Another Question to shredders

wats ur speed in bpm wuth 16th notes? and does shredding mean pure picking? can it ahve legato runs? and wat are the usuefull techniques for shredding?

First, there isn't a set bpm for 16th notes -- this is the type of notes you're playing. Going with 4/4 time at 120 bpm you have 4 quarter notes per measure. After quarter notes you have eighth notes which is half a quarter note and then sixteenth notes which are half the time of eighth. I'll try to make a chart to help explain that.

whole note
|
half note half note
| |
quarter quart. quart. quart.
| | | |
8th 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th
(and then 16th, then 32nd, then 64th, etc...)

Shredding just picking fast (i believe) and can have legato runs. I usually include techniques like sweeping in this as well.

Hope this helps, and if I have said anything wrong then hopefully someone will speak up soon.

but would u consider 16th notes on the speed of 132 bpm shredding?

No, I think from 140 bpm and up it qualifies as shredding. ;)

anyone know how fast satriani or hammett could go in with 16th notes? in bpm measurement.. i want to set a goal...

I wouldn't worry so much about the speed, concentrate on accuracy for now. The speed will get to you with time. If you're trying to play the fast licks of Hammett or Satriani the best thing is to find the tab, or music books, of their songs that you like and learn to play those licks just like they play it.

Speed comes with time. If you want a 'goal' I personally play 24 notes per second (dunno what it does in notes/BPM) VAI Satch and Petrucci go at around 20, 16 for Hammett, and the guy from Mr Cucumber is at 42 per second (he's in the guiness for it)

42 in one second ? Wtf ? How do you do that ? Like PG with somesort of drill or something ? If I strum some chords really fast I can get 42 too :)

Btw, 24 notes a second is doing chromatics at 240bpm... Ain't that a lil' too high to set your goal ? I would set it around 200bpm (still, 20 notes/minute) or something so you wont get discouraged too much. Doing 24notes/second takes years of practise, imho. While doing 20 notes/second is much easier, but still hard. Once you're over 200bpm it gets more difficult to increase I think (haven't gone over 175 myself, so...) (I'm talking about strictly alternate picking here but, it's best you try some legato, taps... too)

Besides, like I said some time before. Music is an art, not math ! Nobody cares about how much notes you can play in one second, because they won't notice it anyway :) It's about how you keep your audience entertained !

Latz, Gul.

When you listen to Mr cucumber, it sounds like some mickey mouse high speed licks. The guy has some kind of syndrome that makes his muscles hyperactive. As for the 20 notes per second, it's true that it's really difficult to go way faster, unless your practice routine is only based on speed. I think that over 25 notes per second, you must have some kind of physical or genetical gift. Actually, I have tried to play this fast because that's what I hear in my head.

i have just joined guitar tricks so i don't know how old this thread is, but i'm posting a reply anyway. i have heard the guy from mr cucumber and analyzed the type of licks he uses. they are very similar to the kind of licks that shawn lane uses when he really starts movin'. i am a 16 year old aspiring guitarist and have been playing for 3 years, but i have been able to play 53 notes per second (thus the name) using a similar legato lick as the guitarist from mr. cucumber. if he is in guinness, than i would like to know how to contact them to try and break his record.

Got any recordings of that ? 52... a second... HTF you do that, even if you have some trick you can pull to make you pick faster, going up and down 52(even 42) time in one second, that's inhumanly fast, you can't even hear the difference then ? (Isn't that about 50Hz or something ? Or doesn't it have anything to do with that ? Beats me :))

Going to check that cucumber guy, can't find anything 'tho...

Edit: Just found an mp3 sample of the Mr cucumber thingy. Wtf, i'm totally stunned. ****, at this point I don't even dare to touch my guitar anymore :)

[Edited by Gulder on 07-15-2002 at 03:24 PM]

Cool dude, if you are that fast, show it to the world (like in the tricks section here)
See, mr cucumber is quite amazing huh?

Damn, 53 nps is IMPRESSIVE! I consider myself as a fast player, but i don´t think I can pull off more than 15nps. But as mentioned before, playing lightning fast is not ewerything. My main goal is simply making good music, also featuring alot of speed, but not based on it.

