What's Wrong With Shredding?

Lets face it - it doesnt take talent to shred. Its nothing more than a athletic attribute. I stand in awe of a good shredder the same way I'm in awe of, say, Lance Armstrong.
With that said, to be a more versitile guitar player/song writer you should be able to shred to a degree.
"I want to maintain enough technique to convey any type of emotion that comes up in my songwriting." -Paul Gilbert

shredding does take some level of EARNED skill.
its much more than moving your right hand fast.
You have to silence strings your not fretting(as your right hand will most likley hit an open string).
you still have to know what ever lick\run you plan to shred,so if you cant play the lick\run\scale your obviously not going to be able to shred it.
Skill must be in your left hand to fret the notes.
being able to shred "cleanly" is a huge talent.
Not just anyone can shred,and fewer can make good use of it.

The solo from angel of death(slayer) is a perfect example of what skill is needed to play cleanly yet fast.
They dont put it to good use and rely on it exclusivley,its just a showcase of great technique.

Megadeth used it well and maintained a great amount of feeling and melody.

I think you are confusing SKILL with TALENT.
You cant practice for better TALENT, but with proper practice techniques and self motivation, anybody can improve their SKILLS at playing fast. Picking cleanly, scale fingerings, muting non-played strings, right and left hand synching are all SKILLS.

To shread good takes time and practice to achive, RESPECT to anybody who can blaste chromatic scale over 200 and who can sweep and skip from e to E. But of course it can get boring after a while. So you must compromise shred with feeling and melodies to get amazing solos. You can play faster than Randy (if you can), but don´t forget the slower parts ´cause it´s always those slower melodies that makes people say, hey that´s the solo I was talkin´ about our I heard that before somwhere. I mean I been listning to Yngwie for long time now and still can´t recognize some solos from eachother.

Check out Petruccis way of soloing god damn that man kicks ass. Zakk is fenomenal too.

PS. Check out live verision of Suicide Solution with Ozzy (Randy). It beats hell out Crowley and Crazy Train.

Nice list sambob, allow me to add:

Shaun Baxter (Jazz metal, best fusion I've ever heard)
TJ Helmerich (Plays with Brett Gorsed, mega tapper)
Jennifer Batten (a chick who shreds)
Steve Vai (you left him off! Ok, I don't like him either but that's not the point, cause most shred fans do).
Yngwie Malmsteem (bit samey for me).
Joe Satriani (Possibly my favourite player)
Marti Friedman (True obsessions is a great album, lots of eastern scales).

Speed is important:

our appreciation of music is limited by the efficiency of our memories. As we listen to music the memories we form of the previous music fade away or go into storage so the sense of a melodic line may be lost if the line is too long. On the other hand long melodic lines are what interests a lot of us musos. For this reason it is often important for a musician to play at speed to fit in the notes quickly enough to remain active in our minds until the phrase is completed and the melody resolved.
On the other hand our memories are also constrained by how fast we can take notes in, to me a blur of speed is just a blur of speeds, more of a rhythmic device than a melodic fragment.

Interesting phrases often have a wide variety of different note lengths in them. If a musician wishes to include a great variety of different note lengths it may be important for them to play the fastest note runs very fast to ensure that the whole melody does not exceed our attention span.

There is a tradeoff between the speed we play at and how individual and pleasing we can make our notes. You can't bend/violin/wah/shake/pinch individual notes above
a certain speed. Fast playing is consequently less articulate and vocal in quality. Also the faster one plays the more of the time is occupied by the messy sounds of pick attacks and fret noise, the tone looses purity.

Some of the most soulful players I know of vary their speed enormously and consequently their playing styles are very technically demanding.

Also, I think the demands of trying to process the aural imput of blinding fast runs can be quite invigorating. This said most shred patterns are very simple which can make them melodically boring. Players who vary the kinds of intervals they use in their playing make their music more challenging to comprehend without having to up their tempo as much and are much better in my opinion.

There's a big difference between such people and your run of the mill shredder practicing metronomic runs just to show off. Personally great shreds do impress me even if they aren't very musical simply 'cause I know how much effort it takes to develop that level of technique but I'd far rather listen to (for example) Alex Lifeson than Malmsteem or some clone of his.

I love to hear a fast solo equally as much as a slow soulful one. If you determine shredding as only going as fast as possible ALL the time then no I don't like it.

Whatever speed you play should be determined by the feel of the song you are soloing over and so a guitarist should be able to go as fast as hell or hang on to one note forever.

One of my favourite guitarists is Dimebag from Pantera. He can play lightning fast but often opts for some slow parts because they suit the song or sometimes just a bunch of atmospheric noise.

I like solos that have slow parts that build tension upto a fast part that is going somewhere. As long as it's going somewhere musically then it's just as good as a slow part. It's the people who go fast without any particular destination that suck.

A good example of Dime's great soloing is 'Cemetary Gates' which starts slow and then finishes with a fairly short blistering piece.

Shaun Baxter (Jazz metal, best fusion I've ever heard)
TJ Helmerich (Plays with Brett Gorsed, mega tapper)
Jennifer Batten (a chick who shreds)
Steve Vai (you left him off! Ok, I don't like him either but that's not the point, cause most shred fans do).
Yngwie Malmsteem (bit samey for me).
Joe Satriani (Possibly my favourite player)
Marti Friedman (True obsessions is a great album, lots of eastern scales).

I have a picture of Jennifer Batten framed from when she was still semi-attractive ;) People usually think its CC from Poison though. :P

i love marty friedman. not only is he a phemonally good shredder but he has one of the best senses melody out there

just to add my 2c worth;

im completely self taught on the guitar, and have been playing for about what 6 or 7 years now i think - on and off. Its only recently last two years or so i really knuckled down and started to really *play*. Ive been discovering all these guitarists for that time and yeah they blew me away to begin with but these days malsteen et although v talented kinda bores me now, but hey the guy plays what he wants to play so its no big thing - if he wanted to do like layla or something im sure he could play it in a replica clapton way, if that makes sense. But he likes doing his own thing, and so do it he does.

