Meh, I wouldn’t put too much stock into that. Makes a great story but is there any truth to it?
In this old audio interview (before Yngwie nuked it from YouTube) he was being very candid and when asked about speed he said this:
Interviewer: “Practice slow, you feel like- practicing slow and building up?”
Yngwie: “And build up? I never did that.”
This was the absolute fastest I could go after years and years of meticulous metronome practice and trying to build up:
This is my FW USX motion 6 months later after trying to start with speed:
Was then able to play Jet to Jet faster than on the record:
5 months later I worked out a wrist DSX motion:
(Sorry, I post these videos a lot, I just feel like I am the perfect example of this)
I’ve been working on DBX for a good few years now and even despite all this experience I slipped back into practicing too slow and wasting lots of time with little progress, it wasn’t until more recently when I upped the speed again that I’m having my next breakthrough, I could upload a video of my rolls later!
I’m not against slow practice, great when you already have a motion and you’re trying to memorise something but for building speed without the fast motion in place? I just don’t think your brain/body works like that
I’ve had the complete opposite experience with this, I’m not even interested in playing that fast anymore. I play Bluegrass more than anything these days so you rarely play over 145bpm 16th notes (though there is an almost constant stream of notes which ups the difficulty) but what I like about fast practice is that there is less room for error/inefficiency so when you slow down the accuracy seems to be way higher as your motion is really locked in
I remember Yngwie saying that he didn’t practice in general. He just played.
He didn’t practice scales or practice at all. See some of his very early interviews. I think he cut himself badly during one of them before a show.
But the recording story is quite old - one where his “just playing” - he wasn’t practicing - increased in speed over time… and older still is info in his autobiography which goes into how he started with single strings for months before going to the next string.
If we are not going to believe what an artists says - then i guess that is what it is.
And besides, maybe a person can nail down some picking techique at high speed by chasing a way to use the hands at high speed that didn’t come from their own incremental slow practice building the speed up… but what is the quality of that? Is one really present in all of those notes or is it just an exercise in math? If one had done as others say they did… slowly build up, would it look the same? Would Yngwie’s relaxed technique look the same if he had followed a method to play like he does from the start? I suspect no it wouldn’t but I can’t prove that of course.
(By the way, I don’t mean you or anyone when I say that, I’m just asking in general.)
Again, famous great guitarist after guitarist (with perhaps SL and maybe PG as an exception), states their accuracy and speed grew from slower practice and that slow practice going up at least somewhat incrementally was critical to reaching their speeds and artistry. Often with an ear/listening component - perhaps driving it. I think there is something to that. Not just that, but slow practice sometimes still being important for their higher speed playing even with a developed technique. Slow practice being the root and soul of the highest speeds.
Perhaps though the hand’s positioning and posture and “use” may change as it encounters the demands and physics of higher speed playing, maybe something else doesn’t change, and that is a fine attention to notes and sounds. And that attention is born and developed with slower playing and I guess taken up to the higher velocities in an relatively incremental way by some.
Maybe these players are not as clueless (but very talented) as has sometimes been suggested. I suspect given their talent that they know a lot more about virtuosity than they let on or are able to articulate. With virtuosity encompassing a lot more than just picking… including phrasing, timing, fine control of note quality, the ability to listen, musical vibrato, to be present and flow in the moment etc - but it still being connected to their picking and technique.
I’ll be cheeky and answer your overarching question with a question
What problem are you trying to solve?
PS: I’ll also add that it’s important to realise at what stage of the learning - for a given technique - one is:
very-mega-oversimplified:
skill acquisition = figuring out the actual motions required for a given technique. Here I think we have enough evidence that you must find a way to perform a skill at the target tempo. Some helpful metaphors: trying to stand up on a surfboard, doing a skateboard trick, figuring out how to do a somersault (I can’t do any of these by the way!)
sequence memorization: here you have the technique already, and you know it can in principle work at the target tempo. Now, you want to learn new musical phrases that use it. More traditional practice methods may help here, but again highly dependent on what specific problems you are trying to address etc. etc.
