Michael when did your interest for shredding begin

[HlynurStef]

When did you start having interest for shredding? For how long had you played the guitar when you seriously started practising to shred? How long did it take you to get to a level where you could look at yourself and say "wow, I'm actually playing pretty fast and accurate!"?

[PatrickofMoon]

He probably clicked the 32nd note button on his hand

[Michael Angelo Batio]

The word "shredder" was given to electric guitar players sometime in the 1990's. I don't remember ever calling my style of guitar "shred" when I was growing up or in the band "Nitro". I do not really care for that name. My only interest was to be able to play what I heard in my head. From the time I was 10 years old and had my first lesson, I was "fast" on guitar. We used to call it "quickness", not "fast". In fact, when I was 13 my guitar teacher said he could not teach me anymore. He was about 30 to 35 at the time and said that I was faster at 13 than he was at 22. I will never forget this. I was a 13 year old guitar player that was told he was too good for his teacher. I did not get arrogant, I worked harder and started to create my owns ways to practice and get better. Many of the exercises and examples in my DVDs are things that I came up with in the quest to be the best guitarist I could be.

[Ryan]

Was that the only teacher you ever had? Or did you have previous ones before tht, or did you ever try to find a new teacher after that teacher could not teach you anymore, sorry if that is confusing.

[Michael Angelo Batio]

When I went to Northeastern University, I studied Jazz guitar with a great teacher. I was in the Jazz band in High School as well but really developed my skill as a Jazz guitarist at about 19 years old.

[HlynurStef]

Okey, I'm currently 16 years old and in some ways I play faster than my teacher and he is always pushing me on going further and telling me to practice, practice, practice so I bought a metronome and use that almost every time I practice plus that I bought your DVD's both Speed Kills and Speed Lives and I'm working my way through them . Also I got John Petrucci's Rock Discipline and I have some Yngwie J. Malmsteen guitar lessons and Steve Vai lessons and just a lot of stuff. I just try to grab everything I can get a hold on and practice as I can, I try to study many guitarplayers and check their technique and try to use it in my own playing. I've tried to study Metal, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Classical, just basicly everything I could use.
The only thing that's really bugging me, sometimes, is how or where to position my right hand (picking hand) to be able to play the fastest. I've tried your technique but it just doesn't work for me, so I use a sort of an inversion of how you pick I have the pinky and the next two fingers pressed up against the guitar but the last one just points out into the air .

But anyways, as I was saying, I practice as much as I can and then I'm aiming on going to study music in the USA after high-school. I was thinking about Berklee Collage of Music in Boston but do you have any recommendation on good schools? My teacher went to Berklee and he says nothing but good things of that school but I'd like to look at other schools as well.