Re-evaluating playing fast

General Music Discussion
#61

Going on a bit of a tangent here, and I’ll admit upfront that I’m a HUGE fan of Tony’s, but he always stood very far apart from the other Shrapnel guys for me. He really came into his own after the first couple of records - more of this romantic era classical influence shows, very interesting harmonically and his sense of melody is always soooo emotional to me, frequently quite sad. His soloing always seemed very improvised, too, which I appreciated.

I started playing in '94, and for whatever reason I was drawn to this stuff, despite it no longer being cool AT ALL. haha There were definitely some incredible players from that era, like the guys from Haji’s Kitchen, who would’ve potentially seen much more success had they only been around less than 10 years earlier.

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#62

Reminds me of Tosin or Nita Strauss talking about learning from instructional DVD when it was very uncool.

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#63

haha That’s awesome. Similar for me… I did have a bunch of teachers, but my very first gave me a super long bootleg copy of REH and Hot Licks videos, the first in fact being Tony’s Shrapnel University vid (from what I remember it also had Steve Morse, Paul Gilbert, bit of Yngwie, and Brad Gillis). Stuff that really blew my mind at the time, since I was primarily into Metallica. And then there’s a local music college here that used to have a yearly guitar show, and I’d always go and convince my dad to buy me random instructional tapes from anyone who “looked like a shredder” - Vinnie Moore, Reb Beach, and Shawn Lane (though he didn’t have the look). It was all a pretty serious component of my formation, cool that it was for Tosin/Nita, too.

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#64

Yeah, I think I had a similar experience - I was aware of the reversal in the 90s but never lived it and started in on guitar in late 00s. There was that kind of resurgeance of shreddy stuff, even semi-mainstream bands like Escape the Fate and early Falling in Reverse basically brought in that hair metal shred sound again. Black Veil Brides too. And alt girls liked them, so you had that burst of popularity with scene bands that had pretty damn good guitarists.

On the more extreme metal end, I remeber Negrophagist having a huge impact on my playing in highschool too I mean, they just rip

Animals As Leaders just started to blow up, After the Burial, Arsis and Black Dahlia Murder (who have traded like 5 lead guitarists) have always been an infuence too. You really had a lot of hot guitar music coming out again by the late 00s - Metalocalypse was on Adult Swim, Summer Slaughter Tour was in full swing. It was a pretty good time to be a teenager who likes shreddy stuff.

Kind of a more general point though, the music scene is so fragmented now, you might as well just play what you like. You’re better off finding the niche you like to inhabit and finding some ways to make some money from that and build a aspecific fan base than trying to get mass appeal.

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#65

I was playing back in those days but if you didn’t have a guitar book out that was readily available in a small town music store, I probably didn’t bother to listen lol I missed out on a small few but dodged far more.

#66

“And when the world needed him most he vanished.”

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#67

Honestly, this subject could be a thread unto itself, though I suspect it might get a little heated.

But, speaking personally, I first picked up the guitar in the late 90s, in large part thanks to grunge, though with a healthy dose of blues in the background as well. I think… I mean, part of it is as simple as that grunge wasn’t really as anti-solo as it’s made out to be; a surprising number of Nirvana songs do have lead breaks and while there’s a lot of grunge bands where solos weren’t a big part of their sounds, there were enough where there were, particularly on the heavier side - Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, even some stuff like Days of the New - where I don’t think writing the whole movement off as anti-solo is really fair.

As far as why the solos were less over the top than in the shred era, I think calling that jealousy and insecurity is too simple - again looking at Cobain, he was coming out of some sort of an intersection between the Beatles and punk rock. Flashy technique was kind of the antithesis of the latter, so I kinda doubt young Kurt ever spent time with a copy of Rising Force and just got frustrated and wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit” because he couldn’t play “Black Star” - it probably wasn’t even on his radar. And some of those guys were pretty unabashed about having spent some time working on technique - Kim Thayall talked about it in a couple interviews I’ve seen and Tom Morello probably could do more of a shred album if he wanted to, he just went in a very different direction with his band.

If I was a late 80s shredder I’d be tempted to call the 90s less of a reaction to the 80s and a desire to do something different and I could absolutely see the temptation of writing off the change in the way guitar was showcased in a band as about jealousy. But, that feels too simple. I think it really was a bunch of different people, with very different musical backgrounds, kind of came to the same place where they wanted to do something different than the technique arms race.

And, frankly, having that pushed underground for a while probably wasn’t a bad thing - grunge was still on the airwaves when Rusty Cooley’s debut came out, and some of Joe Satriani, Andy Timmons, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci’s best (IMO) recorded work came out during the 90s and 00s.

#68

The mid to late 80s and early 90s were ‘my time’.

The 90s had spit to do with jealousy. I mean…I liked a lot of 80s music, but got horribly tired of “Two Guitars, Bass, Drums, Vocals…maybe keys.” The word ‘virtuousic guitarist’ was used so much it became a punchline. Spandex… ‘men’ not quite dressing in drag and (effectively) corporate sponsorship by AquaNet Hairspray.

The 80s rock scene died the over-exposed and overdone death it deserved.

Besides, a new generation of young people moved in and wanted their own sound.

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#69

I mean, I’m probably in the minority here in a community dedicated to guitar technique, so I’d have maybe erred further on the side of tact than this… :rofl:

…but yeah, I’ve always said grunge didn’t kill the 80s, they just choked on their own excess and grunge was just the stripped down, raw alternative that stepped in to fill the gap.

