how fast can you guys play a chromatic scale fitting in 4 notes per click on a metronome? so far i can play comfortably at 132 bpm, any higher than that its messy as shit.

I was going to post a topic about this

4 note runs 162bpm
3 note runs 175bpm

A guitar maagazine i got about 4 years ago had steve morse as the 10th fastest guitar player put on cd with 4 notes at 210bpm.....

So who was the fastest?

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How is this ?
Can you play the 3 or 4 notes with legato, or tremolo picking???

And yes, who is the fastest???

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apparently it was steve vai with 28.5 notes a second which is quite fast if you ask me (even though it was tapped harmonics with legato). There must be a faster guitarist. I just chose Steve Morse as an example because the he was timed doing an accending run (very similar you a chromatic run).

For behemoth i think the idea from Kev C was something like

g-----------------------------4-5-6-7
d-------------------3-4-5-6----------
a----------2-3-4-5-------------------
E-1-2-3-4----------------------------

With the click of the metronome being on the first note of each string. Legato would be way to easy and surely tremolo picking each note would mean you would need a slower tempo on the metronome. If you can tremolo the run above at above 120bpm i take my hat off to you.

Ever heard of M.A.B?

nope

16th notes? at 130 damn, i can only do them cleanly at like 90 or 100 or somthing

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I can't do much 4-note picked shredding, but I can do palm muted sixteenth notes a littel faster than 200bpm.

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I'm like the same, but at 108 bpm.

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g-----------------------------4-5-6-7
d-------------------3-4-5-6----------
a----------2-3-4-5-------------------
E-1-2-3-4----------------------------

to the people who are talking about 16th notes at 130bpm or 100 bpm - do you mean the scale thing above or something else?

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michael angelo batio

apparently hes the faster

i dont care who is the faster tho, you could be fast as shit but not have any emotion in your playing. i would have emotion and be a fairly fast player than be a speed freak who just plays boring fast non-emotive shit

I agree with you - just nice to have solid technique when change of tempo could changes the atmosphere of the song etc

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for the people who are at low speeds i have an idea for you. Get a stopwatch and time it for 30 minutes. Just do scales, modes chromatics all over the fretboard (there is a post further down the message board about how to play faster which would be a big help). Before you play for 30 minutes put the metronome on and see what speed you are at. After the 30 minutes test again. Do it for about a week (if you have the time - i know not everybody is a bum like me). I did this and i went from 110 bpm to 160 bpm in 2 weeks! All it takes it sitting down in front of the tv or when you are on the phone or just as you wake up before school/work and just playing it for that long.

I hope that helps - it certainly helped me!

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so did your playing improve significantly after you reached 160 bpm ?

definitly !!!!!!!

before i couldn't play accending runs or anything (there is a post somewhere on here about me asking how to pick an accending run). Now I just seem to be able to accending runs and riffs i could never do before. Also my speed picking and string skipping speed picking is a lot better.

Of course speed isn't everything but it was something that i wanted to do so i had all the bases covered (also i wanted to play children of bodom and zyklon songs without having to skip bits out knowing i couldn't play them). I can now play riffs, licks and solo's faster and with the same precision as before and sometimes a change in tempo can make a difference between a boring picking exercise solo and cool sounding solo. Example being Kirk Hammet from Metallica - slowed down some of his stuff sounds like a warm up exercise but at speed it sounds awesome.

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nice , recently i've increased from 132 to 138 bpm... slowly getting up there, watching live vids keep me motivated to practice hard

Your right, anyone whos looking to start increasing should just try stuff like
|-------------------------1234-and decend---------------------------
|--------------------1234-------------------------------------------1234
|---------------1234---------------------------------------1234----------
|----------1234----------------------------------1234----------1234------
|-----1234--------------------------------------------1234--------------
|1234---------------------------------------1234--------------------
the numbers are your fingers not frets (you can do the excercises anywhere)
also make sure you try 134 124 ect, it erally helps in soloing

I did that for like half an hour and i could tell the difference in finger speed after a couple of days, it only makes you better.

