What do we know about the astonishing chops of Stephen Taranto?

Playing Technique
#41

Again though, this may seem like splitting hairs… But, just because Stephen CAN play at the speed and complexity he is in the clip that sounds a little odd, doesn’t mean that he isn’t also miming to a sped-up or otherwise edited performance in the first clip posted above. It wouldn’t be about creating an illusion that he was faster than he is, so much as cleaner than he is.

Speaking personally - frankly, if someone was accusing me of editing audio and/or video to sound faster or cleaner than I am, and I wasn’t, I’d be pretty damned stoked. :rofl:

#42

If we use Occam’s Razor to split those same hairs, it makes no sense. We can clearly see he can play the exact lick from the clip at the exact same speed. Argument from authority seems like the more prevalent fallacy here.

Sure, I’m just saying Troy’s word means a lot, because he is very very good at communicating about picking technique. People already seem to have lost the forest for the trees here:

This guy’s left hand work is unreal. I don’t understand how he manages to play with those stretches and not develop some sort of hand injury.

edit; Nevermind, I’ve read some stuff suggesting some of his stuff might be frauded. Idk what to think

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#44

Gonna start adding “Idk what to think” to every single post of mine to get this forum blowing up in 2020. We’re talking 100000000s of users and posts.

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#45

Lol.
Sorry everyone, I just started this thread in awe of Taranto and wanting to learn a few things. The thread never got any traction, and now it’s back purely because of a non sequitor.

#46

Hey if we’re splitting hairs here I thought I was on topic. Idk what to think

#47

Heh. not out to get ya buddy, sorry :slight_smile:

1 Like
#48

Completely tangential but may help lighten up the mood : I love a bit of room mic in an electric guitar performance - it helps sharpen the transients that you lose with saturation, and adds a bit of life and acoustic quality to it.
I’m surprised no one adds it on purpose to studio recordings.

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#49

Welcome to the internet. :lol:

I’ll say this - this kind of crap has been a HUGE pet peeve of mine for years now, how willing people are to do digital “enhancement” to their guitar playing, and how easier increasingly powerful and accessible computer recording platforms have gotten, coupled with the ever-lower barriers to entry to DI recording and video recording meaning that pretty much any 16 year old already owns or has affordable access to the equiptment necessary do do some significant “enhancement” or “forgery” depending on your perspective.

I know very little about this guy, and frankly don’t have a horse in the race - he clearly CAN play, but if he’s also artifically cleaning up his performances in some of his instagram videos, well, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Whatever, he may be, he may not be.

I think that the real problem here is a sizable portion of the metal and shred world, possibly as far as a plurality, thinks there’s nothing wrong with someone doing that. That, to me, is the thing that really sets me teeth on edge.

I’ve heard a few engineers advocate that, throwing a room mic in the control room with the guitarist and adding in just a tiny bit of the unplugged sound of the guitar to a mix, to give the guitarist more of the sound they’re used to hearing in the room with an amp. This isn’t at all widespread, and - hugely subjective here - it’s something that if I heard in a recording I’d be more likely to attribute it to poor engineering technique and accidental bleed. But, some of the guys I’ve heard talking about doing this swear the players love it when they hear it.

End of the day, if it’s a sound you think is pretty cool, go for it. And maybe doing it for totally exaggerated effect could be kind of interesting in the right context, I guess.

#50

From my perspective Stephen is an excellent example of above average genetics (motor mechanics/fast-twitch?) + a lot of practice. Whether he’s ‘enhanced’ things is beyond my field of knowledge, and frankly doesn’t take away that he is better than anyone on this board from a technical perspective.

The real bummer about this thread is that even with Troy and co’s immense contribution to ‘cracking the code’ and guitar playing in general, Stephen Taranato level chops are just not possible for 99% of players.

2 Likes
#51

Plenty of phone editing software has speed controls. Adobe Rush for example, which has a very smooth time stretch.

I don’t have a vested interest in either being true, but you nailed it. Just because it didn’t need to be done on some videos, doesn’t mean it wasn’t on others.

  • Speed of process
  • fewer takes
  • extra wow factor
  • industry competitiveness

Same reason I’m guessing you use short cuts in your line of work too.

1 Like
#53

They’re saying he can play what he posts. That’s not quite the same thing as saying that each and every video has not been sweetened. Personally, I love his playing. But sweetened is probably the best word I can use for taking what can already be done, and adding a little secret sauce to compliment it. His followers seem to take this very personally.

#54

Is that really a bummer though ? The nice thing about music is that technical proficiency is just one ingredient - I don’t think anyone needs to be able to play as fast as him in order to make great music.

Everyone has their own ‘fast enough/fluent enough’ threshold for being able to express their ideas and for most people even on this board it’s probably nowhere near as high as what he aims for.

#55

Ok, got off work and got a chance to watch this - same room, similar lines, amd a room mic… But, also without the odd artificial sound, and all three of these videos are less mechanically precise than the one we were discussing, and sound more like a player at the limit of his technique. Which, FWIW, I think these sound way better than the original one we were discussing.

