Originally Posted by: SebastBergJoe Satriani's song Surfing with the alien his a good exemple of "needed" speed to go with the emotion of the song. Its fast and it fits the mood. It really feels like we are surfing, filled with adrenaline.
That's one of the reason he's out there rocking for the world and
those thousands of crazy fast shredders you can find on youtube are sitting infront of a webcam.

It's interesting that you bring Satriani up. Though he can shred, he writes awesome catchy melodies. He also writes really catchy guitar riffs. Just about every song of his opens up with a relatively simple catchy riff that mortals like you and I can play. Eventually this will lead to an insane shredding solo with massive amounts of whammy bar abuse, but I find it's the catchy riffs and melodies of his that I can easily recall.

His ability to write catchy melodies is what differentiates him from many of his peers.