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what's your plucking speed?

..exactly ed ,no arguments from me !!! the hardest part of playing is telling the story.my point again is that you might have great stories going on in you head but it sure does help to have the means of telling it accurately .technique is nothing without ideas and vice versa .there are no excuses for poor technique though,yet we cant all have the creativity of parker,montgomery and the likes.jello,being able to execute fast lines doesnt make anyone a better player,it only means youve got your chops together,playing other peoples lines also doesnt impress me though it maybe shows a degree of application...in fact making a ballad sing ...no thats where im coming from.technique is personal....you need as much and as little as the ideas you want to express...if you want to slap ,slap...if it doesnt ring ya ding then dont...if you want to play fast lines everyone has to spend time in the "shed".
 
Uncle.
I totally agree with you. I dont think speed or chops for chops sake means anything. I knew someone would misunderstand me. And the tempos we were talking about are pretty grooveless anyways. Alls I was trying to say that I have never heard "anybody" play a stream of 16th notes at around 200 bpm like so many people in this thread are claiming. Not calling anybody a liar. Not saying its even important. I would just like to hear it and see how its done.
Thats all
 
jello...i must admit to also be pretty sceptical to the amount of 200+ claims....i just love being a hypocrite...i would also like to hear how clean the playing sounds when recorded ..no place to hide then.i use extreme grooves mainly as tech exercises but check out jaco on "port of entry" and marcus miller soloing on "moons" ..probably both at around 150 bpm for 16ths ..pushing above those speeds allows you to sink into the groove when your technique not a problem otherwise like you rightly say its sounds kinda grooveless.you can also play half tempo against say a 180 bpm and play the occasional 16th note fill which works well.one practice tip is like i said before check out grooves at ultra slow speeds ...thats when you know if your on it.by the way the right practice is the key ..not in terms of duration..one of my students went from 100 to 135 in a month doing 3 45min sessions a week .the result he can now sit back and groove upto about 120 ..anyone can do it if they want it.....
 
I don't know how many bpm's Master Of Puppets is but there are massive amounts of string skips and it's 16ths. I can also play, like, Seek and Destroy, which is 16ths. There are no string skips in that, though. I do both of those with my fingers. Quite easily, actually.
 
16ths at 110 is what some of the guys above were using as a "pretty good" guideline. The tempo of that Tower of Power song isn't really that fast, even though the bass is goin' quick. If you want to try something tricky (kinda, sorta, not really), try "BBK" by KoRn. You seem to not really have all that much respect for Feildy (the bassist), but, speaking of 16ths...those might be 8ths, actually. It's still kinda tricky to slap all of those notes and keep it clean.
 
So, ya dont like "What Is Hip?" Good Grief! I think it's one of the funkiest songs ever, and the last band I played it in, it was one of our most popular numbers. For all the speed-kings here: 1/16ths at 200bpm? Bulls**t! "hip" is 102 bpm, and I'll bet there's not many speed merchants here that can play it well, complete with the octaves and 7ths. I agree, you can play 1/16ths at 200 for a short space of time, but for a whole song? Dont make me laugh! And dont forget to GROOVE!
 
Originally posted by rmp5s
What is Hip? Is that the name of the song, band, what?


"What is Hip" is a song by "Tower of Power". Rocco Prestia plays straight 1/16 notes throughout most of the 5:00 minute song. Mostly all that he plays is octaves, mind you, but still the length that he can play 1/16 notes for is incredible to me.


Edit: The best I can tell the song is around 130 bpm. Anyone else agree?

2nd edit: On second thought, its actually a bit closer to 116 or so.

[Edited by hunter585 on 02-11-2001 at 08:06 PM]
 
The tempo is actually 102. At least that is what
every transcription I have ever seen of it says.

I think I have heard tower of power perform it even slower.
Like maybe 90 bpm or so.

Yeah, I still wanna see someone play even 16ths at
200 bpm.

[Edited by theJello on 02-12-2001 at 08:48 AM]
 
I'd be pretty interesting in hearing some of the 200 bpm 16ths. I've been playing a looong time and will readily admit I can't even approach that speed.

Are we all talking about the same thing?

one 1/4 note per beat
two 1/8 notes ber beat
four 1/16 notes per beat
eight 1/32 notes per beat
 
Nice crickets.

I think they realized we were talking 16th and not 8ths.

Except for uncle marcus. He says he can hold a stream of 16ths at 180 for 5 minutes. A groove that has lot of string skipping at 170 bpm. What is hip at 170 anybody?

I guess there is an exercise he developed and he got a student from 100 bpm to 130 in a month.

I asked him to tell me what this exercise is because I would like to know what Im missing. I have been playing for a long time also and cant even approach those tempos.

Not calling him a liar but I havent heard back from him.
 

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