I’m not, again, arguing that this guy CAN’T play. He;s an effing monster. It’s just that first video does sound awfully weird in ways these don’t.

#56

I don’t take it personally.

I’m simply discussing on a discussion forum.

What info do you base your decision to say he’s “cheating”?

I see no incentive on his end to sweeten the pot.

He can play it live and on demand.

His videos contain mistakes and to my ears show none of the usual tampering:

  • weird reverb effects dissapearing or appearing;
  • sound waveforms that suggest pick attacks where there shouldn’t be (e.g. during sweeps);
  • sound waveforms that suggest a “guitar pro” approach (i.e. perfect pitch, same attack for each note, etc).

The fact that iOS actually has crap codecs that do mono-summing for IG audio is also something that may cause weird audio artefacts (especially when audio levels are near the compression limit, something which can change from one video to the other, namely due to different guitar audio levels).

Anyhow, believe what you want. I enjoy the discussion.

P.S.: Pretty sure Jake means Stephen’s posts are legit since his response here is to Jared’s video on “fake shredders”. That’s my interpretation anyhow.

11111111111111

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#57

Cool, thanks! I’ll give this a try when I get home.

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#59

I’m happy to discuss all matter of things, but your summary basically reads: I found people who think like me, so I’m right. I’d prefer to go with my instincts and maintain some measure of health skepticism

#60

Oh I totally agree, was being slightly sarcastic :slight_smile:
Just interesting to note there are some players with obviously better ‘genetics’

#62

I’ve said this a few posts upstream, but just to be super clear, I’ll say it again that it’s obvious to me that Stephen is a good player. I’m not in disagreement with anyone on this — not Levi, nor any of the various famous people offered up here.

Instead, what I did say is that the audio in that particular clip struck me as sounding odd as soon as I heard it, and similar to the kind of artifacting you hear in sped-up audio. @Drew also seems to think it sounds off in some way. @BillHoudini said he didn’t think it sounded weird. I respect both takes! Thanks for your candor, everyone. Nobody is forced to have the same impressions I do just because it’s our forum.

Re: iPhone audio processing, I still can’t tell if you think it sounded weird, potentially due to tech issues. Or did you think it sounded fine?

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#63

The live footage isn’t nearly on the same level as the stuff he’s posting on Instagram. Some of the recent stuff he’s posted has a strange sound and I’m inclined to believe something odd is going on. I don’t personally care one way or the other, that’s just my impression. If I had to bet I would say there is manipulation going on in some of his videos.

#64

It’s a good thing this discussion exists, if only for making people aware of the fact that when you see something on a screen, it isn’t necessarily as “real” as you expect it to be.

In movies, people have already accepted this. Is CGI cheating? Or using a stunt-double? Yes, but also no, because it’s not a secret that it’s in every single action movie. That’s why a guy like Jackie Chan who does his own stunts gets so much respect.

In pictures, same thing. Is Photoshop cheating? In a way yes, but you know every single “high profile” picture in a magazine and online has been Photoshopped or at least has been enhanced to a certain level. But we all know this, so it’s an accepted form of “cheating/manipulation”.

In music, you have several levels of altering performance perception. From being able to play your stuff live at levels ranging from acceptable to incredible (SRV, EJ, Shawn Lane, Gambale etc), the equivalent of being “the real deal”, to needing 250+ takes to cut-n-paste and cherry pick a studio performance from those takes (Lars Ulrich on the “Justice for All” album), to lip syncing a voice that belongs to another vocalist during a supposed live performance (this is some next-level cheating :joy:!), like Milli Vanilli.

Now you have video added to it, and everyone has access to tools to manipulate the video and the audio.

This means: you can edit your guitar solo and compile multiple takes. You can record it at a slower speed and play it back at a higher speed. You can mimick your pre-recorded solo, compiled from 50 takes. You can speed up the video. Etc.

Is this cheating? For me it depends. If the artist/performer is HONEST when asked about the methods used, then, no.

If the artist/performer is NOT HONEST when asked about the methods used, then yes.

For me it’s really that simple. The problem is that some of these IG guitarists have been avoiding to answer questions about their performances, which of course fuels the doubts.

Also when there are so many options to manipulate video/audio, it’s difficult to draw conclusions. Maybe ONE video was sped up out of the 100. Then making a statement like “he speeds up his videos” is inaccurate. More accurate would be: he sped up one video out of the 100, the rest is not sped up.

You can safely assume that many IG performances that look “live” have been prerecorded and mimicked. For everyone that has recorded in front of a camera, the reason is obvious.

You have several red light syndromes going on at the same time, audio and video, plus “looking good” on video, plus the technical complexities of recording a decent video/audio performance all at once.

So it’s to be expected that some people would like to be able to concentrate on one thing at a time.

However, if asked about it, I feel you owe it to the viewers of the video to be clear and honest about it when asked how you recorded it. If you avoid answering or are dishonest about it, then you increase the possibility of being called out as a fraud.