This dying soul final unison practice diary

Wow that’s a lot of notes to be played at 192bpm 16ths :open_mouth:

The tempo on the album is 202. Here’s a few bars with a 202 bpm click.

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I make it circa 192bpm.
Edit: not that it makes much difference!

Actually, my metronome tap function is yeilding various lol not to be trusted!

One thing is for sure: I’ll throw the biggest party of my lifetime once I can play this at 202bpm.

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@JBakerman @tommo @Shredd Inspired by my other thread How to get faster, when you are not slow anymore I started butchering fragments of the run at the original tempo, 202 bpm. This is a real world example how I’m practicing stuff nowadays. Yes it sounds awful (not just the audio quality, sorry for not lowering the volume, it’s an extremely noisy take) but I start to get the “feel” of it at this tempo. I couldn’t even play a group of 8 notes last week of this run.

Edit: an other take after 5 mins rest and not touching the guitar. I tried playing this part without stopping. What I can feel now is not that my picking hand becoming tense but my brain is melting to focus on the position shifts and the fretting.

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To be honest I would stop using this negative language about your playing!

The last video for example sounded great, comparable to what petrucci would do live or perhaps even better :slight_smile:

EDIT: I understand that maybe it didn’t feel great and that may influence in thinking that it sounded bad. It can help to take a break and examine the footage later with a fresh mind

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I’m seriously thinking there must be some psychological factor here, as I really hear that it sounds bad. But at least it didn’t feel tense and my aim is to get more and more comfortable with this tempos.

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I listened to the last clip on my phone and the first impression was good! Not sure if I would find problems by listening more closely by using headphones etc. Also of course it will 99% sound better in a mix.

TLDR I think big picture wise the playing was great, but of course you may be able to find details to correct

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Quick, but genuine question/request. … Do you have anything that you could post that you think is an example of your playing that is good?

Well, I think I can play the Superstitious solo quite well by now.

Hmmm… I’m not convinced by the “quite” well… :rofl: Have you posted this already? If you haven’t, I think it would do you good to post it in show and tell, maybe with some comments or highlight the challenging lines abd show the methods you employed to get it right. You definitely need to look at your playing more positively and I think you would help other players like myself that would love to make the same progress as you have.

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I have a video where I’ve tried to play it the second day after learning it in my other thread but I put the link here for you.

It’s a month old so I’m playing it much better now in my opinion, the fast run is clean and I can execute it anytime and I can play it while standing up easily. I’ll do an other recording of that. But that’s not nearly as challenging as the Train of thought stuff.

Nice one.

I think this is the point here. The stuff you are striving to play is like elite shredding in terms of speed and endurance. It is incredibly difficult compared to a lot of stuff, so maybe @tommo’s point is that playing some of this stuff remotely near tempo is no joke and using the negative language is only going to compound the self-doubt and not allow you to hear your playing objectively as you would otherwise. If not already the case, make sure that you have some slightly less challenging stuff in you practice so that you get some level of confirmed/completed acheivement - like you have with the superstitous solo. As someone who is struggling to make any of his goals, those smaller celebrations need to get as much credit as they deserve!

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@gabrielthorn Excellent playing dude! I’m reading your comments about your own playing. I wholly respect that you’re striving to be as clean as possible (because well, me too), but I’ll echo others’ responses: You really have no reason to speak so negatively about your playing! It’s not nearly as raw or unclean as you probably think it is. It’s certainly not “awful” by any relevant standard. It’s already miles ahead of most players and it’s only gonna get cleaner with time. It’s crucial to be able to put a microscope on your own playing, but it’s also crucial to be able to take it off.

This next bit is Petrucci fans only:

I actually tried listening critically to your second This Dying Soul clip while suspending disbelief and imagining if it was Petrucci playing. I wondered, would it sound “not good enough to be JP”? Nope - it sounds like it could be one of JP’s takes. Disregarding amp tone and video sound quality etc, this particular snapshot could have been from Live At Budokan. You’ve got a great situation here, keep it up!

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Couldn’t agree more. Even some of Petrucci’s album isolated guitar stems have ‘artifacts’ in them - its called playing guitar through a heavily distorted amp - its gonna happen!

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@Shredd @PickingApprentice Thank you for your words, it really helps me to feel better about my playing. I hope it will be cleaner over time, and this is really new territory for me. If I could perform the entire unison the same quality as my attempt in the second video, probably I’d be a really happy person. My real problem here is consistency and stamina. Even if I catch the “feel” and I can execute stuff at these higher speeds, I feel like my brain just can’t keep up and I mess it up. It’s not my left, or right hand, it’s some kind of coordination issue I think.

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I think a good next step for you is to learn to evaluate your playing more objectively.

Don’t just say a take is “bad”, listen to it carefully and decide rationally what are the problems to fix, if any, and think how you might want to fix them. Is it the timing? A note missing? Some open string ringing at the wrong time? Or none of these, maybe you want to change the phrasing / accenting / dynamics?

This way your threads will also be infinitely more helpful and instructive to the people following you. Remember this is show and tell :slight_smile:

Edit: and in this way you will actually make even more progress!

That being said, your takes are always at (or very very close to) “professional shredder” quality.

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Trying to play the ascending lick, with less luck and precision, but on a higher tempo. Still praying things will click one day on this tempo. My fretting hand also needs to get used to do things this fast.

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I haven’t touched this beast for a long time, but in the last few days I wanted to take a look if I improved at all in terms of speed and stamina in the last few months.

Still far, far away, and with lots of mistakes and I got really tired before the final descending run, and I fell behind the beat, I could recover at the end though. I tried to do it in one take without stopping. Lots of sloppy parts and sync issues when shifting positions on the ascending runs. One day I’ll make it… I hope. :woozy_face:

Sorry for the terrible audio quality, I cranked up my amp really loud, my phone couldn’t handle it :sweat_smile:

I can do it at 192 bpm if I split it into two parts.

Edit:
What I also noticed on the Budokan version is that the tempo is slower than 202 bpm. In the middle of the run it’s getting close to 200 but most of the solo is played around the 190-195 range.

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