I DO think this was still ultimately healthy for guitar and allowed technical playing to grow in ways it never would have on top-40 radio, and at a minimum I certainly would have never picked up the guitar if Nirvana didn’t suddenly make it accessible again. And I’m SURE I’m not alone. it’s a cycle, like anything else.

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#70

I thought this was a cool video, on speed and how you are waiting for it to speed up.
Melody gives that entertainment without speed, one thing this example lacks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/17p5qu1/a_ball_speeding_up_by_1_each_bounce_untill_the/
As Elegant Elliot offen would say, THATS THE CRESCENDO!!! Riiiiight…

#71

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Wait is this an Ibanez ad, aquanet, or spandex? (Or all three)

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#72

I think the main thing that killed 80s metal was c and d tier bands being pretty much only known from their ballads. It’s the same thing that killed grunge in like 94 or 95 clone bands churned out by the industry where it became parody. It’s also what killed all the 00s post grunge bands where all the songs on modern rock radio got to a point where it sounded like the same band.

#73

I wish I could walk around in tights n not look like a freak, it’s so hard to finds clothes that fit me.

#74

Only those of a certain age will understand this reference:

-You wear tights?

  • No, I don’t wear tights. I wear the required uniform.
  • Tights.
  • Shut up
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#75

Grunge made it quite a bit longer than 94 or 95, but I 100% agree that there came a point in the late 90s and early 2000s where bands started to sound like you threw a bunch of grunge albums in a blender, hit “frappe,” and then poured whatever came out into a CD. Took a long time to die, too - I kinda wonder if that was the impact of the internet and a decentralization of distribution, but THAT’s a conversation for another time.

Either way, music should evolve, and that’s something we as listeners and musicians should embrace.

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#76

Agreed music without development and growth leads to stagnation and death of styles or self parody.

That’s why I’m a big fan of what Nita Strauss does mixing modern metal stylings with shred/neoclassical

I was not a fan of djent type stuff, and the race toward infinity stringed guitars. When this came out and showed there’s a path forward for more melodic shred type stuff it was a big breath of fresh air.

I have a hard time thinking of the 90s entirely as growth though when certain segments were lambasting players for simply having guitar solos or a rock star attitude. I think most of the hate towards someone like Scott Stapp comes from “oh look at this guy he has a rock star attitude didn’t anyone tell him we don’t do that anymore, how dare he.” There’s a reason Billy wrote this.

For a genre where “it’s about freedom and no rules” rock scenes have some of the biggest genre conservatives alive.

I think by the mid 90s the music industry being at its highest was such a well oiled machine it was very easy to go city to city and find “the next band” do A&R for a year then give up on them before the second album. Whereas it was an experiment in process with the 80s metal scene so there was still an organic combo of legitimate artists and manufactured label creations.

#77

One thought I have is that we often equate growth and evolution with additional complexity.

That’s not how music works, though. Complexity isn’t the goal.

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#78

I mean, he was also an arrogant jackass with a massive ego and a spiraling drug addiction, from all the stories I’ve heard of him, all under the facade of Christian faith, while the rest of the band were evidently pretty down to earth. I think it’s less “rock star” and more that he really was just that big a hypocrite and prick. :rofl: I always thought they got a LOT better when they fired him and brought on Myles Kennedy - the first two Alter Bridge albums were great.

But even then, I still think the first Creed album holds up pretty well. There’s some desperation there, and lyrically Styapp was still pretty much hitting bottom. It was only after they became famous we got trite stuff like “gee, wouldn’t it be great if the world was as good as it was in my dreams? But wait, then I wouldn’t have anything to dream about, so oh well, whatever, nevermind.”

Cherub Rock is an awesome example of how I don’t think the 90s were a low point for guitar, though - that intro riff, when it properly kicks in, is fucking epic, and I’ve always loved Corgan’s soloing, melodic yet chaotic (his phrasing has actually been an influence of mine). Pretentious as hell, sure, and Corgan’s got his own issues, but at their best the Pumpkins wrote some pretty incredible stuff, and Corgan may have gone down this weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole these days, but he never veered into Stapp-level degrees of hypocrisy, at a time when people REALLY hated hypocrisy. :rofl:

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#79

Around 2008-ish my band recorded a demo with Brett Hestla. He was the touring replacement for Creed’s fired bassist. Without going into a huge tangent (let’s just say, I’ve got some stories lol) I can attest to the above being spot on.

Also, Smashing Pumpkins is one of my absolute favorite bands. I get why some people wouldn’t be into them. Corgan’s voice isn’t for everyone. I think they wrote some of the most interesting stuff ever played on the radio. Soundgarden is another band from that era with amazing composition and creativity. I think it says a lot for any band when you can hear just a snippet from any of their tracks and immediately know who it is, while there are pretty much no bands (at least that I am aware of) that sound anything like either of them

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#80

On Corgan - I remember after they broke up, hearing he’d started a new band, Zwann, and one day started my car to go drive somewhere and the radio turned on just in time to hear the opening notes of a guitar solo, and in that first second being 100% sure what I was hearing was the new Zwann single. I think, regardless of whether you like Corgan or his playing or any of his bands, that degree of recognizability in your playing is what we all should be striving for.

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