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Well if 16th notes are 4 notes a click then I can do about 160 I think using the 1234 up and down the strings.

nice, the clicking at 160 is insane, just listening to it makes me wonder how the fuck can i fit 4 notes per click into that. back to practicing

My fastest speed, at four notes per click, is around 220-230 ish, as far as running patterns up and down the neck across all strings. But I'm a rythm guitarist at heart and by necessity, so my fastest tremelo picking speed is sixteenth notes ( four per click ) at 250 bpm.

True man. I totally agree.

when i last checked w/ three notes per string, i wuz at 250 bpm. thats the hightest my metronome would go

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it doesnt count if its messy as shit.

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shit and i thought 160 was impressive... 250 holy fuck !!

So true.

I can get like 140-150 myself economy picked. Round 100 alternate picked.

I'm up to a clean 126-132 BPM doing the 1234 run. After warming up I can usually get to 138. What annoys me is that my left hand can do some really freaky shit, but my right hand struggles to follow all of it. I think I'm between 152-160 tremelo picking on the high e. If I REALLY want to sound like Yngwie for a few seconds, I can use my arm(strumming from elbow) and pick around 800-900 notes per second But it sounds like crap, so I will rarely do that.

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I have the EXACT opposite problem : my left hand dexterity is light years behind my picking hand. You sound like the sort of person who would admire Allan Holdsworth : check out his playing.


And about having clean technique ... 250 bpm is me turning blue in the face, getting light-headed, peeing my pants and having a heart attack . But I can still play it though!

i dont care how fast i play, i just like and want to play

?

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i play it in clean tone. its not very messy at all.

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apparently above 200bpm with 16th notes is the 'shredding zone'. I can even comprehend playing at that speed (160bpm is where i am so far) yet but that is what time is for and a fuck load of practise

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For some reason, either its my playing style or my equipment, but my mistakes are more evident in distorted tones than clean tones. So therefore I practice in distorted tones.

thats kinda odd. but its still better to practice cleanly i think.

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Playing it distorted definitly shows the mistakes more then clean does. I do this after i have practises the exercise clean, to make sure that there is no string ringing etc. Would definitly say play it clean first and then use distortion.

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thats wut i do. clean first, then distort the shit.

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Oh wow, I meant per minute.

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the most important question is how long are you able to play at high speed.how precise you are? and how does it sound? the stamina is the important factor not the speed. everybody who reaches 230 bpm at straight 16th and still sounds nice is really good imo. besides im not convinced at all that some guys from the forum can do 250 bpm clean in 16th over a decent period of time. maybe you post some sound files? im just talking about tremolo not about patterns yet.

and runs at 220 bpm ... i hope you know what youre talking about. 4 different notes per click on 220 bpm. maybe you should check if your metronome is working properly?

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Damnit, I've posted the same sound clip of me playing at 250 bpm over and over!

http://blueprint.dijit.net/mt-jh/song1.mp3

And like I've said, its not exactly "squeaky clean", its me pushing my tremelo picking speed as far as I can push it.

hah, i don't even remember that clip, amazing though, was expecting some nice blasting to come in after a few bars of the tremolo picking at the start

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Would have been good ... but yes, that click track is set to 250.

That would be crazy if you could get your left hand to catch up.

When you're playing that does if feel twitchy, or do you actually have full control. For instance could you play 220 just as cleanly, because I've noticed that there comes a speed in between my medium speed and high speed where it feels really awkward.

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My left hand is slowly catching up

I seem to have an equal amount of control at all speeds ... its just stamina that is my main problem.

the fastest i've ever played chromatic stuff was over 250 but that was when i was done chuging 2cans of red bull and jones soda mixed in a glass after an hour i pretty much passed out.

Cool shit. What kind of amp are you playing through and what effects if any?

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Yeah, Synching up each hands are all to common a problem.. My right hand is fast as hell, and my picking is fast, But they dont fit together cause my picking is undisiplined and sloppy. Its just not in harmony.

http://www.myspace.com/devouringthelexicon

Click on "Test Track" --- I've put drums to it. Lots of nice blasting.


