Working on my improvising today but I’m struggling to keep a strong sense of timing when mixing together different fast licks
For example, if I’m playing along to a metronome/backing track at 130bpm, all my 6 note 3NPS licks in 16th note triplets sound great but when I want to switch to a lick which uses groups of 4 and play it in 16th notes it’s insanely slow and sounds silly 
How would you tackle this? Is the answer just to get used to how playing 4 note groupings in 16th note triplets feels?
Have you you tried listening to tracks from your favorite players at a similar tempo to see what they do? I know what you mean though. There are tempos where certain subdivisions just feel sort of lame.
I guess you could always try 5’s. That sort of splits the difference : -)
Yeah to me my favourite players tend to sound like they are floating around rhythmically with some things and then locking in strictly to other things. I don’t really get it unless it’s just rubato and they are loosely sticking to the meter, I find this quite hard to do convincingly without sounding like I’m just playing out of time!
That is an idea, I’ll give it a go 
Yeah that loosey goosey Yngwie or EJ feel is hard to do. I’d BET they didn’t achieve it by playing to just a click 
I agree it is hard though. But I have historically devoted much more time to playing worked out stuff too a click than free time improv stuff, so it all makes sense. We don’t generally get good at stuff we don’t work on lol
Good luck on the quest!
Found a perfect example of what I mean, Al is SO GOOD at this!
Well he certainly doesn’t have that loose sexy phrasing like Yngwie. He is very conscious of the click. He plays all ‘around’ it though. Super syncopated. And maybe that’s the trick. Starting a phrase between beats creates an exciting forward motion so the fact that the 4’s are slower isn’t as much of a problem thanks to the offbeat nature of the phrasing.
Could you do it with the same notes per second at that tempo but shift from a 6s rhythmical flow to a 4s rhythmical flow?
Yeah I think he mentioned that as an option. That would definitely work and would probably sound cool
I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time on this kind of thing, and developed somewhat of a system for it. In a nutshell, it’s easy to divide or multiply by 2, little harder to divide or multiply by 3, and the more you mix them together, the more challenging it gets, so I advocate starting with the easiest transitions.
Example: instead of switching 16th note trips to 16th notes, first get rock solid in switching from 16th note trips to 8th notes. When you have 16th note trips you’re already playing all the 8th notes anyway, (ONE trip let AND trip let TWO trip let AND trip let, etc) and likely using the 8th note to keep time a bit anyway. That’s an easier transition. Of course, switching between 8ths and 16ths is even easier, but requires at least some practice or built familiarity for everybody at first.
Once you’ve rock solid switching between 16th trip to 8ths, AND 8ths to 16ths - at a variety of tempos (important to do these things outside of your comfort zone, tempo-wise) then try 16th trips to 16ths.
Note also that the more ‘steps’ you have to take away from the metronome, that also plays a role in difficulty. Meaning, if you have the metronome at a Q note, and you are looking for 16th note triplets, the way I see it you have to first find the 8th note (two notes per click) then find the 16th note trip (3 notes per 8th note.) This might happen instantaneously at this point, but I’m sure at some point it did not.
If you’re trying to play 8th note trips (even if it’s at 2x the tempo, so the speed of the playing is the same) then your rhythmic value is fewer ‘steps’ away from the metronome. So switching from 8th trips to 8ths is the same relationship as switching from 16th trips to 16ths, but fewer ‘steps’ away from the metronome.
Point is, when trying to practice these things in a progressive/gradual way (As opposed to just ‘feeling it’ and hoping for the best over a very long period of time) these are tools you can use to toggle difficulty; if it’s too hard, do an easier version, build confidence with that, then retry the original (or move to even easier.)
Wow! Thank you so much!
So many great tips and so much to digest, thank you 
Didn’t realise that but seems obvious now you’ve pointed it out!