question about shredding

hey everybody
i look at these posts, and i see people talking about this thing called shredding. ok, i have no idea what it is, because i was born in the mid 80's and i didnt know squat about guitars during this time. apparently shredding mainly took place in the 80's, and for some reason it's a health hazard. i wanna know what it is because i think its funny that a guitar style(or whatever it is) can mess up your arm.

thanks for wasting your time...
frank

Shred is to guitar what extreme sports (bungee jumping, sky diving...) are to sports in general.
Shred involves faster, harder to play stuff and some show off attitude that you won't find in other styles, where the main goal is somewhere else, (usually it's creating art).

When we talked about how dangerous shred was, it was how you could develop tendinitis due to extreme practicing of scales, arpeggios etc. at an extreme speed.

Artists like satriani and Vai are said to be shredders, but they actually have a style that involves more than just shred. Shredders are far more extreme than Vai or Satch when it comes to chops. You can find some names in the 'famous bands and artists' under 'fastest guitarist you know'...

if you want to know what shredding is all about, download morpheus or WinMX or Aimster or whatever you want ( as your form of napster), and download a Steve Vai song. he plays so fast, its absolutely crazy. I find this music alright for about a minute, then cant stand it anymore afterwards

Vai has been in the shred movement, but the actual shredders, even though they see him as a great player, have moved to something else.
You can check out what I mean at http://www.chopsfromhell.com
now those guys are insane shredders, don't try this at home!!

http://www.chopsfromhell.com/cooleyAOPsample.rm

Now, that's a shredder, see the tasteless licks?

thats cool thanks
maybe if i have some time on my hands i'll be stupid for a moment and try to shred a bit :)

I think that's pretty much anybody's desire to have that kind of control over one's playing.
But let's not lose sight of the goals, make music, create art, enjoy.......