Your favorite shredder?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fusionbear
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Next to the Michael Romeo clip I posted, this clip from Petrucci is the best of both worlds for me in terms of shred and melodic sensibility. Love it!



I like Petrucci's playing a lot. I love most of the DT catalog. What I don't like is the "hash" I hear on a lot of his fast lead playing. That keeps him from being my personal favorite.

My goal in this thread is not to find the "best" but rather your personal favorite and a little explanation of why that is for you...

TMAC checks all the boxes for me....

His compositions, his variations on tone, the different genres, his melodies... etc...
 
Andy LaRocque


Yngwie


Marek “Ashok” Smerda


Ashok was on “The Book” and “The Black Seal” albums from the Czech band Root. He’s been in Cradle of Filth for like 10 years now though. I think he got to do cooler lead playing in Root. That lead stuff is really Andy LaRocque influenced.
 
I don’t consider them shredders but the rest of the world does; Vai and/or EJ. They’re pretty much neck and neck for me.

EJ’s tones are enough for me to dig into for the rest of my life without even thinking of the music, but I’ve been listening to Ah Via Musicom and Venus Isle a lot again recently and they’re really perfect albums. His chord work is so out of my territory I’ll most certainly never even get close to the ballpark and while he improvises the majority of his stuff live, when he’s on he’s really fucking on.

And Vai just marries the emotion with technique for me. The shred aspect of his playing is so far at the bottom of the list of why I listen to his music I don’t even consider it a reason at all. I get the same feeling from Vai as I do Gilmour and am fortunate as fuck to have grown up with him as my biggest influence. It wasn’t so much the guitar itself that he inspired me with, just his outlook on creativity and being a musician. Whenever I see people calling him a shredder I can’t help but think they’re not really listening, especially if the example is one of his more orchestrated songs where he’s basically writing symphonies to play guitar over.
 
Dime and Marty will always have a special place in my heart.

Blues Saraceno is up there. Hairpick is insane and tasteful to my ears.

Ian Thornley has really stepped into that role for me too in a much more well-rounded way as far as writing and being the full package.
 
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