Do You Have Slower Tempos That You Find Difficult?

[TSJMajesty]

Say I'm playing 16th notes, I have tempo range where I feel like I fall behind the beat, say around 95 bpm. But move it up to say 115-130 and it gets much more comfortable.

Anybody else notice this? I'm wondering if it's because that's like a 'transition' tempo, where it's like if you were walking fast, then you switch to running.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Say I'm playing 16th notes, I have tempo range where I feel like I fall behind the beat, say around 95 bpm. But move it up to say 115-130 and it gets much more comfortable.

Anybody else notice this? I'm wondering if it's because that's like a 'transition' tempo, where it's like if you were walking fast, then you switch to running.

Everybody has those blind spots, i spent the last year finally working on it.
My PITA thing is 120 to 130 so right there with ya.
I actually noticed when i started to fixing it that i switched to 16th triplets in irder to get around it.

 

[TSJMajesty]

i switched to 16th triplets in irder to get around it.

That does work.

 

[the-trooper]

Most musicians have difficulties playing slowly. That's one side of the coin.
The other side is that it's easier to overlook mistakes when playing really fast (talking about solos). I got a pretty ugly surprise when I started getting my playing in order and recording myself. Seeing just how much I'm off the grid and it's easy to overlook because I was spot on on the first beat of every measure.
To be fair, there are isolated solos Petrucci plays, when you slow down really fast shreds even he has some "questionable" runs

 

[TSJMajesty]

To be fair, there are isolated solos Petrucci plays, when you slow down really fast shreds even he has some "questionable" runs

Yep, definitely. I imagine he's writing solos that have parts that are right on the edge of even his abilities, and since he hasn't really practiced them a lot at the recording stage, he gets a take done, and just like anyone, says, Yep. That'll do.

He seems to always make those 3 nps ascending runs sound perfect, but it's obvious on some other riffs that it was something new to him, at the time.

I like that about his solos, in that I can hear that he's trying to add new ideas, as opposed to playing the same stuff.

I was recently working on Lines In The Sand, and I realized one of the riffs seemed similar to one in Carry On Wayward Son, using hammer-ons from open strings..., and then I remembered the band covered that song right around the time they were writing for Falling Into Infinity.

 

[la szum]

Yup. On drums slow tempos are a motherfucka!!

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Most musicians have difficulties playing slowly. That's one side of the coin.
The other side is that it's easier to overlook mistakes when playing really fast (talking about solos). I got a pretty ugly surprise when I started getting my playing in order and recording myself. Seeing just how much I'm off the grid and it's easy to overlook because I was spot on on the first beat of every measure.
To be fair, there are isolated solos Petrucci plays, when you slow down really fast shreds even he has some "questionable" runs

Or in time…