10 Greatest Rock Instrumentals

Any great hard rock song has got to have a good melody. Whether it's coming from the guitar riff or from the singer, you need something the audience can latch onto so they can sing it back to you every night while you're on the road. Vocals normally get the job done the best, but the real artists grab their audience through pure music.

For the most part, instrumental cuts on albums seem to be an afterthought. Oftentimes, bands will throw little bits of music onto their record to either set up ambiance for the next track or to just noodle around in order to fill the runtime on the CD. However, many musicians have seen an instrumental as an opportunity to give the audience a glimpse of the band that they haven't seen before.

Instead of making you want to raise your fist in the air and chant along, these tunes have been able to put the listener in a trance as the music hits you one wave at a time. While the fairweather fans are sitting there looking at their watches, the real music nerds will sit there in awe, unable to get enough of the sonic bliss that these tunes still give us. Put your headphones on and listen for yourself.

There's probably a good subsect of people who know this tune exclusively from Pulp Fiction. Released at the peak of the surf rock movement, Dick Dale's take on the traditional tune "Misirlou" was one of the starts for the heavier side of rock going forward.

Looking back on it now, surf rock doesn't necessarily seem all that exciting, with most of the records being just plays on one string that kept ascending. However, the magic of "Misirlou" comes in the absolute ferocity with which Dale strikes the string, as if he's trying to choke the life out of his instrument. When asked about his signature style, even Dale didn't consider himself a proper guitar player but rather an artist who banged on his instrument to get the natural sounds he craved.

The tune itself was already intriguing before the guitar was put on, with the melody providing an Eastern alternative to the blues patterns that were typically expected from rock players at the time. The way this tune moved the people made everyone want to play with more grit, which led to higher volumes and eventually the distortion we all know and love. While other surf rock may sound cheesy nowadays, "Misirlou" has aged like fine wine, with a sound that will never cease to excite.