Mechanics of Hyper-fretting

Playing Technique
#1

I’ve recently found out about Roy Marchbank, and the sheer depth of his technique consistently amazes me. Though his picking hand is incredibly fast, that has already been explored with the concept of hyperpicking. What interests me is his fretting hand, which at times seems to necessitate that each finger on his left hand is as fast as Marchbank’s picking hand. Take, for example, his G4 solo (tabs of which can be found here: https://www.roymarchbankguitar.com/notation-tablature/). From measure 13 onward, there are two note per string patterns that seem to require the reuse of the same two fingers. Play it at the speed indicated, and one would have to lift up both fingers and replace them repeatedly at a rate of 140 bpm 16th notes (or 9.33 Hz)! There are people on this forum who claim they can’t even pick that fast!

I would love if anyone could offer some insight about what Roy may be doing to reach this level of finger speed (if the motion even comes from his fingers at all!)

1 Like
#2

Unfortunately his speed comes from speeding up audio/video or not even playing at all, just miming the video to fit some MIDI. I see more and more people doing that and that’s a shame.

#3

Just curious (not trying to start an argument I SWEAR) did you watch the video? I went through the whole thing and it all seems legit to me. I don’t see any of what’s been discussed elsewhere on here when someone posted one of his videos, where the hand movements don’t match up with the audio. This one seems real to me.

There are some exercises near the end that seems too fast to be true…but going in super slo-mo on the YouTube player everything lines up. There are small pieces where it almost looks like his hand is sliding instead of playing notes but I’m not sure. The more I watch it I think it may just be the tiny movements required to play this fast. Someone in the comments section asks him about it, he claims it’s legit.

#4

Are you talking about that G4 video? I don’t think that’s even a real guitar, sounds like MIDI.

#5

Would be interesting to keep this on track - I don’t care for Roy’s playing (no offense to him) and the opening post deserves more than decending into whether Roy’s videos are legit or not. I think that the opening post does raise interesting questions about how the fretting hand. @Kardioid, A thread posted by @Tom_Gilroy called ‘Efficient Digital Cycles’ raised some facinating insights into Shawn Lane’s lightning left hand speed and has also posted some other left-hand orientated posts - definitely worth a search on here.