Does Speed Really Kill?

A hero? I dont know any guitarist that are heros and I am not really even being funny. Do you mean stars? Super stars?

Watch American Idol, people are fickle. There really is no rhyme or reason to why they select what they do.

Jim

In my opinion, speed is not a necessity and does NOT make any guitarist great. Sure, being able to play fast is impressive and can certainly widen your arsenal of techniques, but I'd rather have a guitarist who is only of decent speed but can play with a ton of soul.

That said, lately I've been trying to play a lot of Brendan Bayliss' (Umphrey's McGee) solos and leads and I have this simple question (not to hijack the thread), what are good exercises for tremolo picking to help build speed and rhythm?

Personally, I think that in this fast-paced ever-changing super-diverse world we all live in, it's pretty impossible to become a 'hero', heck you're lucky if you get 5 minutes of fame, let alone 15 :P

As for speed exercises, all I've ever done is to take things I know, either scales, riffs or songs, and just up the tempo a bit. Once you are comfortable, speed up again, then again, and again. Speed comes as a result of practice and dedication I think, technique is second to perservereance :D

Pete

ps:you guy got any speed work outs?

Speed Mechanics

well said pete, speed comes with practice, technique is what makes a great guitar player 8)

and taste. got to have taste.
know what I mean?

I've never found my guitar heroes by what was fashionable but by what I liked.

Not a lot of people groove on Django . . . but he's a hell of a guitarist.

I started playing 'cause of Ace Frehly, so I guess my first hero was due to fashion. But after that it was because of where my ear led me.

Speed impressed me for a while. But the heroes I've held the longest have been there because of their melodic, rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities, not because of how fast they are.

There's players a lot faster than Django or Joe Pass. But there are few that can match those guys in their ability to play with melody (Django) or Harmonies (Pass).

I have seen very few if any great guitarists that didn't have their signature "guitar face." If you ain't got the face, then you ain't feelin' it, and if you ain't feelin' it, then you ain't my hero. :twisted:

EDIT: Oh, and welcome back.

It's all about Tom Morello and Kim Thayil ;P

Rawrrrr

john frusciante is the closest thing to an old fashioned guitar hero that i can think of. what i like about him is his versatility. he can do anything on the guitar.

There have always been speed demons.

You mention the heroes 'back in the day': Page, Hendrix, and Clapton. They were guitar heroes because they were musical heroes - that is, people who didn't play guitar idolized them for their musicianship. I know plenty of jazz musicians who really like Hendrix, because he was breaking new ground.

Back in the day we also had Alvin Lee. Put on "At the Woodchopper's Ball" from the Undead album by Ten Years After, and convince me there weren't any speed demons in the 60s.

Lee had plenty of fans - all guitarists.

That's the real difference.

Go to a concert of Yngwie, Satriani, Vai, Batio, or any of the other folks who are speed demons today. Take a poll - ask the fellow audience members if they play guitar. You'll find 90% of them do.... they're at the concert to admire the technical wizardry. The same thing was true at Alvin Lee concerts.

Then go to a concert of John Mayer, or Los Lobos, or RHCP, or any of the other bands that sport fine guitarists who don't always play fast. Take the same poll, and you'll get the opposite result - the fans are there to admire the music, not the picking speed.

40 years from now there will be a whole new crop of guitarists with fast new tricks, and there will be folks talking about how much better guitar music was back in the day of Mayer.

One trick ponies are amazing, but they don't hold up well over time.

Welcome back Hawk!

I like to listen to speed, so long as it serves a purpose in the music. 100 notes per bar going from one corner of the neck to the other just sounds awful to me, funny even. I like the way Slash and Dave Mustaine put a few bursts of speed into a solo, but don't rely on it to make the statement. That kind of thing.

I would be a liar if I said I didn't wish I could play super fast. But really, all of my favorite players have played fairly slow... Paul Kossoff of Free (amazing vibrato), Eric Clapton (huge bends), Hendrix (pure fire and passion), Jimmy Page (versatility, great Blues player).

I was a big fan of Alvin Lee that Noteboat mentioned. He was considered very fast back then. :D

It's like anything else, you've got to have a balance. I think guitarists that play at blazing speed all the time are very boring. It is just super-noodling. But it is good to mix speed with soulful playing. It's all about the feel of the music. Sometimes you want the music to move, so you need speed. But you want the music to have ebb and flow, tension and release. So, you have to be able to play slow with feeling as well. If you can mix the two together seamlessly, then you really have something.

There's also the 'they're not as good as in my day' reckoning going on here, most of us are significantly older and probably are unaware of the current guitar gods?? Trivium, Dragon Fire? etc that 'kids' will tell you play awsome, just like some thought about Clapton, Beck, Hendrix, Page and then the 30+s about Fast Eddie, Angus, Blackmore et al