Okay, so tonight I’m watching Michael Angelo Batio’s latest stream on youtube, and I just found out that a couple of weeks ago, Batio and the bass player Joey De Maio of Manowar released a video on YouTube where they claim to play 30 notes per second in unison. I’m sorry, but I have trouble believing that’s correct. I’m curious to know what you guys think about this.
All due respect to MAB, I’ve been a fan for decades and he’s been cool the couple of times I’ve met him, but he makes some CRAZY claims. This is nowhere near 30NPS, both of them are dropping lots of notes as they speed up.
yeah, he can probably hit at least 15 notes per sec, I really don’t know who he thinks he needs to impress at this point, he’s clearly one of the very fastest gutarists on the planet, top 1% easy.
Whatever about the scientific validity of this, there are two things I get from the video :
1- they are playing ridiculously fast.
2- they are having great fun doing this.
Hey I can’t hate on that 
Oh I don’t deny that. I’m not trying to hate. I actually like Batio quite a lot. I’m just trying to stay grounded in reality.
If they posted a video that was titled something like “hey watch us play kinda in unison really fast”, that’d be all good. But making a wild claim and then posting it all over opens one up to scrutiny - it’s dishonest, P.T. Barnum-level stuff. While I agree it doesn’t really matter, and they just did it to increase views, I still find it weird behavior.
MAB has always been a little….over the top….with things. A four neck guitar? Routinely using a dual-neck at opposite angles?
He’s being a showman in his own way, and this fits. I hope to be as feisty at 67.
As for the PT Barnum reference, there are worse things to reference.
Yeah that’s the way I took it, plus you have to factor in the social media effect where everything has to have a contentious or otherwise attention grabbing title to get people to watch it.
Hey here we are talking about it… so it works!!
Mike is a wonderful guy and an amazing player. He and Joey have done a few of these kinds of videos and I think the ironic thing here is that, while the picking is not moving at the stated speeds, they sound better than the edited players who hit the speeds.
The internet has long ago fulfilled its quota for phony, hyper-edited / quantized-sounding speed guitar. If you’re going to go all-in on speed for clicks, then at least do it like this. This way sounds real (because it is), requires strong playing skills so that the parts degrade gracefully, and would actually work in a live performance.
I would just take this in the spirit of fun in which it was probably intended.