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Shred guitar or shredding is a virtuoso lead guitar solo playing style for the guitar, based on various advanced and complex playing techniques, particularly rapid passages and advanced performance effects. Shred guitar includes "fast alternate picking, sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic scales, finger-tapping and whammy-bar abuse",[1] It is commonly used in heavy metal guitar playing, where it is includes rapid tapping solos, fast scale and arpeggio runs and special effects such as whammy bar "dive bombs". Metal guitarists playing in a "shred" style use the electric guitar with a guitar amplifier and a range of electronic effects such as distortion, which create a more sustained guitar tone and facilitate guitar feedback effects.
The term is sometimes used with reference to virtuoso playing by instrumentalists other than guitarists, as well. The term "shred" is also used outside the metal idiom, particularly in bluegrass musicians and jazz-rock fusion electric guitarists.