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Marty Friedman on ‘shredding’ versus music-making: “It looks cool on the fingers, but it doesn’t sound cool”
“And it’s really quite easy to do those things, if you just practice, anything. But making music is not about practice.”
Image: Jun Sato / Getty Images
Marty Friedman has opined on the art of shredding, saying while the style “looks cool on the fingers”, it “doesn’t sound cool” and is certainly not something he equates to being a musician.
Discussing his approach to music in a chat with Ultimate Guitar, Friedman says, “I’ve always thought about melodies first and genre of music doesn’t really matter so much because melodies go in every kind of music — everything from metal to classical, to punk rock, to dance music. Every single type of music has some sort of melody.”
“So if you understand melodies, and you hear melodies inside yourself, then you can put it anywhere, wherever your musical taste leads you,” he explains. “I might be known as being a metal guitarist, but my base is in melody… anything that I do would be kind of based in melody.”
As for his thoughts on ‘shredders’, Friedman admits that he’s “not sure” what the term means now, “but when I was growing up, there was always some kid in somebody’s basement who practised 10 hours a day. And they played so incredibly fast, and accurate, and tricky, and all that stuff. But, to be honest with you, I never thought it sounded very good.”
“But it looked amazing. You look at those fingers, and it looks so exciting, like, ‘Wow, this guy’s so good,’ but if you close your eyes and listen, it’s like, ‘What this guy’s playing will never ever be in a song.’ It could never be something that could become popular.”
The guitarist adds, “It looks cool on the fingers, but it doesn’t sound cool. That’s what shredding is to my image. So when I hear that term, that’s what I think of. And it’s really quite easy to do those things, if you just practice, anything.”
More importantly, Friedman asserts that “making music is not about practice”.
“Making music is about life, life experiences, and taking your feelings, and putting them into someone else’s ears. That has less to do with practice and more to do with understanding how to interpret your feelings on whatever instrument you play. And that is a life journey. You see the difference?”
“When I hear these shredders, sometimes I’m very impressed by the technique to be honest with you,” Friedman concedes. “But I see right through it — I see that this as a guy who’s practising all day. That’s wonderful, but if I hear music that really touches me, I’m very interested in the soul of that musician [who’s] making the music. I feel a human connection to that. And those things have very little to do with mechanical practice.”