Jason Becker. Als. Speed?

General Music Discussion
#1

Anyone who appreciates true musicianship and skill, I’m sure most of you. Realises Jason had an unnatural level of speed and coordination. Even more so than Shawn Lane with the sweeps.

This is an ignorant idea that many have put forth before. But due to the nature of his playing It’s at least, interesting to entertain.

Do you think he was so fast due to something excessive in his body? An excessive neurotransmitter for example? Or perhaps his excessive speed at such a young age burnt out something in some way? Apparently cocaine users are more inclined to get ALS. And as far as I’m aware cocaine lights up the nervous system, producing high levels of speed and control. Not saying he did any, he was a child prodigy. More that such ideas hint at possible speed limits for humans. And excessive abuse of such abilities could cause issues.

Remember. Idk Wtf I’m talking about.

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#2

I don’t believe that Jason Becker was a fast player due to some abnormality of his nervous system. For that matter, I don’t believe that Shawn Lane was fast due to some vague, undefined abnormality of his nervous system either.

I think that Jason and Shawn wanted to be fast. I think that they believed they could be fast. I think that in there efforts to develop speed, they discovered playing mechanics which allowed them to play fast. Maybe they discovered their mechanics by feel and intuition, maybe through trial and error, or maybe through design and revision. Maybe they just got lucky.

What is certain, is that both embraced the mechanics they discovered fully and developed extensive vocabularies of fast lines which fit their mechanics. Maybe they had an explicit understanding of what they could and could not do with their mechanics, or maybe they tried different things and kept what worked for them.

I also doubt that there is any causal link between playing fast and developing ALS at all.

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#3

QFT. Natural/unnatural talent/ability goes against everything this site is about. Talent is the word thrown around by people to explain skills they haven’t yet acquired. What more is there than method and work?

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#4

Some people can move their hands far faster than others naturally.

Some people can run faster, some can talk faster. Natural ability is real.

Tbh these mechanics replies are worrying… Cult like lol

#5

If being practical instead of turning skills into unicorn tears is a cult, sign me up and give me my ten wives!

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#6

I will paint with a broad brush here: Most guitar players have no idea that any competent violinist or pianist can play 16th notes at ♩=200bpm. Why are the violinists and pianists so good? They have time-tested techniques and methodical repertoire created by some of the true giants of music… there is just nothing like this in the guitar world, hence most guitar people will just be bad players. If somebody is capable of the speeds—and I would guess that many people are—with motivation they should be able to finish their classical piano or violin training.

Guitar is an embarrassment in many ways, but what can I say, I still love it (although I have no idea why).

So let’s say that Sean has more fast-twitch muscles, etc., but at the end of the day this skill is useless because there is no repertoire that demands it. Athletic skill is interesting, don’t get me wrong, but the purpose of technique is to play music. Now somebody might argue, “Sean is so musical, it’s worth my learning to play his music,” but honestly I am hard pressed to see why… hit 200bpm and memorize more, anything more is just a waste.

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#7

Come on guys. Obviously talent and practiced skills may coexist in one person. So, ‘Its all about talent’ as well as ‘It’s all about practice’ are extremes.

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#8

I’m being facetious ofcourse.
My point is have a hammer, all your problems become nails.

NODOUBT practice and mechanics are everything for most normal players.
But so my e people are just better and others physically, and no amount of practice or technique will get you to their level.

Just looking at a young jason, shawn lane play. Those hand movements are not normal.
The speed is of a level most people can’t and won’t ever move their hands.
I’m fully on board with our Lord of Mechanics Troy. But I also fully believe some people are freaks of nature. You see it in EVERY pursuit, people whose bodies just work better.
Tho those abilities often come with a price, it’s abnormal for the human body. We’ve not evolved the recovery mechanisms to handle extremes. That’s why recovery PEDs are so popular.

