History question - what is the origin of the term 'shred'?

General Music Discussion
#1

Hi hi

because I am historically interested, I would like to find out how the career of the term “shred” for virtuoso guitar began. Since when people called virtuoso guitar shred? Where does it come from? Who said it “first”? Was their a music magazine or guitar magazine that helped to establish the word for virtuosity? TV? By word of mouth in subcultures and music scenes? How common was it? Did you use it for other instruments back in the days, too?

So many questions, but maybe you all have a clue (especially the 80s veterans here :wink: ) or an advice where I could look it up and find an old mention

I am looking forward to reading your ideas :slight_smile:

Judaspriester

#2

I don’t remember hearing ‘shredding’ much in the 80s. Not like I hear it used now.

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#3

If I had to guess, I’d say it has some sort of association with the Shrapnel label…?

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#4

No idea, but I like to think it has something to do with this guy:

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#5

Think you’re right. Mid-to-late 80s is when I recall first hearing the term shred, right around the time Shrapnel Records started getting popular.

#6

im going to go out on a massive limb here and say it probably dates back to the 50s lol. Seriously. I bet it came out of jazz. Blowing, ripping, shredding.

“Charlie Parker we really shredded that joint” etc

Yngwie on the term ‘shred’

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#7

Interesting stuff here. My guess is it’s some extension of the “wood shed” musical practice analogy. Like wood shedding evolved to wood (i.e., musical instrument) “shredding”?

#8

I could be mistaken, but I swear I remember surf guitarists using the term to describe some of the fast low note tremolo playing in the 50s (Like Dick Dale).

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#9

I found the word in a dictionary of sociolects and US american slang. It probably comes from Californian surfer language and means “to excel”. One book to document that is for instance the “Surfer’s Almanac” by Gary Fairmont Filosa from 1977,

But probably you are right and you can date it back further. + Dick Dale was a surfer himself + the famous Shrapnel shred school from the 80s is Californian

Finally, a friend of mine who is a skater says it is frequently used by skaters to acknowledge skaters who are not posers but good performers with style and skills and so “virtuosos” of skateboards

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#10

Also good evidence! Sounds plausible

#11

late reply here only a new member … it comes from the plectrums …if you practice long and hard enough you wear them down …shredding the dust all over your guitar

#12

Before I ever heard the term shredding I heard the phrase “tearing up the guitar.”

“Was that you in that practice room tearing up that guitar?” - circa 1991.

It sounds like the terms shredding and tearing up became interchangable in a non musical context and were eventually transferred to guitarspeak.

I found the following on the Online Etymology Dictionary which could take this back to the 16th century:

tear(v.3)
colloquial, “move noisily and with vigorous haste and turbulence,” 1590s, a special use of tear (v.1), perhaps on the notion of ripping through barriers or obstacles. Hence “to rant, rage, bluster” (c. 1600), in many Elizabethan dramatists; Shakespeare has emphatic tear a cat (1590). Hence probably also colloquial tear into “make a vigorous start” (by 1901), also tearer (1620s) “something big, raging, and violent.”

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#13

I love etymology and I’ve explored this a lot myself. The word shred likely came from surfing culture, where if you navigated a wave with exceptional skill you “shredded the wave”. Imagine the pot smoking, surfing guitar player of the late 60s to early 80s in California - surfing was huge around this time and coincidentally so was guitar. Think Baywatch etc. The term eventually started getting used with rollerblading, BMX etc. and eventually ended up being used for guitar.

What shredding means is not fast playing. It’s a term which describes doing something a novice in that skill considers impossibly difficult to accomplish. The alternative is “ripping”, which is also a surfing term which just means powering through something difficult, but it’s still difficult. Shredding implies you have reached a plane of existence where is ceases to be hard.

mainframe, October 31, 2003 - Urban Dictionary
1. music: to play distorted electric lead guitar in a manner which is at once so extremely cogent and rapid that listener experiences the sensation that the production of the sound should be impossible or nearly impossible.

  1. surfing: performing a series of cutbacks requiring seemingly impossible adeptness.
  2. going every-which-way at once
#14

Shredding came from the surfing, and later, the skateboarding, worlds. As noted by others, shredding the wave/halfpipe/pool was to make it look easy.

The jazz metaphor was that a musician would take their axe (instrument) to the woodshed (practice room) to work on their chops (technique).

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#16

I HAVE always wondered if there was a “woodshed” => “shed” => “shred” pipeline, linguistically. There are some skateboarding/surfing connotations too, so Dick Dale is a possible crossover point as well… but skate culture is probably more punk than it is metal, and those guys are pretty anti-shred.

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#17

There could be a link there. Thinking back to the 80s skate scene, hardcore punk was big (Black Flag, Agnostic Front, Minor Threat) but there were also some crossover bands who were popular like Suicidal Tendencies that started out hardcore and crossed over into thrash that featured some shreddy leads (courtesy of Rocky George in Suicidal’s case).

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#18

Thank you. I was gonna have to post some Pepsi memes soon

#19

image

#20

It came from surfer lingo.

Etymology and Cultural Roots

  • Slang for Intensity: The word “shred” evokes the visual and auditory image of tearing or ripping something to pieces—reflecting the sheer speed, aggression, and fast-paced nature of a virtuosic guitar solo. [1, 2]

  • Surfer and Skater Slang: Many music historians and enthusiasts on forums like Reddit agree that the term borrows from 1950s and 1960s surf and skate culture (such as “shredding a wave”) to describe someone mastering an activity with style and aggressive speed

Also the fact that a guitar pickup called the Full Shred got released early in the 90s solidified it in the guitar culture.

#21

That looks a lot like an AI search result, and this sort of question where it’s a fairly nebulous evolutionary history, especially, I would NOT trust AI on. :rofl:

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