Session bassist Lee Sklar talked many years ago how he would increase the turntable speed from 33 1/3 to 45 rpm because learning to play stuff faster made it easier to play it at regular tempo. If I need to nail a part, I usually bump the practice speed 20% for more headroom.
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How fast can you play 16th notes?
- Thread starter IamGroot
- Start date
Session bassist Lee Sklar talked many years ago how he would increase the turntable speed from 33 1/3 to 45 rpm because learning to play stuff faster made it easier to play it at regular tempo. If I need to nail a part, I usually bump the practice speed 20% for more headroom.
That is impressive. Quarter note at 320 works out to 16ths at only 80, but there is a mental component to walking through changes that fast that is different than a 16th note line. When you’re cooking like that you’re not spending very much time on any chord, or even phrase.
Measuring tempo is the main use for a metronome, but I will shed fast things using it as a timekeeper to see what part of a given line is giving me the real problems.
I do like other kinds of metronome study, like putting the click only on 2 and 4, or only on 1, or for a challenge, just one click on beat 3. But that kind of work isn’t so much for speed as for steadiness in my time-keeping.
Most of my practice is done without a metronome, but I still find it a useful tool for a number of things.
That's why it has to be chord changes i'm familiar with or "standard" sorts of changes. I haven't done it for awhile since I haven't played a lot of Jazz the last year or so.
My best times today using a metronome with 2 fingers alternating (4 notes per click): 100 bpm on the open A string. Two octave C scale at 80 bpm. Kinda strange that I can play Black Dog faster than I can play the C scale. Maybe my math isn’t right but I don’t have a calculator. Stewmac has a nice calculator but it’s a little expensive.
I assume you are playing qtr note so you are playing 280 notes per minute. Thats equivalent to 70 bm playing 16th notes.
Conventionally, in simple time, a beat is a crotchet or quarter note. So 1/16 at 120 bpm is 480 notes per minute or 8 notes per second.
In compound time, e.g. 6/8, the beat is conventionally the dotted crotchet, which contains 6 1/16ths. So 1/16ths at 120bpm in 6/8 (9/8 & 12/8 are the same rates) is 12 notes per second, or 720 notes per minute.
By these conventions, I would say that claims of 300+ bpm (20 notes per second in simple time or 30 notes per second in compound time) are fanciful at best.
Amen.
Click on 2&4 for walking bass lines is a great way to build swinging bass lines that dont sound evev remotely metronomic..
Second that.. walkin lines are a different kind of fast, even if its just R 3 5 Oct.
I confess that I got a transcription to Giant Steps somewhere, with its 3 key centers.
Thanks for doing simple arithmetic for me, but it’s not necessary.
Time signatures are important, for reasons. Quite a lot of music is not in 4/4 time. In 6/8, the beat is not a dotted quarter, it’s an 8th. That’s what the numbers literally mean. 6 beats per bar, each beat is an 8th note. Two 8ths equal a quarter note, a dotted quarter equals three 8ths. If each beat were a dotted quarter in 6/8, there’d be two beats per bar, which anybody can clearly hear is not the case.
Sorry, but 6/8 is two beats to the bar, each consisting of a dotted crotchet or 3 quavers. If you want 4 to the bar in compound time you write 12/8.
No, not it isn’t.
the bottom number indicates what kind of note represents a beat, the top number indicates how many of those notes are in a bar. If you’re subdividing a bar of 6/8 into two beats on a regular basis, you’re not gonna have a good time.
Time signature - Wikipedia
No, not it isn’t.
the bottom number indicates what kind of note represents a beat, the top number indicates how many of those notes are in a bar. If you’re subdividing a bar of 6/8 into two beats on a regular basis, you’re not gonna have a good time.
Read up on compound time.
It’s ok dude, I’ve done my reading. Six years of music in public school, two years of music in university, and a total of 37 years playing. I’m good.
Maybe ask for your money back... I'm quite happy for the Royal School of Music to keep mine.
Lol man, you’re really arrogant for someone who’s just plain wrong.
That’s ok, arrogance isn’t against the rules, butI’m not gonna let your just plain wrong comments slide without calling it out, I’d hate for anyone reading to actually swallow what you’re feeding here.
There isn’t a “compound time,” there are multiple compound time signatures, wherever the top number is divisible by three. So when read as a compound time feel, sure, there are two “beats” per bar, each a dotted quarter note. However, what you said was pretty definitive that all 6/8 time sigs are read this way, when they’re actually not. Time signatures mean things, like I said. 6/8 literally means an eighth note equals a beat, and there are six beats per bar - that’s what it means.
You need to take your education a bit beyond the “For Dummies” series before you posit yourself as an expert.
"The time signature (also known as meter signature,[1] metre signature,[2] or measure signature)[3] is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value is equivalent to a beat."
Time signature - Wikipedia
What have I said that contradicts anything that wikipedia, that font of all human knowledge, has to say on the subject? If anything you've just proved my point. At no time did I say all, I said conventionally. Which means that, unless otherwise indicated on the score (and composers do have to bend the rules from time to time), any trained musician, myself included, will, by default, read 6/8 as two to the bar, 3 for 9/8, etc...
