Speed is not the enemy of melody.
Speed is a tool USED for Melody.
Look at people like GG, and Al Di, some of the fastest runs you'll find on guitar, but still incredibly melodic.
I hate when people get angry at fast guitarists, claiming that they're lacking any melody, or any "feel".
Speed and technique isn't related at all to melody or feel, it's about what you play. Not how fast you play it.
Don't know if your post was in reply to mine but I wasn't against speed
I merely stated that when players play fast all the time you don't get to hear a note or chord bloom and decay which is the tonal signature of any instrument in my opinion
But on the subject of speed:
I have plenty of records in my collection with very fast playing and was a fan of Malmsteen from his first albums too.
Guthrie and Di Miola are fine players , but there are many plyrs who have speed but poor note selection.
I was even a fan of Vinnie Vincent in his day, and whilst I loved his riffs and songwriting his soloing was complete and utter tasteless wank.
Speed in itself is not thrilling to me, but the ability to go from 0-60 at the drop of a hat is. It's the change in dynamics that does it for me and all the better if it also remains melodic in some way in my opinion
I think if anything, speed opens up a whole new world of melodic techniques and licks, although it's as you say, the note selection of alot of guitarists is extremely poor, which is why I raised the point that's it's what you play that's important, not how fast you play it.
Alot of the metal sequencing which you see in fast runs, sounds terrible played slow - And that's not really as it should be. Guitar shouldn't be about awe inspiring with fast notes, it's the notes themselves that are important. Speed should only help you towards better melody - not take you away from it.
And if you're a guitarist that's reading this, and thinking to yourself that you know exactly what I'm talking about, and that you suffer from the same problems, that you have great technique, and no melodic control, there are several things I do when trying to be more melodic, one of my favourite, is to get a jamming track, and choose 2 strings anywhere on the guitar, usually one string, and the one either above or below strings, (however, string skipping is another brilliant melodic technique, so if you're more ambitious, you could try another set of strings) and then try play to a backing track of some sort while trying to play on only those 2 strings. I find that it's alot easier to play melodically if you reduce the pallette you're working with, and thus you can branch on from there, 3 strings, 4, etc untill you begin recognising all the key points of alot of scales and licks - Like learning to abuse pedalling of the major 7th in a Harmonic minor scale, etc.