Anyway having said that one of my main aims of late has been trying to crack into the whole shredding thing.. not because i just want to do that all the time, but im figuring that if i get the speed going and get it going properly - nice clean sound, clarity .. not just one big blurred mess with too much distortion like you get from a lot of shred wannabes, which from what im reading isnt the kinda dude you find on this board anyway. Anyway my theory is that if i can play like malmsteen (for example) or that guy from symphony X (i forget his name - sorry) then im never going to be limited physicaly. nothing else should pose an athlectic or 'technique-al' problem.. logical?

Example: I once read an interview with steve vai, and learned something i never forgot - what makes his playing (and satch too IMHO) unreal is the fact that he has removed all the barriers between his heart / soul / brain (call it what you will) and the guitar. He doesnt have to worry EVER about whether he can play it, he just has to think of the sound he wants and he can make the guitar make it, or no not even that.. he just has to feel an emotion and his hands brain fingers etc just translate that for him. Thats my interpretation anyway, and is now my goal as a guitarist and has been for some time. after all whats it really all about?

Expression.

(and some good old blood sweat and tears.)

so if you wanna shred, shred, if thats what 'expression' makes you do / wanna do. If you dont want to shred, maybe its still a useful thing. But then again most of you guys are so far head of me that you are proberbly all ready there with the ability thing - at that imortal level where you simply dont ever have to worry about if you can play it or not... NO MATTER WHAT 'IT' IS. Hehe i hope to get there someday too.

Like i said, just getting my 2c worth in.

Cheers all,

PS if ive ofended anyone, its totally not meant to be offensive.

I once read an interview with steve vai, and learned something i never forgot - what makes his playing (and satch too IMHO) unreal is the fact that he has removed all the barriers between his heart / soul / brain (call it what you will) and the guitar.

Am I the only one that things Steve Vai is a major pothead? I've read articles where he talks about just sitting there and playing one note for hours. Now, I understand the theory behind it..but I think the only way I could ever get myself to do that would be after a couple bowls of nl ;(

Yah i think its all crap.
He probably spent more time with the guitar than we all did, but i dont belive in stuff like playing one note for hours. that would have turned him into an insane person... to prove my point, in the 70's some people claimed the kgb people used to play the same note for hours to torture arrested people.

I cant practice the chromatic scale for hours let alone one note...that sounds like obsessive compulsive disorder if I'm not mistaken.

Anyway..Tweak
I was at a point where I thought I could play ANYTHING put in front of me.Well,I was learning "Domination" from Pantera and the beginning of the solo was cake...but then I tried learning/playing the first ascending run and quikly found out that I was nothing.I still cheese my way through that first fast ascending run.Just last week I was watching John Petrucci(some instruction video)and realized I was nothing again!
You get the point.

Later! \m/

Question, why are there so few female 'shredders'? or rather that seems to be the case.. ive never seen / met any anyway. maybe that says something about the male psyche ;) Isnt it about time we saw a female vai? The recoird companies could make a few bucks there im sure if they can find some.

Oh and gotta agree.. i have petrucci's 'rock discipline' on DVD and omg, a.) how calm and nice and non-arrogant does the guy come accross as being, and b.) He is probebrly in my top 5 fav guitarists list.

as for the Vai thing, yeah.. i agree, one note hmmmm.. but he is known to be obsessive compulsive, as are a lot of the best guitarists apparently. I think what it is is a very strict teaching technique where you set yourself a really narrow field to work in - eg take say 2 notes, and play them as many ways as you can - that can work wonders you get bored real fast but its about having the dedication to get through that and keep going and keeping it fresh. Maybe he just likes doing it with one note.... (freak?). Anyway, i heard about that on a satch video and seeing as he taught the guy.... watch the satch tapes video - its WELL funny in places - when satch describes vais 1st lesson for example - lets just say theres hope for us yet!

[Edited by Tweak on 09-13-2003 at 11:49 PM]

Well, we have the Great Kat, who has proclaimed herself to be the greatest guitarist ever. I suppose her first album was ok..but thats all she had for about 10 years :P

And then theres Jennifer Batten. Her playing was fairly interesting actually..and she was damn nice to look at :D

http://www.batten.com/Images/abb.jpg

Firstly this: being able to shred neo-classical sweeps,tap wail and warble pinch and dive doesn't make you an alround technical guitarist. Can Steve Vai play Tarrega's classical guitar pieces? I sincerely doubt it. Nor could he play all of Stanley Jordan's or Allan Holdsworth's stuff. That said he's a hugely talented player.

Malmsteem; never used to be able to stomach him. I think I found Satriani humbling enough without listening to Malmsteem. Now my playing's improved I don't find it so objectionable, maybe the jealousy is easier to live with. In fact he's flippin cool even if the songs themselves are a bit one dimensional.

Women guitar players: best classical guitarist I've ever seen (Galina Vernigora) was a woman. Apparently someone called Rak wrote a piece and had to wait many years to find someone who could play it properly.. guess what, it was her.
I think Jennifer Batten is wonderful. I think it's just the case that women end up playing violin rather than guitar. Maybe it's something to do with having smaller hands? Surely it isn't that hard to get 3/4 size guitars though and if the stretches really bother them maybe they should get a 24 fretter and widle at the top end?

One note for hours? Maybe Steve Vai's trying to cut out competition by making sure people waste their time for hours on end? Surely by one note he would mean whatever one might vibrato or bend from one fretted string?