How much is enough: when do you stop?

Playing Technique
#1

How fast do you want to play? And more importantly, what kinds of licks do you want to be able to play?

I ask because there’s a never-ending ladder to climb of more and more licks to play, but clearly many of the greats (even greats who were famous for picking technique) said “enough is enough” at some point. So where do you stop, or where would you stop if you could have a certain level of technique tomorrow?

My personal goals are kind of vague, but my younger self’s problems were always with “outside picking” licks – I never developed swiping, even though I had decent 2WPS way back when (took a long break from guitar and lost it). I can already comfortably play pretty much any line I want with 2WPS up to sixteenths at 140-160 bpm. So I guess if I had really solid 1WPS + swiping ready to go for faster solo runs (140bpm sextuplets), I’d be pretty satisfied and work on other things.

Where would you stop?

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#2

years ago in Guitar Techniques magazine, Shawn Baxter said (IIRC) that a “good” level of speed to get up to is 160bpm at 16ths and 130bpm at sextuplets. This is what I’m hoping to achieve, although it’s taking a long, long time. If I can reach this level I will be very very happy.

#3

Can we dream? Ok then I’d say that being able to play all the material by Vinnie Moore on electric and Joscho Stephan on acoustic would be `enough’ for me. I’m not asking much right? :wink:

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#4

When the runs that I hear in my head as I’m playing are the ones that come out of the amp when my hands have finished doing their bit.

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#5

This is a good question, one I can’t really answer for myself.

I’ve had to learn to say enough is enough with certain exercises and drills. I know how to squeeze out a few more BPM, but the amount of work and time it takes to make it happen just doesn’t seem worth it after a point.

Currently, I have a goal of getting anything up to 200 BPM with 16th notes, or 150 BPM with sextuplets. MATH ERROR JUST NOW REMOVED!!! DUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP

Yup. So true. Shred guitar can be come a not so happy obsession. You can drive yourself crazy with it.

I think when you reach a point with a piece of music you’re trying to get faster and faster, and it starts to suck the life out of you, then it’s time to move on. Not saying that when something is difficult and frustrating that you quit. I feel there’s a big difference between that and when you start feeling depressed when working on something.

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#6

Currently, I have a goal of getting anything up to 200 BPM with 16th notes, or 150 BPM with sextuplets (same notes per second).

@milehighshred Hang on, you’ve confused me here (I do get confused easily though)… it sounds like you’re saying they’re the same speed?

#7

200*4/60 = 13 1/3 nps

150*6/60 = 15 nps

I’m a little confused here myself.

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#8

I’m wrong. The math says it’s 225 bpm. OOPS! 150 bpm with sextuplets is 225 bpm with 16th notes.

#9

I can’t math. Must be at least 20 characters to submit reply.

#10

You had me going there for a minute, thought I’d been calculating wrong all these years. :laughing:

#11

Ah, wasn’t sure if you were making another point and I just was’t getting it.

@aliendough Those Baxter speeds are different too…

Hope this doesn’t come across as nit picking but thinking they’re the same could mess people about a bit if they tried them with a metronome.

Although, I do also recall Shaun Baxter talking about a student who had accidentally set his click tempo too high and ended up forcing himself to play something above his then level of ability.

#12

Well the error between 13.33 and 15 is about 11%, in many physics experiments it would be pretty good :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

More importantly, what typical patterns are you people thinking of when you mention these BPMs and divisions? Clearly there will be huge differences between patterns. Personally I’d be happy to play a 3nps scale up and down at 200bpm with 16th notes. I’m around 180bpm at the moment but not as clean, relaxed or reliable as I’d like to be (see my technique critique posts if you wanna help :slight_smile: )

#13

If you want to treat guitar like martial arts, where the primary goal is learning to execute various technical things up to a certain belt level, I have no problem with that. We at Cracking the Code will not tell you how to enjoy your guitar!

However I would only caution that if your goal is creative output, most of the players we interview do not appear to have learned this way. Especially the improvisers and songwriters. Albert Lee, Jimmy Bruno, Marty Friedman, these players built technique mainly by writing and playing lines, and allowing the technique to adapt to those things somewhat loosely, and not the other way around. They also have very specific ways of doing things which are patterned and repeatable, and relatively simple.

I have a hunch that if you could test this, we’d find that these things are connected. Having a relatively simple set of mechanical ingredients that you don’t have to think too much about, and more importantly, that you did not spend years and years developing, might very well be correlated with creative output. I suspect it is.

