I record everything I play habitually, that is how I noticed. But that is also the reason why I prefer a form of practice for myself that doesn’t require me to look at waveforms.
Speed bursts are not part of any official CtC material. I suspect the reason is, that it is hard to pinpoint wherein the benefits of this exactly lie. Not to say there aren’t any! I’d like to hear @Troy s opinion on this, if he finds the time
I don’t know about others but personally I’ve never addressed it because I have no evidence that people actually start out slow and get faster over time. I mean, we’ve seen all the Technique Critique clips on here where poeple complain about stringhopping and then we tell them to try and go as fast as they can, and they come back the next day doing 180bpm on a single note. We’ve seen this many times. That’s a pretty big bump. Do those people creep up to 190 or 200 eventually as a result of just getting smoother with the new motion? I mean, maybe but that’s not that big of a jump that I’d even worry about it. Maybe that’s why we don’t have people coming back going wow I got faster, i.e. because the biggest breakthrough was the first one.
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If not as a tool for speed development, do you see any other possible benefits in speed bursts? They don’t seem to be a thing with any of the players that you interviewed, or at least I don’t remember
In this video, Martin Miller and one of his students discuss this topic and Martin seems to be a fan of incorporating bursts in the exercises touched upon in the conversation, at least to some extent. The overall procedure of the method seems to be to find and live in the speed limit area where you occasionally experience difficulties, but is still able to perform the motions the majority of the time. Doing bursts can be a variation to help you on the way.
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That’s a lot of what I’m thinking. So much of it’s mental, and also the fact that if I don’t ever play at 190 (because I can’t), how will I ever get there. I can play at that speed for short time though, and it feels ok if it’s bursts where I can recover. The speed is high enough (and I’m intentionally changing strings on these) that I am pretty sure string hopping can’t creep back in. If nothing else, it could give me the confidence to think ‘Wow, I actually can do this’.
Anyway, thanks for the cool MM video!
It sounds like you have a solution and you’re looking for a problem that fits it. I don’t know if that’s particularly useful. Is there a problem you’re trying to solve and what is it?
Martin has talked about something involving playing shorter things fast as @AndreasNasman points out. But I haven’t watched the video so I can’t comment on what kind of problem he is saying is addressed by this. Martin is a very smart dude so whatever he’s saying works I’m sure there is some kernel of something useful there. It’s more a question of what is the specific problem he is talking about and can you verify the approach actually addresses the problem?
When we see clips in “Technique Critique” of players doing “bursting” who have a stringhopping problem, it doesn’t appear to do anything. Their slow speed is stringhopping. Then they “burst” for a short amount of notes, maybe four or six, but it’s still stringhopping. In the one recent example I’m thinking of, the player said something like, “it’s working” but it was clear from the video that it was not working and the motion had not changed.
So that’s the other problem, is you can’t take anyone’s typed-out text explanation of something as accurate. You really have to look at video to see what is actually happening. If someone says they “got faster” that’s actually a super vague statement that needs to be interrogated. Could they physically not move faster before and now they can? Could they move faster just not for a long period of time and now they can do it for longer? Did they take an inefficient motion and do that inefficient motion a little faster and call it a success? Ask the hard questions!
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It is more like I discovered that it really doesn’t work for me as a speed building tool, but at the same time, a lot of people seem to get something from it in that regard. Now I can’t just discard all of these peoples experiences, just because they don’t match my own, right?
It definitely sparks some curiousity what it’s all about
Not suggesting you discard anything, just asking why you’re asking about uses for something if there’s no problem at hand.
But I understand, people talk about a thing, you want to know what they’re talking about. So do I. But I’m always prepared to discover that the answer is they’re not super clear on what they’re talking about or what it even means.
I guess to expand a little on my initial theory, if speed is really a neuromuscular thing, wouldn’t speed bursts be effective at training the nervous system to fire faster? Also, given the fact that I can play in bursts fairly accurately, I won’t need to then go back and clean up the slop, because I’ll have already programmed it in. Especially if I approach it with the forward chaining approach mentioned earlier by @induction, where my bursts would get progressively longer.
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I moved this over to this thread - you can delete your other comment about the misplaced post if you like, since nobody will know what you’re talking about!
