Pro Speed vs. Amateur Speed: What is your Yngwie Speed?

[Incster]

Hi,

The original reason I started with the guitar was Renaissance and Baroque Lute Music; therefore, I play fingerstyle, not with a pick, even on the electric guitar. Although we have some incredible cats on the Lute (Paul O'Dette, Nigel North, Cristopher Wilson, Jakob Lindberg, and, lately, Richie Blackmore), what van Halen/Rhoads/Malmsteen do is *very* impressive.
To get my chops in order, I bought "Stetina: Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar", translated picking directions into p-i (fighuetta, should be faster than m-i), a-m-i, a-m-i-m tremolos and woodsheded for a few years.
Of course, they all play at Pro speed while I'm an (dedicated) amateur - it would just waste an inordinate amount of time to get at their level - so I must settle for somewhat less. But how much less? 10%? 22%? 47%?

I use two simple exercises from Stetina as speed gauges: #8 for my left hand
and #25 for my right hand.

#8 is hammer-on pull-off with each finger pair: 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 3-1, 3-2, 4-2, 4-3, 4-2 (one measure, notes are 16ths):

e-2-1-2-1--2-1-2-1--3-1-3-1--3-1-3-1-
b------------------------------------
g------------------------------------
D------------------------------------
A------------------------------------
E------------------------------------

#25 is just a scale with an ostinato (again, one measure, notes are 16th):

e-15-0-0-0--14-0-0-0--12-0-0-0--11-0-0-0--
b-----------------------------------------
g-----------------------------------------
A-----------------------------------------
D-----------------------------------------
E-----------------------------------------

So currently I stand at (good day measures):

#8 at 180 bpm (12 notes/second). Glacial but even progress, 190 bpm should be possible, then I'll stop and keep it at that.

#25 at 120 bpm (8 notes/second). No progress since 1 year, feels like I start wasting time here. My original target was 140 bpm.

Naturally, my speed goes further down when I try some more complex melodies, e.g., I can execute Malmsteen runs (scales with mordents) at only about 100 bpm. As the particular run is specified with 150 bpm, I'm currently at 66% Yngwie speed.

So what's your standing (pick/finger) and how long took you it to get there?

Hal

[Nazgul]

Ok, I started out with the Speed Mechanics about a year and a half ago too.

My #8 speed is about 150-160bpm, this is when doing 1-4.

1-2 or 1-3 would probably be faster, but I'm not doing them.

My #25 speed is easily 200bpm .


Another cool exercise from the Speed Mechanics that I do all the time is:
1-4-3-4 and 1-4-2-4. I'm at about 160bpm.

[delt]

My RH technique SUCKS compared to my LH because it's "divided" between these 2 disciplines, pick and fingertips. Fretting is pretty much the same between classical and electric if you play properly, but for the right hand it's like playing 2 completely different instruments.

.... so mostly i can blast my way easily through legato/tap stuff, sweep, etc... but i often screw up with simple things like alternate picking across strings. In particular i find string skipping .very. hard to get right at high speeds. Guess it just takes more practice

[slayer32390]

+1 with delt. The picking is a whole different ball game between classical and electric guitar. I'm not fast at all with my classical picking or my electric picking but my electric is definately faster since I've been playing it longer. It all comes with practice.

[thetroy]

I can't do the 3-2 pair at any reasonable speed, but can do the other pairs right around 200bpm. Straight tremelo picking who knows - certainly faster than I ever really care to play

[Robotechnology]

You know what, I never thought to dedicate myself to practicing finger picking speed. It just came about and it is decent but, of course about half my speed with a pick. I'm going to work with a metronome/drum maching like I did with a pick for a few months and see how it goes. Thanks for the idea!

[Spivonious]

So is this Stetina book any good? I'm interested in a collection of exercises that will be build up my left hand speed and left hand-right hand coordination.

[jwoods986]

I'm the opposite of delt and slayer, my picking is WAY better than my legato.

[KMud]

So is this Stetina book any good? I'm interested in a collection of exercises that will be build up my left hand speed and left hand-right hand coordination.

It's a DVD...and I thought Paul Gilbert's Intense rock was better.

[slash]

So is this Stetina book any good? I'm interested in a collection of exercises that will be build up my left hand speed and left hand-right hand coordination.

Stetina: Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar is a book and CD. It looks like it is just what you are looking for. It has great exercises for left and right hand cooridination.

[KMud]

Ah yeah, sorry...you're right...I've got the book (twice infact...), got it confused with the metal method DVDs (Doug Marks, another guy who I've not really heard of). I couldn't really get along with books, far prefer DVDs.

[slash-ed]

This conversation is just a little bit like "How much can you bench?"

[javert]

Hi!

#8 is hammer-on pull-off with each finger pair: 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 3-1, 3-2, 4-2, 4-3, 4-2 (one measure, notes are 16ths):
So currently I stand at (good day measures):

#8 at 180 bpm (12 notes/second). Glacial but even progress, 190 bpm should be possible, then I'll stop and keep it at that.

#25 at 120 bpm (8 notes/second). No progress since 1 year, feels like I start wasting time here. My original target was 140 bpm.

Naturally, my speed goes further down when I try some more complex melodies, e.g., I can execute Malmsteen runs (scales with mordents) at only about 100 bpm. As the particular run is specified with 150 bpm, I'm currently at 66% Yngwie speed.

So what's your standing (pick/finger) and how long took you it to get there?
Hal

I started playing again last year in August after a ten year hiatus. I used to play mostly blues/hard rock, but I wanted to try something new and challenge myself, so I decided on heavy metal. I started using Speed Mechanics in January and I had problems especially with the RH excercises, like #25. For months, I was stuck at 120-130 bpm like you (and I was getting really fed up with that), but all of a sudden, I broke the barrier and going from there to 200 bpm was smooth sailing. Still working on the cross-string mechanics...

BTW, does anybody know what happened to the forum on Troy Stetina's webpage? For a long time, I've been getting an error when trying to access it (Forbidden - You don't have permission to access /cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi on this server.).

[Robert Burns]

Of course Patrucci can do 550 BPM !! :ROTF:

[javert]

Of course Patrucci can do 550 BPM !! :ROTF:

He can play so fast people die... it's quite amazing. His guitars are custom made by Mr. Ibanez, his pickups are hand-wired by Tony Blair, and he has a piece of equipment that controls the earths rotation.