#9

I don’t think that’s quite right, rather that we should understand ‘talent’ not so much as ‘can play guitar well’ but more as ‘naturally has the ability to persist with early practise and to get out of the way of the body’s in-built physical problem-solving abilities’.

Also, I think it is highly unpleasant to speculate about any link between Becker’s illness and playing abilities but that’s just, you know, my opinion, man.

#10

I always reserved the “freaks of nature” category for people who hit 999BPM :smiley:

Concerning a correlation between being able to perform very good at some mechanical fields and being prone to a certain illness: Answering such a question would require Data i dont think we have. Or has someone checked if the average ALS-patient was a better musician than the rest of the population?

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#11

I never said that natural ability isn’t real. I said I don’t believe that Jason or Shawn was fast due to any abnormality of their nervous systems.

See, here’s my issue with this. I hope you don’t mind a little story-telling.

I developed playing mechanics as a teenager which allowed me to play fast. Not as fast as Jason or Shawn, but faster than most. Whenever I tried to push he speed higher, I just couldn’t manage it.

I thought for years that I had probably reached my natural potential and that I’d never gain any significant speed beyond that point. I thought those who could play faster than me were freaks. They were different to me in some way.

Later, I decided to try building some speed again. Instead of trying to push the mechanics I had further, I tried new mechanics with both picking hand and fretting hand. I got faster. Significantly so.

A few weeks ago, I set the voice recorder on my phone to record some unplugged noodling. I slowed the recording down and clocked myself. I can play descending sixes at 18 notes per second, which is as fast as Shawn could play it. There are other Shawn Lane Patterns where I can achieve Shawn’s speeds also.

Maybe I had a mental block on speed that required I move outside of my established mechanics to break through. Maybe my previously established mechanics simply cannot be performed as quickly as the new mechanics I’ve discovered.

Did I have a freak nervous system this whole time? Did I have some abnormal ability to move my hands faster than other, “normal people” that I wasn’t aware of?

I don’t think so. I think I discovered a method of playing which allows me to play faster than I previously could. I think the speeds I can now achieve are achievable for others. I wouldn’t call myself “normal,” but I doubt I’m particularly extraordinary in this regard.

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#12

Lets see, and lets see you playing multiple things at this speed and not one pattern that you’ve hammered away at over years.

I think this is quite dishonest. Are you playing full shred songs like cacophony?
Or just some patterns.

Major difference. Happy to be proven wrong. I do want to see this playing. NOT exercises.

watch Jason in this full clip, are you telling me you’re able to do this? Not the flash, not the style, the pure shredding multiple very difficult passages, very akward stuff at speed. Full neck runs.
Not a simple 3nps major scale run. Or any exercise pattern.
Like I say more than happy to be proven wrong, as I’m not stating anything as fact, more thinking out loud.

#13

I buy from Jasons store, and promote him to people all the time, I’m a huge fan, No insult meant to his condition. I don’t believe any topic should be taboo

#14

There is apparently data on soldiers and extreme athletes, they have higher tendency.
I’m sure you want me to find it, but I can’t handle the stress of searching for it.
Happy to talk shit on here tho.

#15

I’d actually argue that even the greats, when they go their fastest, do exactly that!

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#16

At a minimum, I think it’s telling that ALS occurs in the population at a rate of one-per-50,000, if there was a relationship between technical ability and susceptability to ALS you’d expect to see it at a significantly higher ratio in rock guitarists, and Becker is the only guitarist I’m aware of fighting ALS.

By way of anecdotal evidence, my uncle who is currently dying of ALS is, for all his other wonderful qualities, a crap guitarist.

I’m not even sure where you’re trying to go with this.

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#17

You see focal dystonia a fair amount.
I wish your Uncle well Drew.

