Shredding Sucks Options

[RichardK]

I just saw the awesome shreddy cat fight video, and it got me thinking. Do cats in general dislike shredding, or is this cat just an aggressive little monster that will bite you no matter what you play? It also got me thinking that shredding is actually getting really old.

I realize this isn’t the most popular statement ever on a guitar forum, and that now might be a good time to pack my things and hide in an undisclosed, safe location. But, at the risk of being hunted down by an angry mob, armed with pitchforks, torches and v-shaped guitars, I’ll say it again: shredding sucks.

Sure, it’s pretty awesome to be able shred those scales at warp speed, cramming fifteen notes into a millisecond. But there’s a point I’d like to make. There is the tendency to overdo it. It’s totally understandable that you’re very proud that you can pull it off after years of practice. And, in your enthusiasm, you want to incorporate it as much as you can in your playing. If the singer could just shut the hell up for a second, so you can do your thing and melt some faces off in the audience with your lightning speed virtuosity.

And that’s just it. The fun of playing music is that you do it together. All the instruments are equally important in creating a cool song, the solo is just part of it. There’s this emphasis on the guitar as a solo instrument and that you need at least two insane solos in any rock song. Imagine the drummer doing that, or the bass player. Hell, imagine Will Ferrel laying down that cowbell in poly-rhythmic blast beats any chance he gets. Might be fun for one song, provided it’s just the one song and it doesn’t last more than a minute.

Poly-rhythmic cowbell blast beats, like shredding, are an added feature to a song. They make a cool song even cooler. Overuse it, and it loses its power. It’s just like any hilarious joke or catch phrase: it doesn’t get funnier if you use it in every other sentence. In fact, healthy gut laughs will soon turn into polite ‘hahas’ and then awkward attempts at smiling. You won’t get invited to as many afterparties as you’d like and people will think that there’s something seriously wrong with you.

So, to use that analogy of the joke, shredding has been a running gag for almost thirty years. Isn't it time we came up with something new? Unless you have a obsessive compulsive disorder and the alternative to shredding is lying on stage in fetal position of course. It would make for a sad, sad show and you can just keep on shredding away! But for the rest of us, I think we can come up with awesome new guitar tricks we can exploit for the next thirty years. What do you guys think? Flame war in 3... 2... 1...

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