and other lead guitarist, thanked Loomis and told him that one day he would become a great guitar player, but because of his age he was not right for the position. Jeff Loomis saw Cacophony on tour, and told Marty Friedman, who became very interested, about the audition. Marty tried out for the position and joined the band in 1989. In 2005, Loomis would then share the stage with Megadeth, as the lead guitarist for Nevermore as part of Mustaine's Gigantour festival. Jeff began to work on his solo album "Zero Order Phase". At this time Megadeth were having tryouts for a new guitarist once again and invited Jeff to join them. Jeff turned the band down in order to keep working on his solo album. Coincidentally, Loomis' co-guitarist in Nevermore, Chris Broderick, auditioned for Megadeth and was given the part.

Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770) was an Italianbaroque composer and violinist.

Tartini was born in Piran, a town on the peninsula of Istria, in the Republic of Venice (now in Slovenia) to Gianantonio – native of Florence – and Caterina Zangrando, a descendant of one of the oldest aristocratic Piranian families.

It appears Tartini's parents intended him to become a Franciscan friar and in this way he received a basic musical training. He studied law at the University of Padua, where he became skilled at fencing. After his father's death in 1710, he married Elisabetta Premazone, a woman his father would have disapproved of because of her lower social class and age difference. Unfortunately, Elisabetta was a favorite of the powerful Cardinal Giorgio Cornaro, who promptly charged Tartini with abduction. Tartini fled Padua to go to the monastery of St. Francis in Assisi, where he could escape prosecution. While there he took up playing the violin.

Legend says when Giuseppe Tartini heard Francesco Maria Veracini's playing in 1716, he was impressed by it and dissatisfied with his own skill. He fled to Ancona and locked himself away in a room to practice, according to Charles Burney, "in order to study the use of the bow in more tranquility, and with more convenience than at Venice, as he had a place assigned him in the opera orchestra of that city".