Re-evaluating playing fast

General Music Discussion
#41

This is the kind of stuff I try - not saying succeed, just try! - to write, and even then I think you need to be careful that when you get to that shreddy solo, even THAT can’t always be a wall of shred, but the speed should be used as an effect and an accent, and this will land better if its in the context of a good melody and there’s a feeling of melodic movement and tension and release going on in the solo.

But, I think this is why Joe Satriani is one of the few instrumental guitarists to ever crack the pop and rock top 40 - because he was a stupendous technical player, but did it all within the context of a damned good song.

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#42

I’d argue this is why Yngwie became more well known opposed to someone like Chris Impellitteri who doesn’t really have a dial it back mode. Love Chris’s playing but I totally get why non guitar nerds don’t get into it.

Another aspect to Satriani is he squarely still retains much of the blues/pentatonic paradigm of rock guitar. The average American ear is just not tuned to constant modal and harmonic minor playing. Same thing that made EVH and Nuno Bettencourt more liked to the average music listener than Yngwie.

A ZZ Top or (insert blues based rock band here) fan can squarely understand something like “Satch Boogie” where as a “Far Beyond the Sun” or “Black Star” just sounds like scale runs to them. (It’s a lot like non jazz listeners being baffled by the harmonic language of jazz). Eric Johnson had similar success for the same reason. Whereas in places like Europe or Japan where there is more of a cultural appreciation for classical music and the harmonic structure involved Yngwie outsold Mariah Carey.

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#43

Clearly they never watched this then

That might’ve given Mariah a little boost

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#44

Which, if you think about it, is weird considering how harmonically out there some of the stuff going on in Satch Boogie is. The modulations during the shuffle section aren’t really that out there, but the tapped interlude is pretty damned avant-garde.

#45

Not really.

Satch Boogie grooves much harder. Its full of pentatonics, making it more rhythmically and harmonically familiar.

Far Beyond The Sun and Black Star don’t groove in a foot-tapping way. The numerous stops along with the harmonic minor scale aren’t familiar to most ears…and never has been. Those songs are far more angular and way outside most people’s idea of ‘fun to listen to’ music.

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#46

Yeah for sure - if I think of players I personally wanna emulate I think Brandon Ellis, Josh Middleton etc. players who have great dynamics to their solos and riffs along with cool, well placed speed bursts.

I don’t really want to emulate the wall of shred players who made their names with over the top playing in the late 80s/early 90s, back when you could be a well compensated studio player or

Yngwie I agree is really compelling even for non-guitarists who like that neoclassical vibe because he has great dynamics and aggressive riffing especially in his earlier stuff. Jason Becker was getting there too, like Marty did post-cacophony (as fun as that stuff was).

I think the only exception to players that kind of have a wall of notes going on is Paul Gilbert - and to me it’s because his shredding is so goddamn rhythmically chunked, dynamnic and in the pocket that it almost has this percussive quality that escapes 99% of even the killer shredders out there.

#47

The tapping interlude? With the series of wildly-un-pentatonic pitch-axis modulations through various A tonalities, and if still rhythmic, certainly nothing I’d call a “foot tapping groove”?

It’s pretty out-there stuff, and I’ve always wondered if the fact Satch was able to get away with some pretty wild avant-garde jazz harmony in a rock context partly by setting it up with amped up Benny Goodman meets ZZ Top, and partly by “oooo! Tapping! Wheeeee!” so the two handed stuff gets the attention and the harmonies get put on a back-burner. But, it’s worth sitting down with a transcription and working out the chords implied through there, it’s definitely nothing you would find in a blues-rock context back in 1987 anywhere else.

That’s honestly one of the things I find the most impressive about Satriani’s playing; he can make some pretty adventurous harmonic stuff sound pretty, well, normal.

#48

The song is already deep in, the hook in the listener’s ear well established…the song strays…but doesn’t stay there forever and comes back. That’s the thing about certain players and bands. They can create a thread to draw the listener through. Satch knows how to craft a song, go off the reservation…and come back without losing everyone.

I feel Rush did this better than any ‘Progressive’ band. It’s harder to find a song that didn’t have an odd-meter in it than did.

Yngwie did/does his thing, and that doesn’t necessarily include those threads. That’s not good or bad…it’s just Yngwie’s vision.

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#49

It’s not like I wasn’t already worshiping at the alter of Satch for over 30 years, but seeing some of the more in depth pandemic interviews with him and then reading his book earlier this year, my respect for him went even further through the roof. The time and care he takes to write songs is amazing. I didn’t realize how carefully he crafts them. It’s really quite extraordinary that he still does that.

#50

Buckethead for me.
He’ll have you near tears with the beauty of his playing one moment and then in awe/fear of what he’s capable of the next. He’s the full spectrum. To me he’s the perfect synthesis of the “shredder” and the “emotional feel” players like Gilmour, Eddie Hazel, Santana, or Knopfler.

He’s one the few that’s able to tap into whatever transcendent stream enables stuff like this.

I dont even know where to start with Buckethead.

Guthrie is another one

#51

Yeah I love Buckethead, and his ability to work across genres is top notch - but I was making a distinction between two types of shredders, of which Buckethead falls in a different camp than (early) Paul Gilbert for me. I was more comparing Gilbert more to Imperetelli, early MAB etc. - other guys with long continuous shred solos in everything like early Racer X.

