I guess it could be termed as playing the guitar with a lot of notes at a high speed. Technical proficiency is needed to shred and if you have not got the right technique you may not be able to shred.
The term shred came about during the 80s guitar era where playing a lot of notes is considered the epitomy of guitar playing. It was an interesting era for guitar playing as guitar players began to push the limits and bounderies of technical proficiencies.
Eddie Van Halen set the standards of guitar playing when his all time great ‘Eruption’ solo came out in 1978. Everyone during that time tried to emulate him and the ‘Tapping’ technique became a worldwide phenomenon.
But then another young guitarist named Yngwie Malmsteen changed the whole guitar scene of the 80s when he pioneered the neo-classical movement. It was Yngwie who made famous the neo-classical style of guitar playing and he pushed the technical bounderies up a notch after Eddie Van Halen. It was during this era that produced some of the world’s great guitar players until today.
It was also during the 80s that Mike Varney of the Shrapnel Records recruited alot of aspiring young guitar players who later became legends in their own right. Players like Paul Gilbert (Racer-x), Richie Kotzen, Marty Friedman and Jason Becker (Cacophony), Gerg Howe, Tony MacAlpine, Vinnie Moore and others are just a few of those Shrapnel Army of guitar shredders during the 80s.
The guitar players of the 80s deserves alot of respect because without them there would not be guitarists like John Petrucci, Kiko Loureiro, Rusty Cooley, Guthrie Govan, Buckethead, Michael Romeo and many others who were heavily influenced by the greats of the 80s.
In my opinion, for those of you who wants to be technically proficient in guitar playing you should at least listen to some of the players mentioned above because most of them are the pioneers of guitar shredding. Although technical playing is not a must to become a great guitar player but it is an advantage to have a good technical skill than those without the technical abilities. This is because your musical ideas will not be limited by your lack of technical abilities.
I will link some videos of these great guitar players and you can learn alot from them. See you in my next post.
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