Calling anyone the Greatest Shredder of all time is certainly obnoxious and downright pretentious, but for someone like Yngwie Malmsteen whose playing embodies the whole essence of ‘shredding’ like no other Guitar player in history, is perhaps an apt metaphor.
First off, it’s a pretty well known fact that Yngwie Malmsteen is by no means, the fastest Guitar player on Earth. In fact, there’s LOTS of players who can play waay faster and dare I say, cleaner than Yngwie. If you look at strictly NPS scaling, Yngwie at his absolute best goes about 15 NPS. Now there’s tons of players who can go even farther beyond. But here’s the thing—in case of all the other players, when they’re in the ‘lightning fast’ zone of alternate picking superhighway, it just sounds more and more mechanical and pretty much devoid of any emotional content.
But here’s exactly where Yngwie’s playing stands out—it has an innate and very real sense of ‘fury’ in each of his pickstrokes (there may be tons of technical reasons behind this like how he’s holding and positioning the pick when it’s gliding through the strings but all of it’s just Yngwie being Yngwie, no matter how we put it) which makes his playing feel incredibly organic and lively (even a bit mystical) at all times.
And this is the actual difference between Yngwie and ALL the other great Guitar players who can play outrageously fast. Their fast playing feels very machine-like, vapid and bereft of any sense of thrill, whereas Yngwie’s consistently sounds organic and evokes that feeling of ‘fury’ in every note. And that’s why Yngwie’s playing truly embodies the term ‘shredding’ in a way that is outmatched, as of yet.
And this is really the crux of this article—shredding isn’t
just about playing as much notes as possible but incorporating a real
sense of thrill along with it that’s unfortunately absent in most
other Guitar players, especially most younger players right now.
While they are indeed technically faster and are really playing way
more notes per second, but they mostly sound lifeless and mechanical. Shredding is really more about the 'feel' than just numbers, and while like most things in the World, Shredding,too, can be quantifiable but that doesn't determine it, not solely anyway.
Also, most Guitar players start to sound kinda same when they're playing really fast and lose much of their unique sonic identity at those ultra fast passages. But Yngwie always sounds unmistakably himself, and that's the magic of his playing.
Just to make it clear, no matter what you may feel about Yngwie’s music, there’s no denying his absolute zen-level mastery of craftsmanship on the Guitar. And anyone who can play an instrument on the level Yngwie does, is worthy of massive respects. A true living legend and an example of extreme virtuosity on the Electric Guitar on all levels, Yngwie Malmsteen will forever continue to be a Rising Force in music history.
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