By the way, Gulder, could you post a URL to thar mp3 or similiar ones?

Yeah, sure I can :)
http://perso.club-internet.fr/fabienm/paus/paus_mp3.html
It's mighty impressive and pretty catchy too... I'm kinda addicted to it, really wierd. It's like primus on acid... Really, as soon as I find some material from this group I'm gonna buy it (which I probably wont :() I've used a slow downer to test him, and even slowed down at 1/4 of the speed it seems terribly fast :) His name is Marcus Paus btw, but he seems fairly unknown (haven't found much information about him, not even an official site)

Btw, I made some calculationerrors, ehrr... I'm not a great mathemagician(?) you see :) (not much of a musician either, but i'm still improving :)) 16th at 240bpm = 20notes/second.
Which is a little less, but makes you still friggin' fast.

Edit: Just found out... his tapping is slower than his picking, hehe

Gul

i've been getting a lot of emails asking me how the hell i play 53 notes per second. i will be making a trick soon. i will let you know when it is done. but for now let me just explain to you how i do it. it's not just that i can play that fast, because playing that fast normally would be physically impossibly without some trick right?

i figured out a way to play very economically and thus much faster... i'm trying to come up with something to call the technique. its not that it's that different than normal picking, it's just a combonation of legato and staccatto. anyway...give me ideas.

here is a copy of an email i sent to gulder describing how it works:

the trick as far as picking is to not alternate pick every note, but to find something in between sweep picking and muting, kind of a combonation of legato and stacatto.

as for the fretting hand... i keep it loose and then tighten it hard at the last second, trying to do it with evey successive note, but i end up just kinnda letting it fly and tightening the muscles in my fingers...almost like the way you snap and contract all your muscles when you throw a punch. Every string has the same shape, so i just kinda let it do it's own thing and just. it's not so much like standard fretting, but more like fluttering between two notes, except i do it with 3. try and forget about the notes and just train your hand to stay on the right frets and play them in the right order. articulation does get lost, but since the sound is very blurred anyway, it doesn't really matter.

sometimes i will bar my first finger so the transition between strings is easier, that way, it's basically like fluttering on one string, so as fast as you can do that between 2 notes on one string is as fast as you can fret the lick.

also, since it's so fast and articulation is lost anyway, i basically treat it like a chord with my picking hand. this results in the last note on one string and the first on the next almost being played at the same time, which increases the overall speed. so quite honestly, i don't think at all about accuracy, i trust my fretting hand to get it right becuase it gets so used to the notes after a lot of practice that it happens by itself.

the resulting sound after all is said and done is like a chord being played over itself slightly off time. this is becuase the fretting hand is just trying to play catch up with the sweeping motion of the picking hand, and always barely makes it.

It really isn't that hard. I just analyzed the way the instrument is played and figured out the most economical way to play fast. since chords have the most notes for second technically (because their all played at once), and the fastest the fretting hand moves is when 2 notes are being fluttered, i just combined the two. a step away from stacatto, and a step away from legato....a step away from a chord, and a step away from simply fluttering 2 notes on a string. it's more about a physical excercise and a mental examination of the process, and less about any amazing talents. although speed has always come easy to me and that probably is helping.

Just so you know...I practiced it legato and i couldn't get it smooth enough because i was basically just fluttering my fretting hand, so it didn't sound articulate enough. so i decided to kina cheat and came up with a sound that is almost purposefully sloppy...well, not so much sloppy as just really blurred.

gotta hear it though...

i'm still in the process of recording it on my computer

i just finished making my trick. it's in the jazz section, and it's called 53 notes per second (that's a tough one, huh). tell me what you think

http://www.guitartricks.com/2000/trick.php?trick_id=3195
???
That's something I posted a while ago, and I don't get how you can go that fast??? It's still not clear...Your tricks is the same as mine...

[Edited by lalimacefolle on 07-17-2002 at 06:48 PM]

yeah i know... i saw yours. i wasn't copying, it's just a lick that lane plays alot (or similar to). besides, i wasn't trying to show the lick, just the technique i use to get it so fast. i just used that lick as an example because i can play that one fast easily. i will give you credit on my trick if you want.