I think JustinGuitar is wrong about playing slowly to get faster

allen

digitalkettle said:

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/3177749/#Comment_3177749

Excellent!

Looks scary though. I just looked at bars 9 to 12.

That's one bit sorted.
 Edit: I jut listened to it. I've never played anything anywhere near as fast as that in my life.

Vibetronic

CoffeeAndTV said:

Blueingreen said:

No, I think it’s obtainable for most if not all, but it’s work to get there and more work to maintain.

I totally agree with that - I think most people with functioning fingers can do it - but most people don’t want to put in the amount of work that’s needed, and to be honest, why should they? It’s a niche style and not that many people really care. What annoys me (teaching-wise) are those who DO want to play like that, but fail to see it’s simply hard work and can’t be arsed to do it (and are surprised that they can’t when they’ve hardly practiced). 

Mattharrier

Wow, busy post! I'm not reading all of it, so this may well have been said, but Justin's point about slowing things down to get them perfect is, for me, absolutely correct. He is aiming the video that is mentioned in the OP at beginners and people in the early stages of learning guitar - the specific example he gives is of him learning a scale incorrectly, and that incorrectness still cropping up from time to time.

What Justin isn't saying, at least in my reading, is that everything needs to be done as slowly as possible until it's perfect. In other lessons, he has encouraged people to try stuff, throw caution to the wind, see what happens. Be a bit sloppy and enjoy the journey.

When you're learning a scale, or a picking exercise, or whatever it might be, you are learning two things - one is the physical sequence of movements, the other is remembering the sequence of notes to be played. Slowing things down gives you more time to remember the next note, and complete the sequence from start to finish without making any mistakes. Making mistakes will at best prevent you from learning the sequence properly, and at worst make you remember it incorrectly.

Once you've got that sorted, you need to push yourself - until you fuck it up, at which point you need to back off a smidge, and get it right again.

There are a lot of posts about shredding in here, and if you're trying to learn to shred at the stage Justin was aiming his video at, you're probably getting a bit ahead of yourself and the usual "frustration leads to abandonment" routine may kick in! Once you're past the beginner stage, you can start to push yourself more in the ways that you have found work for you. At the very early stages, any teacher will advise the thing that works the best for the most people, especially in the format that Justinguitar uses, and learning things slowly is in most cases the best way.

As with most things, one single approach is never going to work for all people, nor will it work for any given person all of the time. I started out learning guitar trying to get everything 100% correct before moving on any further, and it crippled my progress, to the point I gave up for a while. I came back to it, having been given the equally important lesson "don't let perfect be the enemy of progress" and learnt how to play a few chords and had a whale of a time bashing out some songs.

For most stuff, I have to go slow. I can then speed up once I've got it perfect. What I consider perfect will vary, and it will certainly vary from what others will think, and I'll never be considered a particularly good guitarist, but it pretty much all starts at a slow pace.

The OP is right, though - going as slow as possible isn't necessarily the best thing to do - sometimes it's good to just go for it and see what happens. I think a good grounding in the fundamentals is needed, though, and I personally found that slowing things down was the best way to make that happen (I'm not a very good follower of my own advice - or Justin's, for that matter, so I still suck at playing guitar, but I'm most successful when I slow things down first).

I edited because I watched the OP's video again, and I added a little bit for clarity.

viz

I really like the two analogies: “practise slowly and ramp up, to avoid baking mistakes into your playing”, and “running uses different muscles from walking, you need to blast it”. 

I think I’m more in the latter camp - I’m a very messy player and if I want something to be fast I just play it fast, even if I can’t actually do it. And sometimes in the split second I’ll find a spontaneous workaround.

Like at 0:09 - 0:10 at the top of the run here. I wanted to play actual notes but it was clearly going to be impossible in the time available, for me anyway, so evidently my brain found a way round it and I just whizzed them. It all happened in the spur of the moment, but if I close my eyes it sounds like I’m playing the notes. Almost

There’s another example at 1:10 - 1:12 where I wasn’t as successful, I knew what I wanted to hear but there just wasn’t time and I was flying by the seat of my pants and just blitzed it. 