Buckethead never really did that and always leaned into that funk fusion stuff early on, so it doesn’t really apply to him.

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#52

I don’t really come across many racer x fans here, or they don’t vocalize it. but i guess i have tried to repress these listening habits probably because of how scary his playing is that it would be near impossible to even try to cover. Or at best take an incredible amount of work learning all of the notes, and string skipped arpeggios with the hybrid technique, cause lets face it, that is the only way i would get near being able to do it. i still think snakebite is his most impressive over the top solo.

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#53

Paul himself isn’t that hot about his time in the 80s Racer X days. From Greg Prato’s Shredders! book.

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I fully agree with him about the amount of reverb it horribly dates those albums as good as they are.

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#54

I also wonder if some of this is because Yngwie was always a little more “metal” in his playing while Satch was more rock and roll/hard rock…

…but it’s also maybe sort of a false dichotomy, as it’s not like Rising Force was a commercial flop either - looks like it got up as high as 60th on the Billboard Top 200, only a little below Surfing’s 29th peak.

But yeah, @DC11GTR I had kind of a similar experience. Longtime fan of Satriani’s though my first of his was the original G3 album so I may have started a little later than you… but, listening to him talk about music really just floors me for how damned thoughtful he is about how the musical building blocks can come together. It’s inspiring. As is Yngwie in his way as well.

#55

My fandom runs deep. I started on a JS-1, I play a JS-1000 now and have a JS-2450 on the way (ish). I don’t really play along with his stuff anymore, but it’s where I got my start I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t my favorite. I’m much more of a picker than a legato guy, but those guitars have always felt like home to me.

Funny story, when I was working for Vai in the early 2k’s, I had to put together a “contact” list for Favored Nations related stuff. I thought it was just for us in the office so when I put Joe’s info down, I listed him as “Musician, Guitarist, God” and someone else in the camp reamed me for it. I called Steve to tell him what happened and he said to reduce him to “Demi-God” status and it would be fine lol

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#56

:rofl: that’s awesome. What were you doing for Favored Nations?

Satch is a huge influence on my playing and writing, but paradoxically that’s kind of pushed me in a different direction gear wise - Strats or various fairly traditional super-Strats sure, but with jumbo fretwire (I can’t get on with frets as light as his preference) and into Mesas, and while I own a wah I almost never use it. I used to play almost entirely legato but this place has helped there by finally getting my picking hand to a point where it can carry it’s weight.

#57

I ran the warehouse and shipping department but before and after that, I was kind of an assistant. The pipes around his old vault burst and it needed to be cleared out of all the tapes and guitars. That was my first task along with misc things at The Mothership. Then the label, then I helped build the first version of The Harmony Hut and a bit more misc stuff. He asked if I’d tech for him on a tour and no way would I be able to handle the pressure lol

As much as I love Satch and learned all of his songs, my first attempt at writing songs just sounded like his outtakes, so I went back to playing super heavy stuff and stayed there. I think my “doodling” attack is similar but not so much my focused playing. Petrucci straight up ruined my legato though. It never occurred to me that everything could be picked. I’m missing a chunk off of my middle finger and my hands are small so picking was easier to compensate for that. I was still a teenager and soaked up everything, so it was a natural progression. I wish I’d heard Shawn Lane back in the day…

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#58

Fair but I feel like he’s got a tendency to exaggerate/self deprecate, at least by Second Heat it’s more like a dozen or so fast patterns in various combinations, but there are like 3 or so that show up way more than others lol

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#59

I feel bad for the Shrapnel guys, there was such a vitriolic backlash to “shredding” in the 90s. I wasn’t around for that era so I have no idea how bad it really was. Towards the end of Prato’s book there are quotes from all the players how they feel about the term “shred” it’s pretty much universal that the Shrapnel guys detest it. There are very few guys from that era that remain unapologetic about it the chief ones being Malmsteen and Batio.
Becker, Friedman, MacAlpine, Howe, Gilbert, Kotzen all aren’t really pleased with it and I think it shows in where there music went afterwards.
Gilbert and Vinnie Moore, and Kotzen went more blues
Becker even if not stricken with ALS I think would still be composing very contemporary classical sounding music with all kinds of disparate elements.
Friedman does whatever he does “kawaii metal?” He’s very indifferent towards Dragon’s Kiss
Howe went fusion
MacAlpine widened his sound with some modern elements (extended range guitars)

I became a player in the late 00s when guys like Alexi Laiho (RIP), Synyster Gates, Jeff Loomis, Guthrie Govan, Herman Li/Sam Totman and Buckethead had made “shred” less of a dirty word.
I don’t know how much vitriol the “shredders” had to endure in the 90s which in my estimation was fueled largely by jealousy and insecurity not really in wanting a change in sound. No one ever told Billy Gibbons that the blues was played out, :joy:

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#60

Speed is great, and is one of many useful articulations available. I do believe though that it’s really just a matter of how most people who listen to music need a song; you know - one with words in it. Malmsteen’s biggest successes I think were with Trilogy and Odyssey as far as Billboard 200 placement. Yngwie actually doesn’t do a lot of “instrumental only” stuff on his albums, which is probably a major contributor to his success.
Still, the instrumental guys have a dedicated audience and draw a substantial crowd.

Fast music is fun. Easy as that, I think…

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