Fastest guitarist in the world - official

So much anger in here...wow.

I may be new to these forums, but I'm incredibly surprised at the polarization in this thread. Seems our young fellow sparked quite a bit of controversy with his little rendition.

At the end of the day, music can be just about how you express yourself. Take it or leave it, I suppose, but no use working on your next heart attack just because some kid somewhere attempted something with a guitar that you do or don't approve of.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to some Chopin at 10 times speed.
 
dogonjon said:
Let's talk about Spanish guitar if you want shredding with emotion. Flamenco on!
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Eh, there's nothing more inherently "emotional" about flamenco than there is about "shred," and to be fair I've heard my share of sloppy, emotionless flamenco. It's just, I've heard a LOT less of it than I have sloppy, emotionless electric guitar wankage.

For every bedroom flamenco player, there's probably a hundred bedroom electric shredders. As such the, ahem, "talent pool" from which to draw bad YouTube vids is a heck of a lot larger, so you see a lot more of it.

No genre of equivalent technical aility has more "emotion" than any other - it all comes down to the player and that player's execution, and since there are so many aspiring shredders relative to aspiring flamenco players, the percentage of truly world-class talent you hear with flamenco is higher than with shred simply because the former is almost entirely limited to guys with major recording contracts whereas the later is not. It's a question of how the music is filtered coming to you...
 
It's about the Dancers

There is nothing quite as stirring as a Flamenco guitarist playing for a couple of dancers. The stern facial expressions and the guy stomping around, clapping his hands and the guitarist smacking his guitar. Very colorful costumes for the girls. I like the guys flat brimmed hat with the dingle balls, tight pants and boots too, very rock and roll (the pants and shoes, not the hat). Now check out this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaHaRUPfKok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6znv2BRzu4U
That is shredding!
 
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eyema_believer said:
I don't know if he's playing 16th or 32nd notes

At 320bpm a 32nd note comes every 46.875ms, at a rate of 21.3 per second.
16th notes, on the other hand, would come every 93.75ms at 320bpm, at a rate of 10.7 per second. :eek:

Peace!

~Shawn
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He's playing 16th notes at 320, but at my calculation, that's 21.3 notes per second.

320 bpm = 320 notes per second

But, he's playing four notes each beat (16th notes), so:

320 notes per minute x 4 (to convert to 16th notes) = 1280 notes per minute

Now, 1280npm/60 = 21.3 notes per second.

Isn't this right?
 
I haven't watched the video, but didn't Yngwie clock at around 1000npm? And he's been surpassed since. 1280 sounds about right for a modern shred-centric guitarist.

I think everybody should stop being wusses and post how fast you can cleanly pick a scale--no sweep picking, tremelo, slurring, just straight-up honest picking.

I never practice anymore, but I managed about 400npm. I can almost double that slurring, but that's cheating. My tremelo is about twice as fast. If only I could combine that tremelo with the slurs . . . :o

But that would require practice, and I'm happy enough with 400npm. I don't use a pick much anymore anyway . . .
 
famous beagle said:
He's playing 16th notes at 320, but at my calculation, that's 21.3 notes per second.

320 bpm = 320 notes per second

But, he's playing four notes each beat (16th notes), so:

320 notes per minute x 4 (to convert to 16th notes) = 1280 notes per minute

Now, 1280npm/60 = 21.3 notes per second.

Isn't this right?
Click to expand...

Not quite. Everything bears out except that "320 bpm = 320 notes per second" bit. 320 beats per minute means just that - he's squeezing 320 quarter notes into every minute.

Aside from that, you're right - 320 beats in a minute, times four notes a beat, does give you 1,280 notes a minute. Divided by 60 seconds, and you come out at 21 and a third notes a second, pretty damned fast.

I think it's easier to understand the math from the other perspective - at 60bpm, one beat a second, you're playing four notes a second. So, figure out the ratio between the tempo you're playing at and 60, and multiply that by 4 - in this case, (320/60)*4 = 21.33 repeating.