Though this was a total improv so I was free to go where my brain took me; maybe if I was trying to play something that I’d worked out in advance I’d be more disciplined / selective in what to attempt. 

 https://youtu.be/nA1CInnvyvg

I prefer the “play as fast as you can when you want to” approach because it makes you play what you want to convey, even if you actually can’t! Art over technique every time

PS - this was an improvisation assignment, but he also mentioned deliberately not looking at your instrument, which I think also really helps, because you can go faster than your eyes let you. Just close your eyes and blitz it. Feels amazing. 

Dave_Mc

Kilgore said:

p90fool said:

Bidley said:

Tannin said:

Spending massive amounts of time and energy learning a not-very-useful technique is a good thing to discourage when there are so many other, more useful things to learn

Again, not-very-useful perhaps for you, and for what you want to play. But again, not everyone wants to play like you or for you.

Of course not, and as a musician I can admire fabulous technique in any genre, but I think the point that @Tannin and I are making is that in the world of popular music guitar is absolutely everywhere, but a style which seems to hold a huge percentage of guitarists in its thrall is almost invisible to "civilians".

It's not a question of taste or who should or shouldn't play whatever they like, to me it's just a curious and incredibly heavily weighted imbalance towards a style which almost nobody else cares about. 

Honestly, it's all good, but it's also just a bit weird. 

Isn't this the case with many styles?

I'm a one trick pony who plays 90% fingerstyle blues. I spend a lot of time on the relevant techniques, especially thumb and finger coordination with my right hand. But the people who are interested in this style are usually other people who play it, not many "civilians". 

That's kind of what I would think. I'm not going to say shred is cool (that being said, the busker I saw bagging the biggest crowd ever was a shredder! Whether they would pay for it, or stay beyond a few minutes' novelty value, is another thing, of course), or that more obviously mainstream stuff aimed at non-musicians might not be more popular, but a lot of the stuff mentioned on here isn't exactly cool outside of here, either. I think we're all too close to it, really, and the people claiming they know better what "regular" or "normal" people like might just be fooling themselves...

Dave_Mc

Lestratcaster said:

I'm a teacher and can relate to this. When doing a technique based exercise (i.e learning a scale) I do slow it down first but always use a metronome so they can have a rhythmical framework to play with e.g quarter notes 1 note per click etc.

If teaching a song though I feel sometimes if you slow it down too much you lose the feel of the music, so if the song was 140bpm and you half it then it stops sounding like the song anymore with its original groove if its riff based.

People are different though some will stumble through it at full speed and force their fingers to click with their brain. Others beg for no metronome or backing as it "messes them up" and don't establish any sense of timing but if they're not playing it properly in the first place then how is it the metronome's fault? I think a series of repetitions with it sounding awful to start with is a good place to learn and getting the rhythm right.

Funny story... I remember years ago when I went to piano lessons (I was probably about 8-10 years old at the time, so bear this in mind), a girl at school who also went to piano lessons with a different teacher was sort of horrified when I said I'd never used a metronome (nor had my teacher). She sort of implied my timing must suck- or my teacher, for not using it with me!

Anyway, next time I was at my piano lesson, I must have been staring pretty obviously at the metronome (which sat on top of the piano) a lot (as I said, I was primary school age, not much of a poker face, it was probably like something out of a sitcom!). Eventually my teacher asked me what the problem was. I told her what the girl had said. My teacher (who was lovely, by the way, and whom I credit in a large part with my love of music) got a little annoyed, and said that she didn't think I needed it, and kind of was a bit hurt that I didn't trust her more than some random girl in school. She put the metronome on while I was playing to show me that I was in time and didn't need it, and then proceeded to turn it off and never turn it on again.

I've barely ever used one since...

the_other_ed

I've been thinking about this, especially as I practiced this evening - and, I somewhat agree with the analogy, but unlike walking/ running, which doesn't usually have a target other than the ground, playing the guitar is more, what I recall Guthrie Govan saying - like typing with a typewriter.

