Top Speed?

[Reece Fullwood]

Man i agree with everything you all just said on the subject, i just know how it feels, to be ripped on for playing fast. really sucks ballz.
while we are on the subject did you guys see tiago della vegas world record flight of the Bumblebee, 370bpm?



got to 3.20 in the video

 

[Scar Symmetry]

Tiago Della Vega looks like my older brother

 

[ShadyDavey]

To be honest, I don't think anyone is going to top Shawn Lane for clean and accurate picking - even slowed down his licks are metrically precise and he's not just playing excercise-type phrases, he's playing beebop....thats of course not to say that you can't get as fast as he was but getting beyond that?

I don't think so. Sweeping and legato are of course a different matter but for the former then Frank really does take the crown. The Fareri's of this world might be faster but simply repeating a sextuplet sweep isn't anything like improvising the way Frank's done it countless times.

For Legato then look no further than Allan Holdsworth or possibly Derryl Gabel....and the point of the name-checking is....

Established benchmarks. As Maniacal said we are going to be critical so you need someone to hold up as an examplar of technique for comparison against. I'm only an interested observer who hasn't played in years so I have no axe to grind and frankly I love to hear well-played fast guitar so YouTube turns me off simply through audio quality and consequently I tune out for a lot of the players on there.

That said, taking the mic input from your video camera and running a guitar into it might not generate the best tone in the world, but you can get a miles better idea of whats going on....

re: Tiago - yeah, he's fast as all fuckery but he's not picking every note.....

 

[TonalArchitect]

^ So what is he doing, not-quite-legato? It just sounds like mush to me.

EDIT: Also, on the topic of Lane, what are some of his more difficult alternate-picked licks?

 

[ShadyDavey]

Its not quite Legato aye

For Mr Lane its really hard to say "X song at Y time" but definately check out some of the licks from Power Licks/Solos as they're a lot easier to follow for examples of speed (i.e they're all tabbed and the videos are up on YouTube in good quality).

I know that sounds like a total cop-out but honestly when I listen to some of the faster live recordings I can't hear what the hell he's doing - if its alt-picked, or legato, or what......

His absolute top NPS ratings came from Willjay and I frankly can't remember what he was clocking to get the reading. The string-skipping 3 notes per sting diminished licks were recorded at 19 or 20 nps iirc (and I might not, its late ).

That wasn't very helpful, sorry

 

[Nick1]

This is the kind of post I'm talking about people.

Like I said I really did some serious damage to my nerves in my left arm. My method was I would take a few phrases 1 or 2 for sweeping, legato, tapping, alternate picking etc... and play them over and over for hours each day for a few weeks. I would play these phrases in just about every key and at various tempos. After several weeks of the same phrases they would get to pretty high tempos. At this point in time that is ALL I was working on for about 6-8 hours per day or more.

Here is the after math from it all........

View attachment 11509

 

[Nick1]

to be honest 360 bpm 16th notes would sound like turd anyway, once it gets past 270/280 it ceases sounding cool and just sound ridiculous.

That is your opinion not a fact.

There are lots of players that can do over 30 per second. Like Shawn Lane or George Bellas (just to name 2) George Played on the Vitalij Kuprij album called Extreme Measures. Check out the track called "Track on Fire" Thats some of the fastest playing Ive ever heard in my life!

 

[ShadyDavey]

There are lots of players that can do over 30 per second

I know of one for certain (Fareri) and at that speed it really does lose any musical identity. There aren't lots of players who can do 30+nps and even if there were, it just sounds awful - in my opinion at least.

 

[Excalibur]

Man i agree with everything you all just said on the subject, i just know how it feels, to be ripped on for playing fast. really sucks ballz.
while we are on the subject did you guys see tiago della vegas world record flight of the Bumblebee, 370bpm?



got to 3.20 in the video

It's been debunked.

Like I said I really did some serious damage to my nerves in my left arm. My method was I would take a few phrases 1 or 2 for sweeping, legato, tapping, alternate picking etc... and play them over and over for hours each day for a few weeks. I would play these phrases in just about every key and at various tempos. After several weeks of the same phrases they would get to pretty high tempos. At this point in time that is ALL I was working on for about 6-8 hours per day or more.

Here is the after math from it all........

View attachment 11509

I'm sure you were fast, but at the speeds you're suggesting, you can apparently pick faster than Shawn Lane, sweep faster than MAB, tap faster than Guthrie, legato faster than Shawn Lane.

So....

That is your opinion not a fact.

There are lots of players that can do over 30 per second. Like Shawn Lane or George Bellas (just to name 2) George Played on the Vitalij Kuprij album called Extreme Measures. Check out the track called "Track on Fire" Thats some of the fastest playing Ive ever heard in my life!

Um, no they can't.

Shawn Lane's NOWHERE near over 30, he's very fast though.
George Bellas is also the same.

A word of advice, throwing around random numbers does not impress me, nor does it impress other members of this forum.

I'm advising you to provide some sort of proof, or to stop exaggerating your claims and others, it only makes people more blind and in the dark regarding speed on the Guitar.

 

[Harry]

^Yep, I agree with that pretty much. Especially the video, it was debunked AGES ago, I don't understand why it still gets thrown around.

