What Do You See As The Future Of Shred?

[blackjack]

Now that we've got shred guitarists like Dannyjoe Carter who are approaching the absolute human limits of how fast it is possible to play as well as the limit of how fast people are able to hear, I don't see the future of shred as people getting faster and faster. Even if it were humanly possible to play significantly faster than Dannyjoe Carter, people wouldn't be able to listen to it and distinguish the individual notes! The average person can only distinguish individual notes up to a certain speed and that speed is about 17 notes a second.

So if the future of shred isn't about getting faster, what do you think it will be? I don't see it as becoming about playing over changes because that's what jazz and jazz fusion players do. It's not a rock 'n roll type sound. If you want to hear very fast people playing over changes they exist and John McLaughlin and Al Dimeola are a couple of them but they aren't rock shredders and I'm talking about shred in a rock 'n roll context.

[jacoby3mnk]

I remember hearing Megadeth and Metallica in the mid-80's and wondering how anyone could play faster. Then a band called Nitro came along and showed it was possible. I look at how what I thought couldn't be topped over the years since then has been and gone well beyond what I thought was possible. I hope that there is some kid sitting in his room with his guitar that is developing a new style/ skill that will turn guitar playing on it's ear and have everyone saying "That's not even possible". We have had the opportunity to witness it with so many legends now. Van Halen, Dime, Vai, Satriani, MAB, etc., etc.,. I look forward to see what the next phase of shred guitarists can develop as a "standard skill ".

[blackjack]

I remember hearing buying Slayer's Reign In Blood album on vinyl and coming home to listen to it. I didn't think anyone would ever come along to surpass the speed at which the fastest songs on that album are played. Something strange happened though. A band called Morbid Angel came along and had (arguably) an even faster drummer, arguably still the fastest drummer there has ever been in death metal. But despite Morbid Angel and a few other death metal bands playing faster than Slayer, none of them ever came anywhere near to as popular or as successful as Slayer. At some point, faster stopped sounding more impressive. Faster even started sounding annoying, abrasive or whatever adjective you'd like to use. The bottom line is, it was hard to listen to this new generation of bands that called themselves "death metal." Some would argue with me, but they are in the minority, statistically speaking. No death metal band has ever had album sales that are near to Slayer's album sales. Their riffs aren't as memorable. Even Slayer realized there has to be a little bit of melody at least for it to sound good. Bach said "Music is melody and melody is music." Bach's music has stood the test of time for the last 300 years, so there must be something to what he said regarding melody.

With shred lead guitar, we are at the point where if someone comes along who is faster than anybody currently recording albums, we won't be able to distinguish the individual notes they are playing anyway so what would be the point??? I hope the next evolution of shred has more to do with melody, harmony, and phrasing. Listen to how cool the phrasing is on Eddie Van Halen's classic solos. There's a lot more there than guitar gymnastics. Listen to the melodies Yngwie plays and the musical structure of the songs and how much classical influence there is and again you hear something far more than mere guitar gymnastics.

Hopefully being able to incorporate shredding into previously untried musical contexts will be a big part of the future of shred. People who can make a casual music fan listen to a shred solo and instead of it just sounding like a swarm of bees to them, sounds like a beautiful, powerful musical statement with melodies that stick in the memories of the listeners long after they hear the music is what I believe the future of shred is. Imagine a shred player with the catchy melodies of Neal Schon of Journey or Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd are the future. Speaking of Neal Schon, he played a guitar solo at the end of a song that made me want to learn to play electric guitar. It was not a fast solo. But it sounded good to me and the melody remained in my head for a long time after I heard it.

HERE IT IS! Here is the song that has the guitar solo at the end of it that made me decide to learn to play electric guitar:

[Blue]

I would agree that speed has reached it's limits in music. When I say that I don't mean that it's not possible to play faster than Shawn Lane did (although it would be abnormally difficult to do so) what I'm saying is that if you play faster than let's say 20 notes per second it doesn't really sound good anymore.

Sure you could argue that you can make new music that has never before been done, creating sounds that contains more than 20 notes per second, I would agree that is possible but only to a limited extent not for entire songs. Let's say you have a really fast song that has a steady fast tempo at 12-14 notes per second, we'll never gonna hear an arrangement like that played at 20-22 notes per second I believe, simply because it doesn't sound good in such a context. What we might hear is small parts in songs that has some sort of repeating pattern which is played at more than 20 notes per second to create a certain sound effect.

The numbers I'm using are based on alternate picking, we might already hear sweeping and legato at this speed, so bump the numbers up a bit for other techniques than alternate picking.


New "shred" (I always disliked that label by the way) will definitely be to incorparate new types of music that has not been explored so much yet. I think a band like Animals As Leaders is a good example of this, their style is a new type of "shredding", Tosin Abasi using his guitar sort of like a hybrid between a bass and a normal guitar and some of the sounds they create is sort of like electronic style music that is normally created by computers. Which wasn't available for the kids in the 60's and 70's when the 80's shredders created their musicality.

