Play Fast Music

Show and Tell
#1

For the last couple months or so, I was experimenting with just focusing on single note lines when practicing. It has been pretty great to clean up my “mid tempo dead zone” (anywhere from 140-150ish BPM 16ths), but pushing the higher end (230+) felt definitely off. I couldn’t get the sync to feel good, or the movement to feel “easy”. I took a week or so off, and started playing more hardcore stuff that’s just very satisfying for me:

After a few days, I started doing some single note stuff after maybe 30 minutes or so of playing songs of this genre (and all similar speed, or faster), and it all just clicked much easier, and felt as satisfying as the rhythm playing.

My guess is that the fast chords / trem / downpicking is just a great CNS primer, and general warmup for the muscles. The left hand still has to warm up with some single note stuff, but after that, everything seems to flow much faster.

Looking back at my guitar playing through the years, I always felt like my best single note playing was hand in hand with fast rhythm playing. I saw this post by one of my favorite drummers back when he was in Animosity:

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I love how succinctly he put it: “play fast music.” I don’t think it necessarily has to be aggressive fast music, but I’m guessing anything that is a high tempo and challenging will work (two songs that I’ve been working with all downpicking have been “Take the Time” by Dream Theater and “Technical Difficulties” by Racer X).

I was trying to think of a well known single note player that didn’t also have insane rhythm abilities at fast tempo. Whether metal, funk, flamenco… Can anyone think of someone?

Anyways, I’ll keep posting videos here for fun. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

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#2

Sounds great! I’m really loving that track. I don’t know much hardcore, but this sounds pretty melodic at times. I must check more of this stuff out

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#3

Glad to hear it! Funny enough, this subgenre is pretty frequently referred to as “melodic hardcore”, and these dudes are pretty well known in that scene. This is the other track I’m covering, I just need to nail the intro since it’s a fade in without a count (that I can tell):

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#4

Nice one, I’ll have to check them out. Looking forward to hearing your cover :fire:

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#5

@Pepepicks66 Same! I have basically “parked” playing superfast solo lines as I was not happy with the sync. I really love tightly synced playing - and mine was not that. So I’ve been in the mid to 3/4 speed zone a lot as well and have been enjoying cleaning that up.

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#6
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#7

Sounds great :fire: love that track! Know any other melodic hardcore type bands to check out?

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#8

@jptk there are a good amount, a good half dozen or so are talked about the most. I started with this band and particularly this song, since the changes bordered on “progressive”. Also mega fast, and the chords aren’t easy to decipher:

3 song EP that rips:

Then I got really into Comeback Kid, which is still one of my favorite active bands that’s been around for a while. They have a pretty big discography now and all the albums have been at least enjoyable, if not classics:

And eventually this band which was easily the biggest:

Smaller band with great guitar (IMO):

Those are the ones that came to mind first, but I can always think of more depending on what you’re digging / not digging lol.

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#9

That’s awesome man thanks for the recommendations! I’m gonna start checking them out this weekend.
The Sinking Ships track you were playing is highly addictive, I’ve listened numerous times today :sweat_smile:
The open string chord arpeggiation that happens a few times throughout the track adds so much :fire:

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#10

If you like that aspect, you might dig this one (probably their most popular song):

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#11

This has been my warmup for a bit; downpick the entire song:

This one has been a warmup for fast chord position shifts:

And this one is a riff that @WhammyStarScream posted which was fun to practice:

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#12

If you’re looking for something kinda nutty in that realm:

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#13

This entire song is ridiculously hard. And full of weird PCS theory stuff, particularly the second riff. I love it.

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#14

Never tried CC stuff, I’m assuming I’d need to downtune lol.

#15

Haven’t played in a while, but got some new bass gear that has me pretty motivated!