Just a cheap Line 6 guitarport ... no real effects, I just plugged in and laid the tracks. Each track is doubled. The drums are courtesy of Guitar Pro --- YoungGuitarist style

....? your talking about 4 notes per string chromatic in 4/4 timing right? If so, economy and alternate would be the same thing in that case no matter what.

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hahahaha i thought you were gonna play 250 BPM with the chromatic 1234 at 16th notes, i was gonna shit myself if you actually did.

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sweet trem picking dude!



sorry if what i said was confusing, Im pretty shit with music theory. Yes, the first part is exactly what im talking about. For the second part, i'm not sure if i get what you mean.

If you pick alternate with the 1234 chorm excersise 4/4 then your also picking economy. At four notes per string it will always be down-up-down-up (next string) down-up-down-up with is techincaly strict alternat keeping the same down-up picking style, but also economy taking into consideration your picking down the first time you change to the next string. Its fucking hard to explain if you dont get it..... its really a very easy concept to understand.

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I'm not quite at 250 with the 1234 excercise ... more like 220ish, being clean.

Alright man, i think i get it now.

220? fuck, any sound clips of that?

Yea record that shit.... thats hard to believe.

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I'll try to get a recording of it soon ... basically I'm going to make a song on my Myspace and include a solo that features it. I'm going to wait until I've practiced for a few days on my seven string, when it arrives ( should be later on today ), so I'll be totally comfortable with it.

http://www.myspace.com/devouringthelexicon

i can do it at about 230bpm.

i can do 16th runs on 450 !!!!!!

dudes steve morse for example plays his runs on about 210 and he is really fast. stop bullshitting arround. and remember you only play each finger once not twice. so its 1234 per beat not 1122 then 3344 right?

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Calm down.

Click on the link in my sig.

Click on "The Golden Epoch" OR

http://www.digitalsoundplanet.com/M...3_000029356.mp3 ( right click save as )

My guitar is in the shop right now ( installing a new nut ) so I'm not able to lay down any tracks right now. But I did find something I recorded a while back.

The solo section of that particular track is at 210 bpm, and you can hear sixteenth note runs in there, its undeniable. I could even host a .wav file of 0:52-0:59 of "Epoch", slowed down to half speed, proving furthermore that they are in fact sixteenth notes. You could simply sit there and count, "1234 1234 1234" if you wanted to. Not tremelo picking one note over and over, but actually traversing the fretboard. And once I get my guitar back, I'll record something better if you'd like, because as I said, my top speed is around 230, 210 is fairly easy for me.

lol. ive worked mine up to about 112 bpm, clean. w00t w00t

Fuck, the link didn't work!

Oh well, hopefully when your site thing gets up you'll have fast shit for us then!

sorry i missed it before...

Did you "right click-save target as"?

Yeah, checked this exercise out before, but never at length. I have done it comfortably at 210, but i am very confident i can get it to about 220+, like a previous post i saw. It always seems to me that when jumpin around the 200's, its hard to notice a difference. Like if your at 208, on any given day you could probably get it at around 212 or something. Its a noticable difference from 208 - 216 and from 216 - 225.
But until i get a way to record stuff at my house, i wont be able to make a recording, so just stay tuned for that i suppose. I have done this with all hammer ons, and i can get it at around 260+.
But lets not forget, emotion is where its at, although this is a strictly speed thread and i hate when i make speed threads and people bring that up, cause that aint what we are talking about!

Refer to Iron90's thread

You definitely rip all over me in the lead guitar department.

I think its time to come with this post again, have you reached another bpm?

ANd another question, do you pick faster palm muted or witout palm muted.
THanks.

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Just over 200bpm thanks to John Petrucci's rock discipline DVD.

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I can do 215(almost 220) up and down the strings (16th notes cromatic)

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A trillion billion squillion. Of course, you mortals wouldn't be able to hear anything since my playing style's so fast.

ive seen michael angelo batio live, and hes a great performer, a funny guy and he DOES have emotion in his playing, despite it being super cheesy lead stuff onto a backing track!

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