I don’t know. Are you talking about maximum motion speed? If you can move at speed A enough to “burst” that speed, then you can already move at that speed, right? So it sounds like you’re talking about duration more so than speed. Or are you saying that by trying to go as fast as you can, you come back tomorrow and your maximum speed is faster than it was today?
What makes a thing a “burst” versus just trying to go fast? On the forum here when I’ve seen clips of “bursting”, people seem to be intentionally playing a much smaller number of notes than they can play at a given speed. Like, one repetition of a pattern as opposed to two or four. Is this better than playing two or four? I have no idea.
Again, I only know what I’ve seen. For stringhoping problems, it does not appear to “untrain” the stringhopping motion. Over a tiny distance like four or six notes, players seem to have no idea what motion they’re actually making or whether it’s changing.
This sounds like hand synchronization, not speed. This is a totally different problem. This is another area where we have seen posts in Technique Critique of players doing this. And what I’ve seen is that over a tiny distance of four or six notes, players can’t seem to tell if they’re synchronized or not. They may think they are, but in the examples of this that I’ve seen, they were not, even though they thought they were.
Again, I can only guess, but I think chunking works by anticipating an intial accent or initial motion, like a downstroke at the beginning of a phrase. I think it uses specific motor system circuitry to do the anticipation, like what is used for timekeeping. If there is only one repetition of something, there is no anticipation. That’s my impression of how chunking works to promote synchronization.
Again, it’s a matter of what specific issue we’re talking about. As to the stringhopping issue, I’m fairly comfortable with “does not work for that”. As to the chunking thing, I would also lean toward “does not work” based on what I’ve seen, but we might need more data.
As to the “getting physically faster by playing short numbers of notes” question, I really don’t know because I haven’t seen it and can’t quantify. We may need more data on that to know if this really changes anything, and if short numbers of notes works better than long, and so on.
Taking Troy’s point, and noticing that I wasn’t super clear about this earlier:
I use forward chaining to get longer licks memorized and comfortable at speed.
I use bursting to increase the speed at which I can play a given chunk cleanly (or equivalently, to improve the accuracy and articulation of a given chunk at full speed).
I use neither of them to increase the absolute speed limit of my picking hand.
Sorry if I misinterpreted your question.
This was the heart of my post. I can play x bpm and I’d like to play x+y bpm. Can I play in bursts, or chunks with small pauses so that I can recover, at the fastest speed I can move my hands to effectively push myself to increase my overall speed. I probably should’ve posted a clip showing my proposed burst strategy to get faster at the Petrucci exercise I mentioned. I’ll work on getting that together.
Thanks a lot for the thorough responses Troy, I really appreciate it!
No problem at all. Yeah my end goal here is to get my hands moving faster tomorrow (or next year haha) than they do today.
I noticed the other day that if I played in these bursts/chunks repeated with small pauses for recovery, I could handle a faster speed than if I were trying to go through the whole exercise. I thought “cool, I’m exposing myself to a faster speed than I’ve played before (~190bpm). I wonder if this will help me gradually increase my top speed as opposed to just playing the whole thing at my current comfortable but challenging speed (~180bpm) speed (which is lower than what I can handle in the bursts) and hoping I can gradually get that faster”.
If you can do the burst at the speed you want (e.g. 16ths at 190bpm) then forward chain the burst…so four fast notes becomes eight fast notes and so on. It’s also one of many strategies to use in each practise session. I’ve come to think of bursts as playing melodically (8ths or triplets) then ‘giv’er’ as many as you can. I hear Al DiMeola do this kind of thing in his compositions.
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I’m still not really following! I’m a little slow, so apologies in advance. Are you saying you can already play at the faster speed, just only for short amount of time? Or are you saying you can’t play at the higher speed at all?
If you can’t play at the higher speed yet at all, then what is the “burst” actually doing to help you get to the higher speed? Are you saying that your plan is to “burst” at your current speed a certain number of times, like reps at the gym? And is the plan that, by doing that, when you come back the next day, you might be able to suddenly go faster than you were able to go today?
Or… are you saying you can already play at the higher speed, but through bursting you’re trying to increase the length of time you can play at that speed, not the actual speed itself.