It’s often said that guitarists like Yngwie etc are physically gifted and talented and a genius even… they were able to figure out how to play and sometimes in a unique and innovative way without much if any instruction.
And then we say that many of us non genius mere mortals… don’t have those gifts. And we struggle with the picking exercises etc. We struggle with the metronone trying to work up to 64th notes.
But, we can look at how they successfullly play and emulate it.
And we say that, well they don’t even know what they are doing and can’t describe it - natural geniuses - but we can look at the hand positions (and how they change) and pick angles and say this is what they are doing. We have science and observation to help us. And we can emulate it to an extent.
But what if we are not seeing the whole story? What is if is not so much his natural ability to figure out how to move his hands effectively that is what got him there or any of these guys. But something else that tags along? I’m not saying some are not physically gifted… but what if the figuring out of a working technique has to do with some other quality of practice like being able to listen well with a focus not on speed or technique at all. But on sound.
I know Yngwie exaggerates sometimes but that seems to be what he is describing… His says his story is crazy because the speed sort of grew over time (and his recording played at faster speed). His ear was guiding him. And he says that all time - play with your ears. He says he never even looked at his hands. But his ear was sure busy. MAB insists on slow practice and knowing what you are playing. And Matteo? Not a pick player but still a lot of the same applies… He talks about slow playing always being important (even after building and working up to his high speed) so you can hear the notes and control the notes properly. It’s seems less about moving your fingers fast or in the most effficient way, even though they appear this way…it’s likely the only way possible… but more about moving them at any speed with full attention and the fingers take care of what the ear wants or “hears”. It’s ear driven.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
It’s great that people can improve their picking and picking speed with the cracking the code method and its brilliant how Yngwie’s and other player technique was figured out. Without a doubt.
Okay but let’s analyse that, this has been the status quo in guitar pedagogy for decades, where has it gotten us? I still see guitarists who can’t play fast look at those who can in almost disbelief, like they are witnessing magic
People thought Shawn Lane was a genetic freak but Troy discovered how he was playing that fast and successfully replicated it
Also if this approach of playing slow is key to elite guitarists techinical skill why does it stop working at around 220-240bpm 16th notes and most never reach Shawn’s speed?
If you want to believe the Yngwie story that’s fine but he was documented saying the opposite as well so if anything it’s proven he can be unreliable on this topic
I’ve written extensively about this on the forum before. Here’s a link to a comment where I outline the process of developing playing speed:
In short, we can not speed up slow playing. Our nervous systems just don’t work like that.
When we repeat any sequence of actions, we naturally activate pattern generators in our nervous system. If that sequence is rhythmic (that is, related to our internal clock), the pattern generated will be also.
Once the pattern is generated, the sequence can be performed with greater automaticity. Our cerebellum becomes involved and begins the process of optimizing our patterns.
The absolutely critical insight is that our cerebellum represents all patterns at the fastest possible speed. Far in excess of what we can actually perform.
We don’t speed up our patterns. We use our internal clock (which is a function of the basal ganglia) to pull the reins on our cerebellum and slow our patterns down.
If there is clear feedback that the pattern is not optimized for more rapid execution (that is, clearly recognised errors in accuracy), the process continues and further optimization occurs. If there is no clear feedback that the pattern is not optimized, the process of optimization stops and no further optimization occurs.
We may be able to achieve desired accuracy while practicing slowly. However, if we are not able to execute accurately at higher speed, the slower practice is only reinforcing a suboptimal motor pattern.
The approach laid out in the comment linked above is effective because it accounts for how our motor systems actually function.
However, we need to understand the sequence that we’re attempting to pattern, and we need to create robust feedback loops to distinguish between “better” and “worse.” Our intention and our attention are critical.
This is the value of slow practice for fast playing. Slow practice can absolutely help you to focus you intention and your attention and help you to develop your feedback loops. However, the feedback itself only comes from fast practice.
More than that, being able to play slowly well is an important skill in itself. Playing a simple melody well is one of the most difficult things to do on an electric guitar. Greater variation in dynamic, articulation, note shaping and tone production are possible while playing slowly and these aspects must be practiced with clear intention and focused attention.
