[Austiger]

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Okay, so you think the best baseball pitcher of all time only throws fastballs?

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That's clearly not what I said.

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Now, I'll admit, I'm not a big sports fan, but I've always considered Clemens to be one of the best in the game (7 cy youngs, right?) Does he throw just a fastball? Nope, he throws that, a splitter, a slider, and maybe even a few other things that I don't remember. (Again, my knowledge here is limited, I'm trying to go with your analogy, but genreally, Clemens is respected as a pitcher, yes?)


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But that doesn't change the fact that I couldn't throw a 100mph fastball or shred like Malmstein no matter how often we practice. It's a lot more than muscle memory. You have to have dexterity. I was just pointing that out.

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Unlike you, I don't hold "shredding" at a godly level.

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Again, I never said that. I don't even like it. I just know that it's something that not just anybody can learn.

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Do you realize you sound a LOT like people who first start guitar and want to improvise, "not in my life could I ever play like that" and then 3 years later, they're improvising and jamming along.

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Not sure about this...I never felt that way. I always felt I could do a lot of stuff and eventually I learned how. What I felt was out of my reach were the really fast solos, which I still can't play.

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It's the same thing with shredding, I'd bet you havn't put more than 50 hours into it to see if you couldn't actually do it. (50 is an extremly high number, I'd figure it's more like 10?)

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I've practiced the Steve Vai solo from Crossroads for at least 50 hours. (No, I still can't play it.)

Okay maybe I haven't dedicated a ton of time to trying to be a shredder. But I think you are really short-changing what they do. Not as an art form, which I think we're on the same page about...but just as a physical feat. It's just not that easy to move your fingers around that fast on a fretboard accurately and coordinate it with the pick hand on the strings. It's incredibly difficult and not something that "about anybody can learn."