Originally Posted by: kevinadiIMO, learn blues first so you know all the phrasing and stuff. Once you get better with the blues, the skill to shred will come naturally as you'll get more and more accurate with your fingering.

Shredding with no knowledge of phrasing will get you nowhere. See, you get to play about 100 notes a second, but which notes? You'll end up going up & down scales which is pointless to do & boring to hear.

Just remember, shredding will come naturally as you'll get more experience (usually after a month or two). Learning to phrase and play soulfully takes a lot more practice (years, likely).

Thats the whole point. If you learn shred properly and can think outside of the box you won't be just playing scales up and down, that's what good shred is all about. That's why I mentioned Jason Becker as an example. Allthough plenty of guys have copied him, few have been able to add the soul to their skills the way he did. That's why he is such an inspiration to all of the great players that followed. By learning, I obviously mean be learning to play intelligently. TO my ear, the vaste amount of blues players just fiddle around a boring pentatonic which ends up sounding the same all the time BUT I do admit, there are the "Beckers" of the blues world too who can make their music shine. I hate when people say shred is for ignorant people and speed is stupid, that's ridiculous. There is a lot of skill involved and with the right mind behind the fingers it can be every bit as emotive as blues.