However, it’s folly to try to practice faster passages in this fashion, because it’s simply not possible to achieve real-time control and variation of these details in faster playing.
In particular:
This is an illusion. If you break down any fast improvisation by anybody at the level of picking and fretting sequences, you will find either that they’re relying upon their generic vocabulary of transferrable rhythmic coordinations, or that it’s a practiced line which is part of their specific vocabulary.
The quality of it is the quality of all fast playing you have ever heard. One is present in the whole, but the individual notes become as the individual syllables when speaking. It’s an exercise in rhythm and flow, not mathematics.
It wouldn’t look the same if it was built-up slowly, because it wouldn’t exist at all. It cannot be built up slowly.
So… when the classical piano/violin/cello teachers start their students down their well-established pipeline, none of the students can play at speed. They acquire that over time and practice. Is guitar different?
Indeed… shouldn’t it be the case that a teacher can pick any mechanically sound technique and teach it to their students? And is the “start with speed” theory really just leveraging prior practice that somebody might have been doing for a particular motion? And would that be the best motion overall? Or, are they better off from scratch and starting with something like wrist-based pure alternate picking?
I can tie my shoelaces fast as hell if I want to, but I never practiced trying to do it fast - I just learned a good method decades ago as a child and have repeated it countless times by now. Just how much that relates to guitar technique acquisition, I am not sure, but I strongly believe it isn’t zero.
I don’t play piano or violin and I very rarely do my shoelaces (I’m lazy so I try to push my foot in & out without undoing them). But!
I suspect slow piano and shoelace techniques may be close enough to their fast version to have some of the learning translate well.
With guitar and violin I suspect fast VS slow techniques have less in common, and indeed the hit rate even among diligent students seems lower. Remember, you have to be alredy pretty great to enter the top music schools, so it could be that the selection happened earlier - those who already figured out the correct motions VS those who didn’t.
Note I’m not saying slow practice is bad or anything. If I am learning a new piece of music, obviously I can’t immediately do it fast. I need to first memorize / plan where the fretting fingers go, what pickstrokes to use etc. Or more succintly, I need to memorize the chunks. This inital phase is indeed done slowly.
I was thinking maybe the problem is that focusing on mechanical exercises with a goal or “agenda” of building speed perhaps with a secondary agenda of impressing, showing high level of skill etc is the problem. And perhaps some methods kind of contribute to it. I’m not talking about CTC. I’m talking about perhaps some metal methods and a sort of street mentality that exists of wanting to be like a guitar hero like EVH. Guitar is cool and fun and I want to be like that. I want to kick ass. Maybe thought in a way unlike you might think of the regimented study required to learn tuba well.
Instruction for other instruments - clarinet, piano… doesn’t usually have this let’s get crazy fast and be a virtuoso focus. I want to get girls. I want to do a ripping clarinet solo. I’ll melt their faces with my flute. You just follow a method and it develops and it is not a big deal. In fact, speed is just a small part… there is the quality of the performance, there is sight reading… music theory etc. Can you play incredibly well and musical at the slowest pace? Is it beautiful? Are you listening?
So as a learning metal or folk/blues guitarist we encounter the exercises and do them slowly trying to build the speed up but there seems to quickly be a limit reached. And we say perhaps it is because you are running into trouble with smooth string switching (and that may be true) and we can make you aware of it and show you how to “fix” that. Show you how and why a given technique works, pick angles and approaches, setting things up so it always works etc.
But what if the real problem isn’t that you are not switching strings well. Or not the root problem. The problem is that there is an agenda from the very beginning. One is not playing to learn the instrument and all that entails like listening. One is playing to become a fast soloist. Is the person even listening to what they play at slow speed and how it sounds (like might be focused on with other instruments). With that being just as important as any high speed playing though it may not impress the girls (though it might impress some adults). The focus always being on quality. And then that “quality” is taken to higher speeds. And the quality is what causes the hands to learn to negotiate the strings.
Perhaps the agenda creates tension that prevents the hands from making natural adjustments that would allow you to escape the strings without much thought.
