demon said:
Once again, there's much more to being "technically gifted" than being able to play really fucking fast. There's nothing wrong with playing really fast when it's appropriate, but doing it ALL THE FUCKING TIME--aka shredding--is overusing it and typically compensating for a lack of creativity, musicality, and being able to do anything else.
You seem to be ignoring that a guitarist CAN be meoldic, creative, and really fucking fast all at the same time. It does happen...John Petrucci from Dream Theater is a great example. Listen to solos from "goodnight kiss", the second solo"another day", the live version of "hollow years", "home" (a really great example of creativity there), the list goes on...
Sure, not every guitarist is able to strike a good balance, and being a shredder myself, I know that it's a REALLY hard balance to strike and make it sound natural. It can be done though, and plenty of people do it. Don't discount that. And as brought up before, shredding is not doing it all the time. All being a shredder means is that you have the ability to cleanly play at high speeds. Not that you overdo it, not that you prefer it, not that you rely on it as a crutch, not ANYTHING like that. It's an ability. That's all. When a shredder is shredding, they do it because they feel it fits the music at that point. I guarantee you, no matter which shredder you ask, if you ask them why they were playing 32nd notes at a given point in a song, they WONT tell you "well...it doesn't really fit...but I was getting blue balls of the guitar and just needed to go".
Somebody that dedicates themselves that much to an instrument will do so because they feel they can make better music because of it. Nobody spends years practicing this stuff(and it does take many years to be able to comfortably play at high speeds) with the goal "I'm gonna write bad music someday!" C'mon...that's just dumb. They write what they enjoy, and that is why they write it. If you don't enjoy it, fine. It doesn't mean that shred is somehow boring though.
