This is particularly true for the electric guitar in the genre of rock music where distortion has always had a special role.
Equipment shapes the sound of genres and affects the performer’s expressiveness. Musical instruments are inextricably linked to genres, their players’ attitudes, and practices. Published: Current Musicology, No 103, Fall 2018. The article closes by advocating greater acknowledgement of the skills required for distorted metal guitar playing. Yet, the results also highlight challenges of distorted guitar playing less commonly considered in research, journalism and performance practice. The findings contribute to acoustic-based evidence of distortion’s simplifying effect that increases the electric guitar’s “potential as a virtuoso solo instrument” (Walser 1993: 50). The present study extends such research by experimentally investigating the effects of distortion on playability, virtuosity and expressiveness based on a multi-methodical analysis from musicology, acoustics and music informatics.
A recent empirical study by Slaven and Krout (2016) reported metal guitar solos having become faster over the last six decades, thus indicating that shredding still is common in metal guitar, as argued in earlier literature in rock and metal studies (Walser 1993 Waksman 2003 Weinstein 2000). ’Shredding’, the fast and virtuous guitar playing, is a central stylistic element of many rock and metal genres.
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