It’s Shredding time!
Ever seen a guitarist going all crazy on his guitar, the smooth fingers sliding over the frets and filling the air with so many beats a second that your ears can’t even keep up with, all the rock and roll that keeps your head thinking “How the hell is he doing it?”? That’s what shredding is: a fast lead guitar solo playing style, a dream that every aspiring guitarist chases after. Shredding is all about passion, the desire to make the guitar your very own and treating it as if it is a part of your body. To see what I am talking about watch the video below.
Reaching this level of performance requires an enormous amount of patience and dedicated practice. You need to work on your finger dexterity, speed, and perfect hand-eye coordination. Music critics have stated that shred guitar is associated with “sweep-picked arpeggios (notes of a chord played alternately), diminished (8-note scale that is built by alternating whole and half steps from any root note) and harmonic scales, finger-tapping and whammy-bar (used to add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the strings) abuse. So better start working on your scales and arpeggios!
The top 10 shred guitarists are:
- Yngwie Malmsteen
- Steve Vai
- Eddie Van Halen
- Michael Angelo Batio
- Buckethead
- John Petrucci
- Jason Becker
- Joe Satriani
- Paul Gilbert
- Marty Friedman
