Greg Howe: is there truth in shredding?

News:
28-03-2009:
Great to hear that Greg Howe is a fan of Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker and Niccolò Paganini, may be not surprising really... in a recent psot for premier guitar, the first of a series for the online magazine Greg discusses

Greg Howe says:
Anyone familiar with my music knows that I enjoy fast playing as much as any diehard “Shred” aficionado. It’s fun and it’s cool, but I just don’t place it on a pedestal. It’s simply one of many things to do. Most accomplished musicians, on any instrument, have the ability to turn on the afterburners when the need arises. But with non-guitar-playing musicians, the ability to pump out notes at high speed seems much less likely to be viewed as having any more or less value than the other many abilities they likely possess.



As a guitarist who is often associated with the delivery of speedy licks, you might think that I’d automatically denounce those who walk tall in their no-shred picket lines. You might expect that I’d have a quick response to any suggestion that shred too often happens at the expense of musicality—and I probably would if it weren’t for the fact that those accusations are quite justified. Heck, I myself am guilty more often than I care to admit. The good news, however, is that these shortcomings can often be remedied simply by shifting perspective a bit.

I can only speculate that a category called “Shred” encourages the development of a sort of “speed at any cost” mentality. Perhaps there’s no need to assign blame. I think we can all agree, however, that a large percentage of licks that lend themselves to speed are void of much musicality. Instead, they’re built around the use of various mundane sequences executed within overly organized shapes and predictable diatonic patterns solely for the sake of securing note rapidity. In such cases, these licks have little to no appeal when played at anything but ultra-high speed. In fact, in such cases their sole appeal is the speed.
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