Nobody?
I don’t! Honestly six notes is already a small group of notes, and if you do three, you get less “data savings”. I think this is why when you watch Al DiMeola’s version of this, which is just the same three notes repeated descending, he also tends to play that in units of six:
Honestly when it comes to playing fast, at least with the right hand, I really don’t think about “working up to speed”. I just go as fast as I can even if it’s sloppy. The idea is to feel what the motion feels like when done quickly. And even if your motion is technically the same as it is when you play slowly, it still doesn’ feel the same.
The only way to get it in your mind what fast and smooth feels like, is to go fast and see if you can make it feel smooth. Most of us probably already possess the ability to move our hands quickly enough, but we may not have learned how to do guitar playing motions quickly, without stopping for no reason, or switching to another motion unexpectedly in uncoordinated fashion - all of which can happen when you’re trying to learn a new motion, or learning a familiar motion at a new speed.
Also variety is good. Not just for musical vocabulary reasons, but also mechanical reasons. The more slightly different opportunities you can give your hands to feel what fast and smooth feels like, the more data they have to go on. This is why I think the exercise mentality, where you hammer away on one thing until you “master” it, fails to produce good results. We don’t learn anything piecemeal like that in life, either athletically, or language, or you name it. Throw a bunch of stuff up there and start shaping it all up together. Over time it gets cleaner and more consistent.
