Hitting a Wall w/ Alternate Picking Speed

[TSJMajesty]

I don't see much merit in ramping a metronome up to 180bpm or 250bpm if we seldom (or never) play
anything above 150bpm or so.

I can give you an example from Good Times Bad Times.

Say you're just starting to learn that riff, and you're not yet fluid enough to play it as sextuplets. So you double the metronome speed, so you can feel the "beat" on every 3rd note. Which would mean you'd approach 180. Then, once you get the feel, you take it down to 90, and hit the beat with every 6th note.

It's all relative.

 

[Byrdman]

Oh, and GREAT fucking song! Listened to it earlier today.

1st song on their 1st album. You can hear how they wanted to come out with a bang.

Absolutely! They set the bar pretty high when that album was released.

I'm really trying to get a lot of Page's work under my belt. I figure if I am trying to learn to solo, he is a good one to start with. Most stuff is pretty straight forward and if you play a little sloppy, it still sounds good. I just learned The Rover solo and now I'm ramping up the speed. I'm at 80% now, but I was at 70% last week so I'm moving in the right direction.

 

[la szum]

Nice! You got this, @Byrdman


Those Bonham whatever the hell he is doing with his foot and one kick drum
in Good Times, Bad Times are

I have no doubt they wanted to make a statement to the entire music-making world.
"We are here. We are a force to be reckoned with."

They didn't lie, did they?

 

[la szum]

I can give you an example from Good Times Bad Times.

Say you're just starting to learn that riff, and you're not yet fluid enough to play it as sextuplets. So you double the metronome speed, so you can feel the "beat" on every 3rd note. Which would mean you'd approach 180. Then, once you get the feel, you take it down to 90, and hit the beat with every 6th note.

It's all relative.

Wow. That sounds really complicated. Is that like Common Core Math or something??

I kid. You likely know more than I do, and have been practicing this stuff, and know all
these neat tricks I would never think of, Tom.

 

[Byrdman]

Nice! You got this, @Byrdman


Those Bonham whatever the hell he is doing with his foot and one kick drum
in Good Times, Bad Times are

I have no doubt they wanted to make a statement to the entire music-making world.
"We are here. We are a force to be reckoned with."

They didn't lie, did they?

For Sure!! Hell, it took me weeks to get the timing on intro/verse part when the vocals start

 

[la szum]

Sweet!

It sure would be fun to find a group of people and work up an entire Zeppelin Album front to back.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Wow. That sounds really complicated. Is that like Common Core Math or something??

I kid. You likely know more than I do, and have been practicing this stuff, and know all
these neat tricks I would never think of, Tom.

It's just doubling the speed of the metronome to help you keep your timing accurate.

I have a few 32nd-note riffs I practice regularly, and at first I set the metronome to give me a beat as if they were 16th notes. For that exact reason.

It's really not rocket surgery.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Sweet!

It sure would be fun to find a group of people and work up an entire Zeppelin Album front to back.

We used to do the first side of the Cars first album. After we played the first song (Just What I Needed ?), our other guitarist would always start the next song. So we figured, why not? Then he did it again, and eventually we just played the whole thing.

Funnily enough, he was the HUGE Zeppelin fan in the band, yet we never did it with any of their albums.

 

[la szum]

Double the tempo to half the grouping?

Why not just leave it alone?

 

[Byrdman]

It's just doubling the speed of the metronome to help you keep your timing accurate.

I have a few 32nd-note riffs I practice regularly, and at first I set the metronome to give me a beat as if they were 16th notes. For that exact reason.

It's really not rocket surgery.

The metronome I use on my phone allows you to accent each beat division in different volumes/sounds. So a triplet will be a hard click on the measure beat and lower volume on the the other 2. it really helps me a lot.

 

[la szum]

I just bought one of those Fitness Tracker/Smart Watch thingies. Cuz' 55.

