More Shredding!!

[boneyguy]

In relation to the recent thread on shredding...
I forgot about this guy. This I like. I think Gambale has got amazing chops and alot of great soling ideas to boot. It's melodic and adventurous and for me it doesn't get boring.

[BritishBluesBoy]

That ain't shredding. That's jazz...

[Larry F]

Well, when you hear someone as amazing as this, what can you do but complain about tone and phrasing. For tone, every note sounded the same to me. I couldn't hear the difference between a phrase played on the high strings on the low end of the fingerboard vs a similar phrase played on the low strings on the upper end of the fingerboard. I think that is caused by the buzzy OD that he is using.

For phrasing, he is relying too much on the pitch contour of his lines to project rhythm. He does an amazing job of that, but wouldn't it expand his expressive palette to change up the durations of some of the notes? Imagine how cool it would sound if you could literally poke holes in his lines, so that some of the notes are replaced by silence for a 16th, 8th, dotted 8th, and so on.

Not to take anything away from his achievements as a musician. I just feel that his emotional plane is maybe a little overly consistent. To my ear, changing the tone within a phrase and using different rhythms to complement the nice melodic contour of his lines would be great.

Remember Bill Connors? He didn't play very fast much, but he could really make a note sing. His kind of sound really worked well with Chick Corea. I wonder what happened with him? Al Dimeola came on the scene and the values of jazz rock playing seemed to change overnight.

[boneyguy]

Originally Posted by Larry F

Well, when you hear someone as amazing as this, what can you do but complain about tone and phrasing. For tone, every note sounded the same to me. I couldn't hear the difference between a phrase played on the high strings on the low end of the fingerboard vs a similar phrase played on the low strings on the upper end of the fingerboard. I think that is caused by the buzzy OD that he is using.

For phrasing, he is relying too much on the pitch contour of his lines to project rhythm. He does an amazing job of that, but wouldn't it expand his expressive palette to change up the durations of some of the notes? Imagine how cool it would sound if you could literally poke holes in his lines, so that some of the notes are replaced by silence for a 16th, 8th, dotted 8th, and so on.

Not to take anything away from his achievements as a musician. I just feel that his emotional plane is maybe a little overly consistent. To my ear, changing the tone within a phrase and using different rhythms to complement the nice melodic contour of his lines would be great.

Remember Bill Connors? He didn't play very fast much, but he could really make a note sing. His kind of sound really worked well with Chick Corea. I wonder what happened with him? Al Dimeola came on the scene and the values of jazz rock playing seemed to change overnight.

All good points I think. I can't think of any musician, especially myself, who I wouldn't ask more of in terms of technique or expression. That's just the way it is. I tend to agree with your assessment of wanting to 'poke holes' in his phrases. That would apply to all the shredding I hear however.

Here's another clip where he's playing in a different genre and his phrasing is more open and airy. I prefer this myself however I wouldn't call it 'shredding' which was the initial theme of this post.

[JayFreddy]

Nice stuff! I consider that shred too.

I don't think of shred as a musical style, it's more of a feeling you get when you hear a really good guitarist cuttin' it up.

When you hear a good guitarist shredding, the music can momentarily take a back seat to the guitar playing, and it doesn't detract from the whole. In other words, it's the opposite of the old adage, "play the tune, not the instrument..."

Speaking strictly for myself, if it's done well, I don't mind. I fully expect the non-guitar playing world to feel differently, and probably a majority of guitarists too, but to each his own.

Whether it's Bireli Lagrene, Monty Montgomery, Eric Johnson, George Benson, Tony Rice, or whomever, I just like hot guitar playing.

[Mike Bruce]

Joscho Stephan, a gipsy jazz style player just slays me. Very trad jazz melodies but improvised furiously. Worth a listen, and YouTube has a few.

Mike Bruce