re: Can someone explain rock guitar solos to me? Most just sound like random noise to me.

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guitar solos complement the songs they're featured in.

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This right here.

"Daylight" - Failure

This is my favorite guitar solo of all time. I'm pretty sure Greg Edwards recorded it (both he and Ken Andrews are credited with guitars on the album, but Edwards played it in the live performance I've seen a recording of). It most definitely does not shred, but instead uses simple note progression and a heavy dose of effects to create a sound that meshes perfectly with the dark, depressing mood of the song and turns the guitar into something almost unrecognizable - an agonized wail fitting to close an album about wanting to escape from heroin addiction but being unable to do so. It is the sort of thing David Gilmour would have played had he been born thirty years later, and I really can't give it any higher praise than that.

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Maybe that’s what I don’t like. “Shredding”.

I’ve been perusing through some music videos to find guitar solos I hate, because I made this thread without anything specific in mind.. it’s just something I’ve always thought and made a thread about it. But while looking up “greatest guitar solos”, I came across “Eruption” by Van Halen.

I absolutely hate it. It just sounds like noise. Is that considered “shredding”?

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But it’s not just “noise.” It’s very difficult to play correctly (to not make it sound like just noise; you would hear the difference), and it is melodic. He also is incorporating some elements of classical music in it.

“Cult of Personality” would sound like noise if someone who didn’t know how to play tried to play it.

Judging by the solos you like, it seems lyou like slower solos, not “shredding,” like you said. There’s nothing wrong with that. I personally love to hear the melodic shredding, like Eddie Van Halen, Kirk Hammett, Zakk Wylde, etc.

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Can someone explain rock guitar solos to me? Most just sound like random noise to me.

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Good solos have a theme and a melody. I'm not sure what else to say. Most are not "random". It's funny that you listed "Teen Spirit" as one you liked - it's not even really a solo. It's just the guitar doing the vocal melody.

Try this "slower" solo (also sort of a bass solo going on underneath) and tell me what you think. It then transitions into the "fast" solos.

Iron Maiden- Powerslave

Can someone explain warm bread to me? I just don’t get the appeal. I also don’t understand why people enjoy puppies, pizza, sex, a cold draft beer, boobs, or a sip of ice cold lemonade right after finishing mowing the grass on a hot summer day.

Yet people seem to love it. What am I missing?

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explain rock guitar solos

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Guess you have to break them down into:

1) I'm going to now play something free-form, without regard to the key, time signature, or chord structure for as long as I damn well please... (and just not entirely related to shredding)

or

2) Oh it's my time to do something interesting for the next 12-to-16 bars, and it's passed onto the next, and the next. Where originality is key but pays back some melodic homage to the song. And when done in repeated manner follows the verse-chorus form ad nauseam. (and can also include shredding).

or

3) Some combination of the two. When some big stars become well known and forget what got them there... (or feel obligated to play longer for the enormous wad of money you just wasted)

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Shredding solos tend to be heavily influenced by classical music ( Mozart, Bizet, Bach, Beethoven, etc) or by Bebop jazz (Myles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Django Reinhardt, etc).

In Bebop, the focus was often less on making something that purely sounded pleasing, but also on making something that other artists could not duplicate. Black artists had grown frustrated from having their parts stolen by and repurposed by white musicians who could profit from them without crediting them. So, they set out to compose and perform music so technically challenging that no one else could play what they were playing, and thus could never duplicate or steal their work.

I believe this motivation to create something others cannot copy is a common one among shreddy lead guitarists.

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This is a lot of it. In jazz, frequently solos are built on a harmonic foundation of the original piece (using chord progressions) as opposed to the melody, so if you aren't very familiar with that either from study or just ear training, it can be hard to understand what's being played and why it has any relationship to the base "song". So an "improvised composition" based on the original work's harmonic structure is a jazz thing and it's had some influence on rock guitar solos.

I don't think it's necessarily a thing you just "get" or not. Your ear/brain can learn to recognize elements of it. I haven't had formal training, and I can't tell you technically what's going on, but after years of just listening I can get a sense of "something's there".

Sometimes it's just about energy, too.

As with most types of music........less is more. I enjoy instrumental solos of all types, although I truly appreciate a well thought out and played solo.