[laobi]

I think there are lots of exciting directions. I have a different definition to shred, I see it as a dedication to technique and the mastery of technical ability. So, from where I stand you can shred in classical, metal, jazz, country etc., It's not necessarily about playing faster and faster. As Jack correctly pointed out, there is a limit to what people can hear. Cast your mind back to when you began playing, I bet like me you thought players like Randy Rhodes, Gary Moore, Eddy Van Halen were super fast, I certainly couldn't hear all the notes they played. I heard Steve Vai in the early 90s and thought it was impossible to play that fast. Then I discovered MAB and then bought Speed Kills. Suddenly through playing I could hear much faster sequences, I began to play a lot faster (I'm not that fast, but much more accurate at speed). So it's my view that speed is very much perception based. Most people who don't play and guitar players outside the shred/jazz/classical genres don't tend to hear flurries of notes as well as we would.

Like Jacob, I thought Megadeth and Metallica were the fastest players alive when I was in my early teens, but that all changed. As Blue said Tosin Abasi has been a breath of fresh air to the scene, he has taken guitar in a totally different direction just as Michael Angelo, Steve Vai and Jason Becker did, they established a style of play that when imitated just doesn't cut it, when I hear anyone attempt to play like them I consider them a "budget" player, it's great to hear an influence of another great player, but when someone just copies their style it's rather boring. So I class Tosin as another great. I think Chris Broderick is also a man to watch, I felt just like Marty Friedman he was wasted in Megadeth, as DM appears to be a control freak just like the 2 managing members of his first famous band. There will be others who use their influences well and develop something new from that, hopefully maybe even one of you guys. I always feel to be good at something you have to become the sum of your influences + your own person.

[Yngtchie Blacksteen]

I do think the idea of shred guys going into other styles being something we could see more of. Like, maybe seeing more fusions of Eastern-influenced phrases and melodies with electronica beats and sampling, that's something that could be really interesting if it was done right.

I kinda dig what Satch did with electronic music on Engines of Creation, even though he's not the most shred-centric guy around. Also really love a lot of what Joe Chawki has been doing over the years, he seems to fuse many of the things I love most about modern music with the more classic shred sounds.

This one's more metal, but still really ripping:

[blackjack]

May 23, 2015 11:55:02 GMT -6 Yngtchie Blacksteen said:

I do think the idea of shred guys going into other styles being something we could see more of. Like, maybe seeing more fusions of Eastern-influenced phrases and melodies with electronica beats and sampling, that's something that could be really interesting if it was done right.

I kinda dig what Satch did with electronic music on Engines of Creation, even though he's not the most shred-centric guy around. Also really love a lot of what Joe Chawki has been doing over the years, he seems to fuse many of the things I love most about modern music with the more classic shred sounds.

This one's more metal, but still really ripping:

I looked for Joe Chawki on Amazon and could not find anything by him at all. Is Quietus the name of the song or his band? If it's the name of his song, what is the name of his band? Thanks.

[guitarshredder666]

me

[blackjack]

I consider Dannyjoe Carter to be the future of shred. He has advanced alternate picking and tremelo bar use to previously unheard levels of virtuosity. His picking is the fastest of anybody alive and as clean as anybody around. His sweeps and legato technique are flawless. He uses the tremelo bar in ways to create the sound of a slide guitar in ways that I've never heard anybody do before. DJC has raised the bar for rock guitar virtuosity in the 21st century.

[blackjack]

If you'd like to see a recent video of Dannyjoe Carter, here's one where he plays a DeJayce guitar. Matter of fact, that's the only brand he plays now because DeJayce is the name of his very own guitar company which he founded and of which he is the sole owner. He builds and sells DeJayce guitars which just happen to be the best value to be found in American-made guitars anywhere! He has a website for prospective customers of DeJayce guitars in which he describes the various models available and so forth. As you can tell from this video - DeJayce guitars look and sound amazing!

[guitarshredder666]

pretty amazing man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[guitarshredder666]

pretty amazing man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[blackjack]

Sept 6, 2015 16:50:38 GMT -6 guitarshredder666 said:

pretty amazing man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, Dannyjoe is pretty amazing. Did you know he and MAB are friends? When MAB played his big shows in Las Vegas a couple years back, Dannyjoe worked for MAB for the whole week, doing his guitar tech work, driving him around town, and a whole lot of other stuff since MAB's regualr tech wasn't there and Dannyjoe did it for practically no money at all! Dannyjoe's wife even cooked a special dinner for Michael when they had Michael over to their house to eat with them.

It's always good to see guys who are top shredders helping each other out rather than trying to compete against them and bury their careers just to hold on to their own spot. Some people feel that if they try to hold someone else's career down, then that person will never rise to the level of popularity where they could be seen as a threat to their place in the business. The thing is, the cream always rises to the top anyway. You can't hold greatness down. Nevertheless, I imagine this happens in the music business as well as the entertainment business in general all the time so apparently the shred community, at least in this case, has a much more helpful attitude towards each other. Lesser men might get jealous of each other instead of being happy for each other's successes and wanting to help further each other's careers.