[QUESTION] Always admired shredders but starting to change my mind a bit about my goal as a guitarist. Thoughts?

Always admired shredders but starting to change my mind a bit about my goal as a guitarist

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I am an intermediate player. I always aimed to become really fast and play complex solos. I still like it. Now, listening to BB King, Steve Rothery and Guilmour, I realized it may be more effective to express feelings with fewer notes.

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I am starting to wonder if playing fast is really what I want my playing to be since this guys can, with fewer notes, express more emotion. My favorite guitarist is John Petrucci but I realized my favorite solos from him are not the metal ones, but the slowers and more jazzy. Examples are: Lines in the Sand and Goodnight Kiss.

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In my improvisations, I am trying to play less and let myself digest these notes instead of playing a lot to sound cool for other guitarists.

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What are your opinion on this? Have you ever experienced some kind of existencial crisis in your playing? Do you feel playing fast is mostly playing for other guitarists rather then playing for the audience?

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I still want to play fast to increase the range of techniques I use. But fewer notes seem to work better a lot of times.