EVERYJOE'S REVIEW OF "BEETHOVEN'S GUITAR SHRED" DVD
Monday, April 13, 2009 - 11:55 am ET
The Great Kat's Beethoven's Guitar Shred
By: Scott |
When I was contacted by Thomas Public Relations about a review of “The Great Kat’s” Beethoven Guitar Shred, I thought it sounded pretty cool. Beethoven played at shredding speeds always sounds interesting. I had no idea who The Great Kat was, but the Beethoven Shred had my attention.
First off, The Great Kat’s guitar playing is ridiculously fast and there’s good reason that Guitar One Magazine (Guitar World’s slightly more affordable magazine) named her as one of the “Top 10 Fastest Shredders”. She’s also a classically trained violinist and graduate of the highly acclaimed Julliard School.
Pros: Kat Thomas’ tears in to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight Of the Bumble Bee with accuracy and speed in both clarified and unsloppy picking and fretwork. Her shred rendition of Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice #24 is also at a mind-blowing speed and she shreds along on the violin to this one as well. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is something that everyone has heard…but probably never like this. Nimble, precise and fast, Beethoven’s 5th get’s chopped down to 1 minute and 13 seconds. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto ends the classical shred on this DVD with a bang and really leaves you wanting more.
Cons: The songs/videos in between the classical shredding. It’s extremely fast, shredding guitar metal but the singing and cliche video is over the top. Kat Thomas is a performer as well as a musicians and her stage persona is of an extreme dominatrix of sorts. The videos are all blood and torture stuff. Nothing I haven’t seen before but as short as the songs are it takes away from the focus of the shredding. Overall this DVD is too short. You can watch the entire thing, to include credits and bonus material in under 15 minutes.
I really like the Classical shredding but I wanted to see/hear more of it. I’d also rather see Katherine Thomas shred away on the guitar instead of The Great Kat. Perhaps I’ve just grown way out of the whole gimmick thing as it’s been overdone throughout the years, but that’s just me. Below are two short videos from the DVD that showcase what you can expect. You can purchase the DVD and learn more about The Great Kat at Greatkat.com .