MSHILARIOUS - My picking is pretty crap (I'm more at home playing legato) and it's especially bad playing scales across the entire six (or 7 in my case) strings of the guitar and back, as the string switching is what screws with me. I'm fine for a string or two, but when I start having to shift my hand to get to the next string, my accuracy suffers... That said, I've been working on this lately, and last night I had the metronome up in 140-150bpm territory and was running through a couple stock "box" position diatonic scales relatively cleanly... On the conservative end, that puts me at just shy of ten notes a second. That said, if I'm confining myself to fewer than 2 or three strings at a time, it's been a while since I've just gone balls out for top speed or anything but I should still be able to get over 180bpm, for 12 or so. And, if I throw picking to the wind and stard doing things like 4 notes of legato with a tapped note up top in a fixed position on a single string (i.e - sacrificing everything musical for raw speed), I'm not really following any particular rhythmic pattern by this point so the metronome angle goes right out the window, but someone started a cock-measuring contest over at Tabcrawler about this, and based on averaging the number of distinct measurable attacks per second over a couple seconds, I seemed to come out in the low 20's. Still, that's not music (not because it's too fast, but because I'll freely admit that my technique is limited such that I couldn't do anything musically interesting at that speed), and it shouldn't really count - about 10-12 notes a second is, at this point, about the limit I can play anything musically interesting.

(and now I'll wait for this thread to TOTALLY degrate into a pissing match, lol)
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
MSHILARIOUS - My picking is pretty crap (I'm more at home playing legato) and it's especially bad playing scales across the entire six (or 7 in my case) strings of the guitar and back, as the string switching is what screws with me. I'm fine for a string or two, but when I start having to shift my hand to get to the next string, my accuracy suffers... That said, I've been working on this lately, and last night I had the metronome up in 140-150bpm territory and was running through a couple stock "box" position diatonic scales relatively cleanly... On the conservative end, that puts me at just shy of ten notes a second. That said, if I'm confining myself to fewer than 2 or three strings at a time, it's been a while since I've just gone balls out for top speed or anything but I should still be able to get over 180bpm, for 12 or so. And, if I throw picking to the wind and stard doing things like 4 notes of legato with a tapped note up top in a fixed position on a single string (i.e - sacrificing everything musical for raw speed), I'm not really following any particular rhythmic pattern by this point so the metronome angle goes right out the window, but someone started a cock-measuring contest over at Tabcrawler about this, and based on averaging the number of distinct measurable attacks per second over a couple seconds, I seemed to come out in the low 20's. Still, that's not music (not because it's too fast, but because I'll freely admit that my technique is limited such that I couldn't do anything musically interesting at that speed), and it shouldn't really count - about 10-12 notes a second is, at this point, about the limit I can play anything musically interesting.
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Seems like 600npm is about right for a minimum standard of musical phrasing. In other words, if you can't play that, then there are unquestionably valid musical phrases you can't play (as I can't at the moment).

800npm should be possible for just about anybody serious about practicing, say, 15 minutes a day. Beyond that is fun, but if it isn't clean, it's not going to be musical. Then again, if it's clean :D
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Not quite. Everything bears out except that "320 bpm = 320 notes per second" bit. 320 beats per minute means just that - he's squeezing 320 quarter notes into every minute.

Aside from that, you're right - 320 beats in a minute, times four notes a beat, does give you 1,280 notes a minute. Divided by 60 seconds, and you come out at 21 and a third notes a second, pretty damned fast.

I think it's easier to understand the math from the other perspective - at 60bpm, one beat a second, you're playing four notes a second. So, figure out the ratio between the tempo you're playing at and 60, and multiply that by 4 - in this case, (320/60)*4 = 21.33 repeating.