One can definitely play fast - but it must first be musical. And beneath the athletics of it, there's a language to speak. And that, a melody, must first be crafted slow...

digitalkettle

allen said:

digitalkettle said:

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/3177749/#Comment_3177749

Excellent!

Looks scary though. I just looked at bars 9 to 12.

That's one bit sorted.
 Edit: I jut listened to it. I've never played anything anywhere near as fast as that in my life.

Yes...very tough but you could just nick it as an exercise and pretend the intended tempo is, say, 150bpm...still works as a nice melodic solo.

Teetonetal

The process that works for me:

Take a lick or riff (not a a whole piece) that is difficult

Practice slower. So it's perfect, concentrating on the movement, mechanics and fingering etc
Raise the speed. and find the speed where it breaks down for you.
Practice just below that speed, where you can loop the lick and get it right most of the time
Practice about 10% above that speed, but in single loops with a pause between each attempt
Practice at the midpoint between two speeds and loop it.

Next time start at your new base speed.

I've found this is an awesome way of increasing speed, but I really limit it to technical exercises, scales and very difficult passages. 

That said, I also see nothing wrong with just going for it. I remember speaking to Dave Killminster about speed, especially in odd groupings and he was like get the first note and last note in the right place and just fit the the rest in... most people won't notice.

prlgmnr

This is a genuine question rather than an attempted rhetorical trap: do dancers learn new complex routines at full speed, or do they go through them in slow motion, or is it a combination of both?

EricTheWeary

prlgmnr said:

This is a genuine question rather than an attempted rhetorical trap: do dancers learn new complex routines at full speed, or do they go through them in slow motion, or is it a combination of both?

On something like Strictly they obviously learn them slowly in small chunks. For a pro dancer it seems to be more like combining elements of existing knowledge. 
So, much the same parallel that if it's completely new to you then take super slow, if it's within your existing skill set you might do it at full speed and refine after.

[based on watching too much TV rather than my dancing experience] 

Lewy

prlgmnr said:

This is a genuine question rather than an attempted rhetorical trap: do dancers learn new complex routines at full speed, or do they go through them in slow motion, or is it a combination of both?

Whatever they do, I doubt very much dancers looking to improve their quickstep have to deal with people implying that it's of limited merit they should be spending time on their rhumba instead .....

Kilgore

prlgmnr said:

This is a genuine question rather than an attempted rhetorical trap: do dancers learn new complex routines at full speed, or do they go through them in slow motion, or is it a combination of both?

Using your dancing analogy. Some of us just do it like Bez. 

p90fool

viz said:

I really like the two analogies: “practise slowly and ramp up, to avoid baking mistakes into your playing”, and “running uses different muscles from walking, you need to blast it”. 

I think I’m more in the latter camp - I’m a very messy player and if I want something to be fast I just play it fast, even if I can’t actually do it. And sometimes in the split second I’ll find a spontaneous workaround.

Like at 0:09 - 0:10 at the top of the run here. I wanted to play actual notes but it was clearly going to be impossible in the time available, for me anyway, so evidently my brain found a way round it and I just whizzed them. It all happened in the spur of the moment, but if I close my eyes it sounds like I’m playing the notes. Almost

There’s another example at 1:10 - 1:12 where I wasn’t as successful, I knew what I wanted to hear but there just wasn’t time and I was flying by the seat of my pants and just blitzed it. 

Though this was a total improv so I was free to go where my brain took me; maybe if I was trying to play something that I’d worked out in advance I’d be more disciplined / selective in what to attempt. 

 https://youtu.be/nA1CInnvyvg

I prefer the “play as fast as you can when you want to” approach because it makes you play what you want to convey, even if you actually can’t! Art over technique every time

PS - this was an improvisation assignment, but he also mentioned deliberately not looking at your instrument, which I think also really helps, because you can go faster than your eyes let you. Just close your eyes and blitz it. Feels amazing. 

