blissblogger

Well-known member

this is a world completely foreign to me

the definition of getting the wrong end of the stick - and waving it frantically around
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I don't get it either but I respect how unpretentious about music metallers (that I've known) tend to be.

Insofar as they don't feel compelled to go beyond "it rocks" as a response.

Obviously I'm not saying metal musicians aren't pretentious because they sometimes dress up in wizards robes and so on...
 

Leo

Well-known member
Yet Eddie Hazel on "Maggot Brain" or Verlaine/Lloyd on "Marquee Moon" or Ron Asheton on "TV Eye" are ok to like. Different kind of shredding. For Hazel and Ashton, it might be due to emotion over technical virtuosity, but just to opposite for Verlaine.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It’s kind of embarrassing but I remember this time of guitar solos and it was ridiculous. I was a kid but remember the absurd guitar solos on these tracks very well, they sounded unreal, synthetic


C. C. Deville


 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
well - as the resident heavy guitars freak in this guitars-unfriendly place I feel obligated to take a break from dematerialization and weigh in

it is indeed a very strange and almost entirely terrible world unto itself

in general an unholy union of mullet cock rock and music theory fetishism, without any of the fun of the former or potential fwd strangeness of the latter

but you have to separate and reclaim THE SHRED ITSELF from these sad bastards and their juiceless Paganini fantasies

the shred is a tool of awesome - in both the colloquial and traditional senses - power, but like any tool it can be put to wise or unwise uses
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
digression on the guitar solo (not all solo is shred and not all shred is solo but shred is basically a subset/particular evolution of lead)

the guitar solo is an emergent property witchcraft of the placement of notes and their interaction with each other in real time

musos would use words like "lines" and "phrasing" to describe that, and not be wrong, but they are shorthand to capture that emergent property of interaction, timing

the riff has a bit of this too but it's much more fixed in place. riffs function, that's their power.

whereas each solo - or any time a lead diverges sufficiently from the riff - is an entity unto itself, every time you play it

it's like a footballer scoring a goal, or a fighter knock someone out. you can go back and break down the mechanics but the moment itself is frozen forever in/beyond time.

similarly you can replay a solo note for note but it's like copying a painting or remaking a film shot for shot
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
anyway, examine this on its own terms

that video's most obvious (besides Prince) glaring omission from any important 80s shredders list is Kerry King. he took the techniques of shredding and turned them inside out - all the fast scales descend into atonal shrieking and squealing, held together by his infamous prolific whammy bar abuse - into almost a parody of virtuosity, if (probably) not an intentional one. it was really a sea change in heavy guitars. Tony Iommi took the pentatonic scale more or less to its logical conclusion, but in the boiling nexus of mid-80s extreme guitar music whence death, black, and grind, there's a major shift to dissonance and atonality. people do talk endless shit (which to me mostly misses the point) on King but whatever your take the massive influence of him and Hannemann across the breadth of heavy guitars is undeniable. specifically relevant here are big name death metal pioneers like Chuck Schuldiner and Trey Azagthoth, super technical and highly influential shredders in their own right.

but it was a highly divisive shift - think of united ardkore splintering into jungle and happy hardcore, with the middle ground here being something like Metallica

Malmsteen etc style "shredding" otoh is a cul de sac of bone-dry autoeroticism. its endgame is Dragonforce, i.e. almost literally just masturbating onto a fretboard.

glam metal lead guitar - C.C. Deville, George Lynch, etc - is applied Malmsteen

tbf its squareness of Malmsteen dorks is impressive - The Clash were already ironically calling out "you're my guitar hero" in 1977 - gotta respect their resilience

still how much sympathy can one ultimately have for anything that makes Yes and Emerson Lake + Palmer sound exciting (at least they're weird) by comparison
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
ofc there are definitely other schools of shred - one of particular interest to me is the hardcore school of what you might call anti-shredding radiating out along the twin axes of Greg Ginn and Bones from Discharge - it's just that metal shredding is most relevant here.

and in reality they're not separate - Discharge was a noted massive influence on Slayer, via both d-beat (which Discharge copped from Motörhead in the 1st place) and the harsh squalling atonal leads, and thrash metal generally - but it's easier for the purposes of discussion.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
k and now the part where I drop the YT examples
not sure what exactly is King and what's Hanneman but you get the point

obligatory, the only good Band of Gypsys thing but man is it ever tho

crucial early days power trio shred

the originators, with Priest, of the twin guitar attack shred

bonus: the rarely seen full-on bass shred - True Mystikal Master Kliff Burton
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You should all read Real Ultimate Power. It's the funniest book ever written. It's written in the character of a hyperactive and possibly autistic 12-year-old boy whose life is completely dominated by his obsession with ninjas, who - in this inner fantasy world - spend all their time cutting off heads, porking hot babes and wailing really, really hard on jet red [sic.] guitars:

Ninja_Wailing_Hard-2553.jpg

It's impossible not to think of it whenever I hear anything that sounds remotely 'shred-y'.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
derek bailey is anti-shred for me. especially on the album mirakle where he goes into free funk territory.

not really guitar solos either. just weird dissonant elongated intervals.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
shred is one of those "know it when you hear it" things with universally agreed areas but no clear boundaries

so just to weigh in on some previous examples in thread

Maggot Brain - of course

Marquee Moon - probably my favorite guitar solo ever and definitely technical (those dudes were into weird scales and tunings), but also definitely not shred

(btw this pair - along with 1983 A Merman I Should Turn to Be - the holy trinity of sprawling weird Americana guitar epics)

TV Eye - obv great but not really, Asheton isn't ever playing enough notes to really shred, just hammering out those vicious leads - tho ofc he is a big ancestor of atonal shredding

Prince - of course. the last Let's Go Crazy solo is like Maggot Brain condensed into 10 very gnarly seconds.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
idk improv or free jazz guitarists well enough to intelligently comment

it's another world unto itself - see comment above potential fwd strangeness of music theory nerds

it does spill out into the world more often and in more productive ways than like, Steve Vai or whatever
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
just to be clear that shredding isn't only about woolly bros here's some modern ladies that fully shred

this band is basic whatever serviceable indie rock except for whenever she starts SHREDDING YOUR FACE OFF

really saw em live a couple years ago and she is truly awesome live

pretty obvious one

idk her songs super well so just picked one at random but she def shreds

she has a super interesting style full of that weirdly approached tapping and the like, really unique (St. Vincent kinda too but hers is more clearly at least partly noise rock derived)

you should the (unsurprising) brutal hater comments them and any other women shredder draws from music theory bros it is the worst
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
for the record I myself can play guitar pretty well but I don't have any of that theory background

so much of shredding is about your gear setup too, your tone, producing sounds thru techniques or extending techniques or pedal fuckery or whatever
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I also play the drums - serviceably but not as well as guitar where I can actually like do some things - and I will say it's really influenced how I think about this

like probably most people here have heard or read funk is what you don't play, the negative space - chicken scratch guitar minimalism, ghost notes

talking about that interaction between notes - the space between notes ("phrasing") - is kind of the emergent property

the mysticism of the placement of notes - akin to the mysticism of keeping time as a drummer

like ofc you can transcribe them exactly, but when you drill down to the subatomic level it dissipates into subjectivity

like awhile when we were arguing about what exactly "swing" is and people couldn't even agree about what note in a measure the kick was actually on.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
well, those are my thoughts on shredding

I'll check back later and if you all have some interesting responses I will reveal how to get from Nile Rodgers to Napalm Death in 4 easy degrees of separation

you'll be able to impress your cool jaded friends at your rave dad parties
 
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