MSHILARIOUS - My picking is pretty crap (I'm more at home playing legato) and it's especially bad playing scales across the entire six (or 7 in my case) strings of the guitar and back, as the string switching is what screws with me. I'm fine for a string or two, but when I start having to shift my hand to get to the next string, my accuracy suffers... That said, I've been working on this lately, and last night I had the metronome up in 140-150bpm territory and was running through a couple stock "box" position diatonic scales relatively cleanly... On the conservative end, that puts me at just shy of ten notes a second. That said, if I'm confining myself to fewer than 2 or three strings at a time, it's been a while since I've just gone balls out for top speed or anything but I should still be able to get over 180bpm, for 12 or so. And, if I throw picking to the wind and stard doing things like 4 notes of legato with a tapped note up top in a fixed position on a single string (i.e - sacrificing everything musical for raw speed), I'm not really following any particular rhythmic pattern by this point so the metronome angle goes right out the window, but someone started a cock-measuring contest over at Tabcrawler about this, and based on averaging the number of distinct measurable attacks per second over a couple seconds, I seemed to come out in the low 20's. Still, that's not music (not because it's too fast, but because I'll freely admit that my technique is limited such that I couldn't do anything musically interesting at that speed), and it shouldn't really count - about 10-12 notes a second is, at this point, about the limit I can play anything musically interesting.

(and now I'll wait for this thread to TOTALLY degrate into a pissing match, lol)
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lol .. yeah duh ... oops ... I meant to say 320 notes per minute. Thanks for the correction. :)
 
The particular performance isn't particularly musical, partially b/c he's palm-muting so you don't get a chance to actually hear any notes, partially b/c it's on an internet video, but it's still pretty cool in my opinion. I think being able to play that fast would be a great way to make you a more accurate player at slower speeds. I agree that that speed would be pretty useless in a real song, but as an exercise it has merits.

If you want to whine about people playing fast without feeling, whine about Dragonforce and their 5 minute show-off sessions in every song. Ugh.
 
mshilarious said:
I think everybody should stop being wusses and post how fast you can cleanly pick a scale--no sweep picking, tremelo, slurring, just straight-up honest picking....
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I'm far slower than you - on scales probably around 250 notes per min cleanly.

Crap, I'm the tortoise in the race with the hare :(

(Then again, when I flatpick reels I can speed things up quite a bit)
 
How about some bowing Skillz

Heres mine


the panning effect is pretty cool with surround sound and if you are sober LOL
 
I think this is as I can "cleanly" play--little lead riffin' over a vamp Rokket used in a rumble in the clinic...

 
legionserial said:
This thread is now officially gay. To all the people bitching about this guy, making assumptions that this guy even considers it music, rather than something fun to do, you are all as transparent as glass. You are jealous. I've met many a guitarist in my time who took a negatory stance to someone playing fast, or doing anything complex, and it was always the same, they couldn't. They saw someone else doing what they couldn't do they get jealous,bitch about the guy, then say "well who would want to do that, it's gay" to cover up for the real motive behind their bitching. I was even like that myself once when I was 14.

The guy is just doing something for fun. The same reason people run a marathon, or cliumb a mountain, or attempt to bake the worlds largest pie. It's for fun, they aren't trying to prove anything, and this guy certainly at no point said 'this is music'. It's already bee nestablished that the guys own music is nothing like that fast paced, but still, everyone sees this one video and creates what they view as an accurate summation of this guys attitude to playing guitar. Really I'm sure all that happened is that the guy loved playing guitar, practiced a lot, got to a point where he could play fast, saw that there was a competition, and thought it would be a laugh to enter.

You can tell the jealous guitarists a mile off, because they are the ones who believe there is a point where you become to good or too fast or too complex or too this or too that. I'm not saying that everyone who plays guitar should aspire to play like that, but it's pretty lame that MrX spends so much of their time ripping on MrY's ability to do something MrX can't.

Deny it if you want, but you people can't deny to yourselves that you wish you could do that shit like that, even if you try and make out to everyone else that you don't.
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OMG!! I'm dyin' here! "officially gay"......you're cracking me up.:D:D
 
After viewing the video, my conclusion is -
Playing that fast does seem a bit unnesessary...but it is bad ass. I have a lot of respect for anyone with that much control.
 
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