Please join us in welcoming guitarist Allen Van Wert to our Twelve Twenty-Four Family. We look forward to working with Allen over the next couple of months as our preparations for this season’s tour start to heat up. Just wait until you hear him play!
Allen began playing guitar using a homemade guitar built by his father. A self-taught musician, he earned a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston but decided to pass on the scholarship to pursue a sound all his own.
Allen earned the nickname R0B0T for a new guitar playing technique he invented in 2000 known as “Robot Tapping.” He used this unique technique on his 2005 instrumental debut album entitled ROBOT. In 2016 Allen invented and developed an artificial intelligence guitar training app called the Ultimate Picking Program to help players develop their guitar picking speed and accuracy. He is also a guitar instructor for JamPlay.com and has done lesson packs for the learning game GuitarBots, which is now known as Yousician. Allen has authored three music and guitar instructional books - Ear Training for Guitarists, Modern Songwriting Secrets, and Robot's Technical Guitar.
Over the past few months, Allen has been working on a shred guitar song with Chris Adler, who is the drummer for Lamb of God and Megadeth. He has also worked with many notable musicians including Steve Stevens of Billy Idol; Dave Ellefson of Megadeth; Travis Miguel of Atreyu and Trapt; Nick Catanese of Black Label Society; Steve Smyth of the bands Dragonlord, Nevermore, Forbidden, and Testament; Jonathan “Bug” Price of Breaking Benjamin; Fred Mascherino of Taking Back Sunday; Jesper Kyd (composer of many huge title video game soundtracks); Tiago Della Vega (shred guitarist); Shane Gibson of the band Korn; and Justin Lassen (composer, sound designer, and remixer for Linkin Park, Madonna, and many others).
He has also played guitar on albums with members of Motley Crue, Alice Cooper, KISS, Poison, Dio, Black Sabbath, Night Ranger, Ratt, Skid Row, Deep Purple, Yngwie Malmsteen, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, Quiet Riot, LA Guns, Symphony X, Spastic Ink, Lynch Mob, The Cult, Steppenwolf, Cinderella, David Coverdale Band, and Warrant.
To learn more about Allen’s extensive and impressive background, please visit his personal site at allenvanwert.com.