Shred guitar

Shred guitar includes fast alternate picking, sweep-picking, diminished and harmonic minor scales, tapping, and whammy bar use.

[2] Les Paul's performance of "How High the Moon" contained sweep picking, one of the earliest recordings of the technique.

He founded Deep Purple in 1968 and combined elements of blues, jazz and classical into his high speed, virtuosic rock guitar playing.

Songs like "Highway Star" and "Burn" from Deep Purple and "Gates of Babylon" from Rainbow are examples of early shred.

In 1969, guitarist Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin composed "Heartbreaker"; his guitar solo introduced many complex techniques mixed together (very fast playing with hammer-ons and pull-offs).

[4] In September 1973, guitarist and singer Glen Campbell used shredding technique in between verses while performing a jazzy version of (Back Home Again in) Indiana on The Tonight Show.

Everything associated with the genre can be found on this brilliant collection of songs—sweep-picked arpeggios, harmonic minor scales, finger-tapping and jaw-dropping whammy bar abuse".

In general, the phrase "shred guitar" has been traditionally associated with instrumental rock and heavy metal guitarists.

In the 1990s, its mainstream appeal diminished with the rise of grunge and nu metal, both of which eschewed flashy lead guitar solos.

[7][8] Shredding includes difficult guitar techniques such as "sweep, alternate, and tremolo picking; string skipping; multi-finger tapping; slurs, [and] trills.

Some shred guitarists, such as Scorpions' Ulrich Roth, have used custom-made tremolo bars and developed modified instruments, such as Roth's "Sky Guitar, that would greatly expand his instrumental range, enabling him to reach notes previously reserved in the string world for cellos and violins.

Shred-style guitarists often use high-gain vacuum tube amplifier brands such as Bogner, Marshall, Carvin, Peavey, Soldano, Mesa Boogie, Orange, Laney, Hughes & Kettner and Randall.

The list included songs by instrumentalists Tony Rice, Josh Williams, Bryan Sutton, Chris Thile and David Grier.

The book featured a foreword by Alex Lifeson and an afterword by Uli Jon Roth, and featured all new interviews with Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan, Paul Gilbert, George Lynch, Kirk Hammett, Michael Schenker, Ace Frehley, Guthrie Govan, and Alexi Laiho, among others.