I know a guy… he plays a kind of fingerstyle flamenco guitar. He likes the virtuoso stuff. And he can play ok with some of the faster stuff… it has a little bit of that cascading sound. And if you heard him you might think… oh, we got Paco de Lucia here. But, when he slows down, his playing kind of falls apart. The timing is off and it sounds almost like a beginner without much talent. Another friend - also fingerstlye … doesn’t have any fast scale skills, but his regular playing is beautiful. Beautiful time and musical. It breaths and sounds alive. I think the grateful dead have spoken about that … a member that joins the band when they are on… father time… and how that gives the music another quality… this guy had that. Not complicated stuff. But always sort of magical sounding. I think he is a way better guitar player than the other guy who can smoke sometimes. He happened to not care much about speed but how anything he plays sounds. He actually could play some pretty quick stuff, but not really scales and things like that. These two have always stuck in my mind.
So then you run into very talented players who we say “figured it all out”. How did they do that? We quickly say… because they could. They are geniuses. So my thinking is just what if we could say more about that instead of a quick easy answer like that? It’s so easy to say… they are brilliant. God did it etc. What do they themselves say about it? Yes, Yngwie’s technique and how it works and how he play has been figured out. At least on the surface. And we say, we know, and he doesn’t know. But what if he and others know something maybe we don’t know? And we miss it. That attention to sound is what is important. It’s not even so much that you are going slow and slowly increasing. Though that may happen. It is that you are going slow enough to be able to listen at a level you can just about play while relaxed and get all the details and time nailed at that speed before going to more challenging speeds. And when you do that, the hands sort of take care of themselves. I’m not saying that you may never do speed bursts or at times play faster than you really can. But that the emphasis is on playing while keeping attention to the quality of the sound.
Yngwie says he never practiced scales or practiced at all. Of course it depends on how you define practice. But, we know that he did build speed incrementally, and he even approached the guitar incrementally, string by string. And he often says “play with your ears”. He actually sounds sorta like violin virtuoso Nicolo Pagannini with sheer speed only being a component of the virtuosity. He has perfect intonation, abiltiy to speed up and slow down on a dime, crazy control of notes, wicked phasing, vibrato and string bending. It’s a sound. Others echo this. Is there something to that? Or do we ignore that and Batio and Matteo and say they are ignorant or not honest or misinterpreting or following methods that don’t work (but they are geniuses) and here is what they actually do.
I’m not saying I’m right btw. I’m just offering thoughts and speculating etc.
Reading what Matteo has to say with a little more articulation than is common with these guys is what really got me thinking. He also was going for a sound (EJ’s cleanliness while being quick) and not necessarily to play super fast or even faster than the sound (his words). He emphasizes listening and starting slow and building up. Getting all the details down and not just a velocity. And like my friend i mentioned, he states the ability to play fast does not mean you can play slow well. But, being able to play slow well, is the ticket to being able to play fast well since it’s slow enough to hear and pay attention to the notes so you can play accurately with all the subtety that entails. While relaxed. And then take that to the higher speeds while keeping a degree of relaxation. He also, like Yngwie, goes for the easiest most relaxed way of doing it…to his hands, even though he can do it in a harder way very well. It just makes sense to him to keep it relaxed, pleasant and fun and… relatively easy.
In regards to violin (and possibly cello) this is completely untrue, I started playing violin a couple of weeks ago and intonation and fingering is a huge struggle but I could bow fast practically instantly. I remembered seeing Troy say that all violinists use pronated DT and tried to replicate that on the violin and it was incredibly easy as the hand is basically horizontal so it is almost second nature to make a DT tapping motion compared to how vertical your hand is when playing guitar
@tomsters I get what you’re saying but my question again would be where has that gotten us? Lots of people today are as clueless as they were 60+ years ago
Then you have someone like Shawn Lane who I believe worked on his speed at speed. He didn’t really necessarily meticulously build it up in the way some describe.
I think three things.
One, Shawn was a fanstastic player. He played slow very well, fast very well and just very well in general. He was great. Very musical. Played piano too. Piano was actually his first instrument. He started very young (8) and studied for years. I assume he studied it the way most people do. He didn’t get into heavy practice of guitar until years later.