On a separate note, I do think you should post a clip of your picking motion, but not because of the bursting thing. Because maybe you should be at the higher speed already and you’re not because you’re just not doing the motion correctly.
Is the picking motion you’re using not the one that you’re fastest at? Or are there other motions you can do that are faster but you don’t like them as much for some reason?
Yes. At 190 I can play small, separated portions of the Petrucci exercise. If I were to attempt to sustain this for the duration of the exercise, it would fall apart. I can play the exercise with acceptable control at 180, all the way through. So let’s call 190 the “faster” speed, and 180 the “current” speed.
My plan is to play the small chunks at 190, the “faster” speed, not the “current” speed. I think if I wasted time playing small chunks of a speed I can already handle (180) it would do nothing for me. I plan on doing the bursts with forward chaining and gradually adding more of the chunks together so that I’m playing at 190 for longer periods of time. Like reps at the gym, totally. I am not expecting to increase each day. I don’t even plan on doing this each day lol! Just over time, exposing myself to the maximum speed I can move my hands, which is 190 right now…just for very short bursts.
Agreed. I’m probably being confusing describing what I’m going for when a clip would clear it up. I’ll get one together.I think I’m using the same motion in all cases, but we’ve all seen enough posts to know what people think isn’t always reality 
A clip would be helpful for sure. I’ll see if I have some time tomorrow.
Sort of covered above but as far I’m aware of, whether I’m playing the whole exercise at 180 or the small broken chunks at 190, the picking motion is the same. That is my intent anyway.
Thanks again for your interest in my question though it means a lot to me that you’ve taken the time for all the responses you’ve given. Same to everyone whose commented. The community here is just the best!
So just to be totally clear, you can actually already play at the speed you want to play. When you say you can’t “handle it” all the way through with “control”, what does that mean? Are you saying you start to slow down? Or does something else happen?
I swear I’m not being willfully obtuse here! I just want to point out how confusing these conversations can be. The subject of your thread literally says “getting faster” right in the title, but that doesn’t actually appear to be what you’re really asking about.
Anyway sure thing let’s take a look at the motion and see if there’s anything there. But there might not be. If you can already play at the speed you want, then it’s probably working. I mean, 190 is pretty fast. Give us a couple takes of this, one at a speed where you have no trouble. Then one at the 190 speed so we can see what happens when you say you can’t “handle” it.
I definitely see how bursts can help with control and the ability to switch gears from a speed where stringhopping can cope into a more efficient motion for the higher speeds, but I haven’t found much increase in speed overall. I see bursts as more of a solidifying tool, its a good test of your timing and hand sync when playing to a pulse where you switch between subdivisions. For speed, I have had good results from ‘revving’ (like an engine). Starting at a moderate speed and doing a smooth revving up to top speed and back. This is done without a metronome. I found that it avoids the fatigue of hardcore repetitions high speed, but gives you the opportunity to feel your way through to higher speeds (hopefully beyond the current), thus maintaining an efficient motion.
Hey thanks for your reply. Good points.
It had been a while since I watched Rock Discipline all the way through but I feel like I remember Petrucci demonstrating this. Pretty sure he just did it with a fragment and not a phrase that moved around at all. I would imagine a moving phrase would be difficult to rev.
I guess with no metronome I wouldn’t know how fast the top is but maybe that wouldn’t matter as long as it’s truly my max speed. My whole thread is really about overload and spending time at the max speed I can move my hands to encourage gradual speed increase, and I suppose duration/control at that speed too.
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I’m glad you never attended my Physics lectures Troy. Because you’d ask the kind of questions that will make me realise I actually don’t know Physics!
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Back on topic, the question of genuine speed increase is actually a difficult one in sports science (or sport sciences?). What seems to be happening a lot in technique critique threads is that people find a new movement, or a variation on an old movement, that unlocks new speed possibilities almost instantly. Then there is of course the long tail of cleaning things up and so on. So I think we are for the most part addressing coordination challenges in here (oversimplifying I know).
But taking an existing movement that works and increasing its top speed - I don’t have many examples in mind of people that did that on this forum! Not saying it’s not possible of course, I just have no idea how one would go about this.