Anyways, when I was young and into fitness I'd get my heart rate way up there
and think nothing of it. 175, 185 ain't shit! So I slap this thing on and get on my Mtn.
Bike and go for a ride. Check the watch. I am good. 96. Ramp it up. 108. Ok. Increase
a little more. 126.

I'm good.

Huff and puff!!

 

[Byrdman]

We used to do the first side of the Cars first album. After we played the first song (Just What I Needed ?), our other guitarist would always start the next song. So we figured, why not? Then he did it again, and eventually we just played the whole thing.

Funnily enough, he was the HUGE Zeppelin fan in the band, yet we never did it with any of their albums.

That solo Just What I Needed is pretty difficult, IMO, towards the end. I haven't tried it in a while so dont remember it exactly but I got almost all the way through it down and gave up due to the end. Figure I would circle back around when my technique was better. I should try it again.

 

[Byrdman]

I just bought one of those Fitness Tracker/Smart Watch thingies. Cuz' 55.

Anyways, when I was young and into fitness I'd get my heart rate way up there
and think nothing of it. 175, 185 ain't shit! So I slap this thing on and get on my Mtn.
Bike and go for a ride. Check the watch. I am good. 96. Ramp it up. 108. Ok. Increase
a little more. 126.

I'm good.

Huff and puff!!

I'm right behind you at 54 and I know exactly what you mean!

 

[TSJMajesty]

The metronome I use on my phone allows you to accent each beat division in different volumes/sounds. So a triplet will be a hard click on the measure beat and lower volume on the the other 2. it really helps me a lot.

The Archetype plugin I have also has that feature. Very helpful (so you don't have to double the metronome speed, but since Fractal's metronome is utterly featureless, that's what I do.)

 

[la szum]

I'm right behind you at 54 and I know exactly what you mean!

Paving the way for ya..... relatively slowly.

 

[TSJMajesty]

That solo Just What I Needed is pretty difficult, IMO, towards the end. I haven't tried it in a while so dont remember it exactly but I got almost all the way through it down and gave up due to the end. Figure I would circle back around when my technique was better. I should try it again.

Elliot Easton was very underrated. Lots of tasty solos that are harder than they sound!

 

[Sascha Franck]

Right now, I'm pretty comfortable in triplets at 120 BPM, and can sometimes push it to 130 depending on how far I have to go to the next string. After that, my fretting hand seems to drag and gets sloppy.

16th note triplets?

 

[Byrdman]

16th note triplets?

No way, not that fast yet 16th note Trips I'm in the 60-70 BMP range, so about half

 

[Sascha Franck]

Let me ask you something: What are your goals? Do you need or want to play something specific in any specific tempo? Is speed a fundamental part of the music you'd like to play?

Personally, while I have been playing some sort of challenging fusion stuff in the past, I never had to do anything really forcing me into whatever speed limits, so there's simply been no pressure for me to get too much involved into picking excercises. But as I'm doing all this as my profession, too, I had to care about at least some decent amount of accuracy. And at least a certain "ground speed" indeed comes as a byproduct of accuracy.

Then there's also something else: Do you want to largely play pre-prepared patterns and licks (or even 1:1 covers of whatever solo parts) or would you rather be going for "free, unlimited access" - as in: I can always play what I want/hear (obviously limited by a certain tempo, but still).
The latter has been vastly more important for me than raw speed, it's also rather obvious that the less you play pre-prepared patterns and what not (or the smaller they get), the slower things become. For me it was about finding a good balance between combining as small as possible blocks and still being at least sufficiently fluent. Higher max. speeds can obviously be reached using more pre-prepared things.

 

[DrewJD82]

How many songs are most of us ever gonna play at 150-160bpm + ?? Seriously??

Not you, Drew. So don't answer.



I'd bet for most of us the vast majourity of material we play will be in the 60bpm (ballad) to 120bpm (foot stomping rocker!)

Hahahahahhahahahah I started reading and felt the air gasp into the back of my throat like I was ready to raise my hand with the answer until I read the 2nd line.