That's totally my approach too @viz ;
I don't know if you do this but I set target notes on certain beats and make sure I get there even if the journey to it is ragged. 
Say you want to land on a Bb on the first beat of the next bar just make sure you play that note with total conviction, it lends the passage a certain authority even if the notes leading to it were almost glossed over. 

It's more of a Zappa than Satriani approach really. 

viz

^ I mean, that does sound like a very good approach. I suppose I might do it a bit, I would be proud if that were the case. But I couldn’t claim to do it properly - I think you can hear from my clip that it’s simply the twists and turns of melodies that are popping spontaneously into my head and my fingers are just trying to keep up!

Sassafras

I play it as I hear it.
I don't hear it in slow motion.

simonhpieman

Barney said:

I think iff you want to play fast just go for it and then make it less sloppy ...iv heard players who can play fast though and struggle with medium or slow tempos cos the technique will be different ... I think that is where start slow and increase the tempo slowly works 

Playing slowly can be much, much harder, particularly rhythmically.

The gaps between notes are longer at a slow tempo, right? The ear has longer to perceive those gaps accurately. If you miss nailing a note even by a hair your timing can sound massively off at slow tempos.

It's especially true of drummers. The worst drummers I've played with literally cannot play slowly and time gaps between kicks and snares accurately, yet can play the intro to the Eastenders theme at well over 200bpm.

Obviously as you play faster, the gaps between notes are smaller and even if your timing is off, the margin for error is sort of technically larger as you're playing so quick that minor slip won't be as perceptible by human ears compared with slower speeds.

Does that make sense? I realized as I wrote this that it's not that easy to explain!

TeleMaster

allen said:

digitalkettle said:

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/3177749/#Comment_3177749

Excellent!

Looks scary though. I just looked at bars 9 to 12.

That's one bit sorted.
 Edit: I jut listened to it. I've never played anything anywhere near as fast as that in my life.

You play it to speed as fast as you can, I'll play it slowed down at a speed that I'm comfortable playing it at and we'll see which one sounds remotely listenable.  

Greatape

Dave_Mc said:

Lestratcaster said:

I'm a teacher and can relate to this. When doing a technique based exercise (i.e learning a scale) I do slow it down first but always use a metronome so they can have a rhythmical framework to play with e.g quarter notes 1 note per click etc.

If teaching a song though I feel sometimes if you slow it down too much you lose the feel of the music, so if the song was 140bpm and you half it then it stops sounding like the song anymore with its original groove if its riff based.

People are different though some will stumble through it at full speed and force their fingers to click with their brain. Others beg for no metronome or backing as it "messes them up" and don't establish any sense of timing but if they're not playing it properly in the first place then how is it the metronome's fault? I think a series of repetitions with it sounding awful to start with is a good place to learn and getting the rhythm right.

Funny story... I remember years ago when I went to piano lessons (I was probably about 8-10 years old at the time, so bear this in mind), a girl at school who also went to piano lessons with a different teacher was sort of horrified when I said I'd never used a metronome (nor had my teacher). She sort of implied my timing must suck- or my teacher, for not using it with me!

Anyway, next time I was at my piano lesson, I must have been staring pretty obviously at the metronome (which sat on top of the piano) a lot (as I said, I was primary school age, not much of a poker face, it was probably like something out of a sitcom!). Eventually my teacher asked me what the problem was. I told her what the girl had said. My teacher (who was lovely, by the way, and whom I credit in a large part with my love of music) got a little annoyed, and said that she didn't think I needed it, and kind of was a bit hurt that I didn't trust her more than some random girl in school. She put the metronome on while I was playing to show me that I was in time and didn't need it, and then proceeded to turn it off and never turn it on again.

I've barely ever used one since...

I would say that her perception of what was good time was out. 

Many of the greats known for good time and awareness of centre of beat e.g. Gadd, Krantz work on it with a Metronome constantly.

viz

But many don’t because being precisely in time isn’t normally required. (Depending on your definition of precise obviously). Like concert pianists don’t play to a click track.