Two, I do think he was special. I think he stated he believed he had a fast nervous system or he was unusual in this way and I think maybe there is some truth to it. When people tell you things I think one should listen. Yes, his technique makes sense under a microscope… but it must or else it wouldn’t work.
Three, putting two aside for a minute, maybe there is more than one way to skin a cat. Maybe sheer speed is what he heard. That was the sound he wanted. Maybe his piano training helped in a way. Maybe there are different approaches that can work like with many things.
But, maybe the slow build up way can work as some claim it can (and for certain reasons) or has and I don’t think it should be dismissed or thought ineffective or not as effective so quickly.
The “freakish nervous system” narrative comes from stories of Simon Barere, a pianist who Shawn admired.
Shawn seems to have used the line when he was asked about speed in situations where he didn’t have the time or interest to provide a more satisfactory explanation.
He was very clear in other more in depth interviews that he felt what he was doing would be possible for others.
Seems it took him 6 years to have his technique totally developed. This is with the piano background.
He states he started vey fast (due to freakish nervous system) and was sloppy and cleaned it up and it took maybe 4 years to clean it up. He says he is not saying it is the best method. It works for some and may not work for others…
He also said the piano did help him. The more he played piano the better he got on guitar.
For whatever it’s worth, I don’t agree with his assessment. I’ve seen/heard plenty of recordings of Shawn in his late teens. He continued to make technical progress into his late twenties and early thirties.
I developed a very respectable level of technique as a teenager, between the ages of 14 and 18 (about 2003 to 2007). I was able to play pieces by Eric Johnson, Paul Gilbert and Steve Morse cleanly and up to tempo. I largely lost interest in electric guitar technique for several years, I felt I had reached my “genetic potential.” I focused on acoustic fingerstyle and songwriting for several years.
I started getting interested in electric guitar technique again in my late twenties. I spent several years analysing Shawn’s playing and vocabulary.
I learned what he was doing and why it worked. I learned how to train my nervous system efficiently.
There are synergies between picking mechanics, fretting mechanics, fretboard organisation and line construction. It all came together in about 2021, and since then I’ve experienced dramatic progress with very minimal effort.
It sounds unbelievable, but I’m as fast as Shawn was. The people here who have taken lessons with me can attest to that. I learned to do explicitly what Shawn learned intuitively.
I love Shawn, I’ve been fascinated by his playing since I was a teenager. That said, the mythology around him is ridiculous. He was a man, not a miracle.
Shawn is an inspiration to me, but for him to be an influence on my playing, I had to get past my hero worship and see him as a human being. We need to let the legend die if we want his legacy to live.
@tomsters from reading this thread, I’m genuinely curious if you feel you’ve had success with the “build up slowly” method, or conversely, if you’ve had negative experiences with the “start fast to learn proper motion mechanic” approach.
I’m only asking because given the forum we’re on and how Troy really spearheaded this new approach to learning the guitar that has definitely started to take off and gain traction in the guitar community, what the motivation is behind defending the “old school” pedagogy (for lack of a better term).
Finding a motion mechanic that is fast and relaxed is the most important thing. However, coupling that mechanic with the left hand, with a system/strategy for synchronization is the resolution of the latter!
I know that Troy has touched upon “chunking” here and there and on the forum at times, but this topic needs a section in the Primer ASAP. Honestly, I’ve always been a bit put off why this step has largely been ignored by CTC overall?
Real-world examples of getting your motion mechanic and your left-hand working together, and how slow practice works with that. Speed bursts, sequences, fragments, metronome. How does it all tie in?
I want to see the actual process of getting both hands working together over musical examples. Start with speed… great. Show me how you did it!
I wrote a long post but then deleted it because I think it was just too much. I don’t really want to get personal with this or make it about me. I’ll just say I think i have problems with tension and with both approaches. With pick and fingerstyle. And it’s ok. Ear is decent.
I’m delighted that you’re just starting violin, that is amazing! Do you mean “fast” compared to other beginners, or that violin is clearly an instrument designed for speed?
That is a good question, I’m not sure if other beginners have the same experience but speed does feel way more intuitive to me. Even the way your hand grips the bow looks more similar to a tall mouse pick grip
