I’ve been working on a notes per second chart to help me quickly see what different speeds produce, and thought this might be something useful for others like me who are obsessed with speed. I plan on sharing it on my site and on social media.
How do you all feel about this? Would you agree with what it says?
Has anyone reached the 315 tier
Straight tremolo I can do. SOME scale run stuff I can do, but very little! I’m sure Rusty Cooley can hit those speeds too.
Rusty Cooley can do almost anything I think I heard somewhere Anton oparin could do 290 max on something I’m not sure
Many players that we call “virtuosos” are way below your “virtuoso threshold” 
They better step it up!
Note that a regular metronome taps out at 208 bpm, just before shredding starts!
There is an app called on here where it goes higher and on iPhone
Though - and you’re going to get a TON of opinions on this stuff - this might be true for straight tremolo playing, but actually playing scale runs… “Technical Difficulties” seems to be around 120-125bpm sextuplets, near as I can tell, which you have just under the top “Advanced” tier of 130bpm sextuplets, just below the “Shredder” tier - I’m of the mindset that that’s one of those litmus test songs and if you can play Technical Difficulties cleanly at tempo, I’d categorize that as “Shredder” under your scale.
Good luck improvising over Giant Steps at “intermediate” 150bpm.
So starting around the 12 NPS mark is where you feel it should have the “shredder” category?
As we all well know on this here forum, elite players never go below 255bpm sixteenths.
Hmm. I mean, I guess, honestly, I might even shift down two tiers -180bpm 16ths feels like a pretty big milestone tempo, and 120 triplet 8ths is still awfully fast. I’m not sure I can say with perfect honest that I’m still clean at these tempos, that’s still awfully fast. Doing some google searching, btw, and Technical Difficulties is evidently 126bpm, per a soundslice transcription.
Now, of course, this is thinking about these metrics as playing scale runs. If it’s just tremolo, different story, and I’d say your divisions are probably pretty sensible. So I guess maybe that’s the biggest piece of feedback I have for this chart, clarifying which it is! 
I think raw trem speed doesn’t count. Something like the trem picking part in the middle of EVH’s “Eruption” does not constitute “shredding” to me, and I think it’s pretty attainable to brute force as a beginner. I think Troy even showed a beginner to trem at high speeds on day one of ever playing guitar?
Something like the typical sixes pattern at about 105 BPM sounds like “shred” to me, or the main line from LTE’s “Universal Mind”, which I think is mid 150 BPM 16ths. While both of these are similar NPS, I think the sixes pattern would be in the realm of an intermediate player, whereas the Universal Mind line would be a category higher, easily (advanced / shredder in the chart).
I think the only way NPS could ever convey skill would be if it were paired with string changes per second. Something like a graph with gradient zones (I don’t believe that’s the right term, but I’ll stick with it lol).
I’d also consider moving “shredder” down a tier. In my Joe Stump “Chop Shop” method book, his example tempos for 16th notes for short fragment type stuff are all between 196 and 212 with most of them between 204 and 208. His sextuplet examples are all either 126 or 132. So, I’ve usually used these tempos as benchmarks for “shred worthy” speeds, which would mean approx 13 notes per second and up would constitute “shred” speeds.
This is all good feedback. Thank you!
Perhaps instead of having the different skills listed, maybe I should have it changed to something more like crawling, walking, jogging, running, sprinting, sonic, etc. And, how about having the shred speeds start at 12 NPS? Or does anyone think it should start any lower?
I would put Shred as the top speed tier. Many shredders can be faster thana lot of true virtuosos but the latter might be regarded as more accomplished musicians in general, regardless of speed.
Yeah briefly but only tremolo right now
I think it really depends on the pattern! If you specify say “single string speed on a tremolo” it’s one thing, but “max speed for string-skipping banjo roll” would probably give very different numbers.
Focusing on just pure notes per second is really what I want the chart to be. Like, if someone plays something they think might be fast, they could reference the chart and be like, “yes! 12 NPS is considered a lot of notes to be played in one second”.
No way I’d be making a chart to track all kinds of variations. Too much!