 

[Harry]

One thing that I don't think was mentioned either, is people have their good playing days and their bad playing days.
Some days you're simply going to perform better than others, no way around it, humans by nature are not going to be 100 per cent consistent from day to day and from performance to performance.
I once had an extremely good playing day last year, where I was picking 16th notes at 270bpm cleanly. I remember that day so vividly.
It never ever happened again, and everyday after that I was topping out at 240bpm clean.
I tend to think unless you're of Shawn Lane genius ( a dude with an insane memory capacity, learning ability far beyond the average person and just general quick mindedness), the 240bpm at 16th notes alternate picked seems to be a good number at what the normal, average guy like myself or many of the other forum members or players in general will top out at.
Especially so, since it was a figure cited by not just one, but several people in this thread.
So pretty much, for me at least anyway, anyone that claims to be able to pick at faster than 16 notes per second (16th note triplets at 160bpm/16 notes at 240bpm), then I want to see a video, and have it slowed down by someone like Willjay that knows their shit to confirm that it's actually clean, because seriously, past that point speedwise is really pushing the limits of what the normal person can do IMHO.

However in legato, 18 notes per second is my "believable" threshold.
Satch has hit 18.4 notes per second clean in legato and given the man is a god at the technique, I tend to think that is the upper limit for legato.
Maybe Shawn Lane was hitting a bit faster, 19 notes maybe, but regardless that seems about the limit for playing it clean I think.
Why is 18 notes believable? Because you're not having to constantly synchronize two hands like you do for alternate picking.
You only pick a few notes at a time, and hell, if your technique is good enough, you can probably fluff up the picking now and then and still sound good since your left hand is good enough.
My alt picking sucks now because I stopped practicing in favor of vibrato and sweep picking (I'm lucky to hit 10 notes per second these days I reckon), but I'd be willing to post up some videos of me playing legato if I could get someone to film me.
I think 16 notes per second in legato is very achievable playing proper musical stuff and I reckon 17, possibly 18-ish is my limit when playing exercise material. Anything over 18, I think would be impossible for me to playing clean no matter what.

 

[Nick1]

It's been debunked.


I'm sure you were fast, but at the speeds you're suggesting, you can apparently pick faster than Shawn Lane, sweep faster than MAB, tap faster than Guthrie, legato faster than Shawn Lane.

So....



Um, no they can't.

Shawn Lane's NOWHERE near over 30, he's very fast though.
George Bellas is also the same.

A word of advice, throwing around random numbers does not impress me, nor does it impress other members of this forum.

I'm advising you to provide some sort of proof, or to stop exaggerating your claims and others, it only makes people more blind and in the dark regarding speed on the Guitar.

 

[Santuzzo]

Reece, that is an awesome clip !!! GREAT song and GREAT playing!!!!

 

[Sean Babiniec]

It seems like Reece and Johnathan are the badasses of this thread!

 

[BenEllerGuitars]

16ths at 240 is the AVERAGE??? holy hell, i need to catch up here... that is fast as balls, guys. when you all talk about this kind of speed that you have, is that just picking an open string, or are you going through and doing 3 note per string scales and stuff at that pace? if so, that is hauling some serious ass.
i used to spend hours and hours working on speed, and a couple years ago my chops were pretty damn nasty. i was doing 3 not per string scales and 4 note per string chromatic stuff at like 210-ish, and to my ears, that was pretty damn fast.

i've been spending a lot of time lately trying to up my speed level, and i only consider myself to be able to "play" at a certain BMP if i can freely improvise with it, run up and down scales with all picked notes, etc... with that method in mind, i'm having a hard time getting past 175-ish BMP's, all 16th notes. my left hand isn't the problem, it seems to be my right hand, i suppose. i do everything pretty normally, as far as the way i hold my pick and everything. i "slice" the string at a slight diagonal and bend my thumb a little, ala Paul Gilbert. when playing a run going from the low strings to the high strings, i will progressively palm mute the unused low strings as i get to the higher strings in order to keep them from making any noise...
am i doing anything odd, from the sounds of things? i've not been hitting the metronome super super hard lately, so maybe i just need to do more of it. after a person has been playing for a number of years, i think its easy to forget that sometimes to raise the bar for your playing, it takes tons of time. maybe that is my problem!

 

[Jackface20]

I hardly think that they meant the average person plays at 240 bpm perfectly clean, I think it was more intended as the limit most people cannot physically surpass and struggle with, assuming a huge amount of metronome effort etc - theres plenty of professional musicians who rarely pass 200 bpm and are still considered to be very fast - its more about how clean you play and what you do with it anything beyond like 160 bpm imo....

 

[Excalibur]

Quick question, to all the speed demons in here.

What does reaching these speeds achieve?

 

[Konfyouzd]

^ bragging rights...?

i really only started this thread because i had heard some numbers that i thought were ridiculous so i wanted to get a feel for the average. that's all.

 

[Scali]

Not sure if I fall in the 'speed demon' category, but in my case I try to get my technique and speed up in order to improve my accuracy and extend my possibilities when writing/playing my own music. It makes all the not-so-fast stuff pretty much effortless when playing.

 

[Konfyouzd]

^ that too