Read some of this.
https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/86/6/667

points of interest. Google some words if you don’t know them, I did:

Indeed, in early life, there may even be unrecognised biological advantages of mutations associated with neurodegenerative disease in the post-reproductive years.42

Lou Gehrig, an American baseball celebrity from the 1930s, is inextricably associated with the disease in the USA. Various lifestyles, including unusual exercise regimes as in athletes,19 leisure-time activity,20 exposure to heavy work,21 soldiers in training,22 professional football players23 and handedness24 have all provided seductive associations of uncertain significance.

The link between ALS and FTD represents an extension of ALS as a motor system disease to the frontal and temporal lobes, themselves parts of the brain concerned with the expression of thought, planning, personality and speech, all aspects of brain function that are strictly ‘motor’ in a wider sense. It lends support to the view that ALS pathogenesis is in some way linked to the neocortical evolutionary development of the anterior motor brain.38

At present, we cannot identify the onset of the disease other than by the patient’s observations of the onset of focal weakness and wasting, or mental change, but these onset features are vague in their timing, and must represent much earlier changes that exist subclinically for many months or even years.64 The study of presymptomatic individuals carrying highly-penetrant ALS gene mutations is an important emerging initiative.65 Continuing discussion as to whether ALS begins in the motor cortex, as suggested by the finding of increased excitability (decreased inhibition) of the motor cortex prior to the onset of symptoms,66 or simultaneously in various sites in the motor system67 is consistent with concepts of spreading pathology in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s.68 ,69 Consistent patterns of preferential muscle involvement in ALS, such as the lateral hand muscle wasting known as the ‘split hand’, have been linked to cortical representations associated with the development of the opposable thumb.70 The fasciculation so characteristic of ALS is itself evidence of the increased excitability at a lower motor neuronal level.71

#18

A fair amount of that text points to als being driven by a buildup of toxins from physical work, and suggestive of high levels of motor connectivity. And ease of nervous system use.

#19

Not at all. One pattern doesn’t allow you to play multiple different patterns of varying levels of complexity, many patterns on guitar need to be practiced individually. This is what takes us so long to learn, you can’t practice a 3nps run and then shred a cacophony piece.

Yet someone with far better control over their hand, far faster muscles and far more connectivity in the motor parts of the brain will be able to not only learn these patterns faster, but due to the connectivity disposition have a greater general applicability effect among all patterns.

And that text also says due to this huge interconnection in the motor cortex, when the body finally can’t regenerate or recoap from the buildup of toxic shit. It’s cascades, fast.
Fast lost of ability to move. Months.

Studies of the C9orf72 G4C2 hexanucleotide repeat mutation have opened a more precisely defined window into the mechanism of neuronal, and perhaps also astrocytic, degeneration in ALS which might therefore apply to nearly 10% of all cases. Repeat-associated non-ATG (RAN)-translated dipeptide products are toxic,47 ,48 driving neurodegeneration by expressing abnormalities in RNA-binding proteins, perhaps through the formation of prion-like polymeric protein assemblies in the cytosol. It is suggested that a slowly accumulating toxic effect might account for the late onset and progressive course of the disease (see commentary in ref. 49). Such dipeptide products have been detected postmortem in a 26-year-old with learning difficulties but without dementia or motor symptoms,50 raising the possibility of developmental as well as degenerative influences for this expansion. However, to the clinician, the relatively abrupt onset and often rapid progression of ALS is striking, and provokes the concept of a tipping point or loss of tolerance for reasons yet to be discovered, possibly resulting from an extraneous source acting on the basis of inbuilt susceptibility. However, no such crucial external influence is currently evident.

#20

As for the don’t see other guitarists with als comment.

I know most will disagree, (I believe due to lack of appreciation/experience of true physical anomalies) Jason Becker is one of a kind, I’ve seen many very very fast players. Though they do it with pure efficiency for movement. Jason has huge hands, and a fairly high “fretting action” (how far his fingers came away from fingerboard) this created a very visual playing style, and like usain bolt with his long legs, need very strong and most importantly, FAST contractions of muscle.

Jason is no normal guitar player.
Shawn lane on the other hand had a low fretting action.