If you want to build an awesome musical vocabulary, try learning a small number of mechanical techniques to the point of fluidity, and doing so while simultaneously writing riffs / songs / licks of your own. Based on the interviews we’ve done, this seems to be the secret recipe.

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#14

Very well put! Marty Friedman makes a similar point here at around the one minute 20 mark, although he’s a lot more blunt about it :slight_smile: Full Shred w/Marty Friedman: How to Play Fast Arpeggios Without Sweep Picking - YouTube

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#15

This is the answer to exactly the question I was trying to get at (but had trouble articulating, it would seem). Thanks, Troy.

When I first found CtC, (like many others, I suspect) I was mostly interested what I didn’t know was going to be 2WPS. But possibly the most useful thing I learned was that economy picking or strict DWPS is justdamnfinetyvm and that I wasn’t a “bad” shred guitarist because I couldn’t play the Paul Gilbert lick at 130bpm.

#16

This is something I’ve thought a lot about too, it’s very easy to disappear down a rabbit hole of chasing technique and then suddenly realize at some point ‘hey I can execute the licks of my favorite player now but I just sound like a poor copy of them as I’ve not spent any time coming up with my own ideas’. I’m saying this from experience…

I think part of it is that in some ways speed and precision are relatively measurable qualities, whereas whether a lick or riff or chord progression is interesting or ‘cool’ is a lot more subjective. So it’s much easier to say ‘well I can execute this lick at 200 bpm so I must be a good guitar player’ and feel confident about it than saying ‘I write music that expresses how I feel about music and is emotionally rich even though it’s not musically complex’.

It’s like the frequent guitar forum argument about say someone like the Edge in U2, some will say he’s not a ‘good’ player because his parts are relatively simple and rely a lot on delay and other effects. But the counter argument to that is that he’s created a unique sound on the guitar and has touched a huge amount of people with his music so while he might not be a technically impressive virtuoso he’s undoubtedly an accomplished musician.

I’m thinking out loud at this point but hopefully this is somewhat relevant to the conversation :slight_smile:

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#17

Hi all!

I have been re-watching Marty Friedman’s interview this morning, so maybe I am a bit biased. But I agree with him more and more about the “let the music drive you” approach.

I clearly belong to the hobbyist group (if I remember correctly he mentions hobbyists and lifers?). So I am not making a living out of music. But I still think that I should allocate more of my practice time for trying to create music.

Most of what I do is practice exercises. Every time I (kind of) master one, I just jump to the next one. I spend hours practicing the same thing without getting bored. Which is good to a certain extent. But I rarely try to incorporate that learned exercise into a musical idea. I have been doing this for the past year. And thanks to CTC, that time wasn’t lost because I made amazing progress from a technical point of view. Lately I have been designing my own exercises that focus on my weaknesses related to alternate picking. But if every exercise takes me weeks/months to master, and exercises are endless, I started asking my self the same question as @eric_divers. I have to say that some exercises are quite addicting :smiley:

My new approach (again as a hobbyist) will be to learn songs and make the challenging parts my new exercises. Many of you probably do this already.

Anyway, I am happy that we are having this kind of discussions here. This is really helping :slight_smile:

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#18

The answer for me is… you stop practising technique when you can finally play fluently what you want to be playing (either is what you hear in your mind or playing covers)

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#19

I sometimes wish that I didn’t like virtuoso guitar playing and prog bands, so that I wouldn’t have to spend so much time trying to play that style!!! However, enough is enough when you only practice technique and do not apply into your own music or in the music you play to others.

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#20

All this depends on what your goals are.

Some people are happy just to be able to nail a solo note for note and nothing more.

Other people get satisfaction only when composing their own original songs.

Some people want to be a professional musician.

I see most of the arguments revolve about “who is better” and what is “better.”

Imho, it all depends on the goals you have set for yourself.

Being able to play a Marty solo is something entirely different than being able to compose a Marty solo and that is also entirely different than composing a song which would be fitting for a Marty solo. These are completely different skills.

I like songwriting and playing together with other musicians more than anything else. I love Marty solos, but the music I write and play is not “Marty solo friendly.”

This means I’m not going to spend hours mastering a Marty solo note for note, because this takes away from my writing time.

However, I try to take as many ideas as I can use out of a Marty solo that can help me improve my own technique, solos and songs.

For me the goal is to write songs, but I don’t look down on a player that just wants to copy solos note-for-note 8 hrs per day, as long as that is his goal.

But, if a player tells me he dreams of being in a Van Halen like band and he practices Van Halen solos all day long instead of writing songs, then there is a problem. Because his goal will not be reached via the path he has chosen.

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