Speed guitar - World record 2008 - GuitarTalk Community

Speed guitar - World record 2008

lindsmuse

Keira-WitherKay

? yeah incredible right hand to play that fast .............. but is it just me or did it all seem very "unmusical" , and played with no feel after the 2nd play ..... it was just mechanical ....

check out this dude, he's fast and melodic ........ i like him .......... ?

lindsmuse

I must confess I'm new to all this speed guitar stuff - altho my son plays in this style but for Death metal - and I've been eating his dust for about 9 years now! I thought I'd just include this as I am curious about this guitarist - (the speed record holder). Why do people go in for this I wonder. Its not really music in a way I remember music but anyway ... But I admire the dedication and will try and find out if he plays music slowly as well!

Thanks for the post Keira - Michelangelo - that was absolutely amazing! I can see the application of the speed and how it all comes together right here! Hate the way he dresses tho!

Here is something about the first guitarist -

Tiago della Vega is a Brazilian guitarist. Born in Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, he began learning to play the acoustic guitar at the age of five. After a year, he realized that the electric guitar was his greatest passion. He started to study electric guitar, practicing 14 hours a day.
Tiago della Vega played with the bands After Dark and Fermatha. At present, he travels around the world playing and doing workshops. He currently holds the Guinness World Records title as the fastest guitar player in the world, playing The Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at 370 beats per minute.[1]
He plays a custom signature Andrellis 7-string guitar which has 24 frets and a Floyd Rose tremolo, the Andrellis TDV.[2]

inflames

Insane!!!

Both Michelangelo and Tiago are sweep picking demons!

PeteM

Loved the Michael Angelo one - tricks yes, but the integrity of the music was all there. Oh well maybe in another lifetime. ?

Conrad

I think Della Vega did this because he could and it helped him with publicity.

Flight of the bumble bee sounds bad there yes but I think he is a really good musician.

Listen to him on Mysace. I love his interpretation of Paganinni's 24th Caprice.

http://www.myspace.com/officialdellavega

@Kiera. I like your site Is it OK if we link to you on our "Friends" page? I want to write that soon.

DonovanB

Jason Becker is one of the greatest lost talents

BMU

How many guitarists does it take to break the world speed record? Roughly 10. One to do the shredding and nine to say how that's not real music. ?

Ok let me do my bit to fulfil that stereotype into truth: the first guy's playing I don't really enjoy. I've seen some footage of him live and it seemed like he was sweeping like a demon all over the fretboard just 'cos he could. (But maybe I just haven't heard the right songs, who knows.) But yah, he's good!

MAB on the other hand really is amazing. He's like a heavy metal cartoon caricature brought to life lol. His playing is amazing. Musical and fluid. A lot of the sweeping he does is just simple 3-string shapes, but they sound great...and that speed! Oi. ???

Jason Becker is awesome. Totally worthy of the respect still heaped on him. That piece above is bland, but his album stuff is amazing, creative and chockfull of emotion. Like a friend of mine says: when JB does a string bend, you cry!

inflames

when JB does a string bend, you cry!

Brilliant!!! ?

lindsmuse

Jason Becker awesome

Bob-Dubery

lindsmuse wrote: I must confess I'm new to all this speed guitar stuff - altho my son plays in this style but for Death metal - and I've been eating his dust for about 9 years now! I thought I'd just include this as I am curious about this guitarist - (the speed record holder). Why do people go in for this I wonder. Its not really music in a way I remember music but anyway ...

The first clip, the one you posted, illustrates the problem. Eventually the speed overpowers the music. By the time he gets up to 300bpm it's so fast that the melody is hard to discern. He could be making a lot of mistakes and you'd hardly know.

It strikes me that these styles of playing impose constraints anyway as the melodies usually are not great and for the most part there aren't a lot of interesting intervals in the melodies. It seems like to play at that speed you have to keep the notes really close to each other. Either that or none of these guys have much in the way of compositional skills.

Last night I saw CH2 playing. That should be fast enough for most reasonable people but the actual music was pretty satisfying too, they had strong compositions with interesting melodies. It wasn't just fretboard athletics - which for me is what too much of this stuff is about.

chris77

Man has an inherent need hardwired into our genetic make up to always want to go faster/further/higher/better than the next bloke. When Urgh first banged two rocks together to keep a beat, I reckon all the other okes in his clan spent the next week with smashed fingertips trying to go faster with more rythm. Its a bonus if 'music' like that has a likeable melody or emotional trigger - its not supposed to. Its done to show off one artists mastery over others in a specific field. And I dont mean that in a bad way, its the same reason we have competative sport and why there's always one guy at a party bragging his arse off. Human nature.

Bob-Dubery

If it's all about getting faster and louder then we're reducing music to weight lifting. I think it can be better than that, have more to offer.

That's not me saying that technique is bad. It isn't. I can admire the discipline and the hours of practice that these guys must have put in and the technical excellence that has resulted. But that's not enough to make satisfying art.

Leonardo da Vinci was notable in his time for mastering things that were considered very difficult then - notably portraying drapings and running water. But if that's all he had going for him then we wouldn't be paying as much attention to his paintings now, and if you look at them just for the technical excellence (and it is there) then you're not seeing... dare I say it... the bigger picture.

BMU

There's more than enough space in the musical landscape for the guys who want to shred AND the guys who want to play one tasteful chord. Let this amazing individual break the world speed record and be happy for him, for pete's sake!

There's no speed-shred gestapo forcing everyone to play like that, or even pay any attention at all. It's as valid as breaking the 100m sprint record, I don't see anyone writing diatribes about that. (Personally I think it's equally pointless! But that's not my point haha.)

I thought his playing at 300 bpm was pretty darn clean and discernable btw.

chris77

I agree with you 100%. I should have clarified better. Music is art, and my favourite form by a long way. 'Technical' players can with talent, skill and dedication create music that does this with as much grace and elegance as any other muso worth his salt. It will appeal to some more than others, but it wil be there nevertheless. But when a guy sets out to set a world record in speed playing, then that is his primary driver. Who cares if it sounds mechanical and crap, but was it faster than the previous record? Then the player is no different than any other individual driven by the primal urge to be better than the Jones'. So not art then that measured in emotional feedback, but a clock driven technical exercise in the same vein as world landspeed record holders and sprinters.

lindsmuse

For some reason speed guitar makes me think of haute coutere - high sewing. Exclusivity, specialisation and trend setting. And then evolution.

I suppose one of the things about music has always been speed - the virtuosity of the instrumentalist kind of overshadowing the music a bit here and there.

So this is just perhaps a development / variety which will surely reach a dead end - unless it comes to speed guitarpieces that last two days. Cause surely the notes will become so fast that they'll join up and then Speed Guitar Supreme Being of the era will say. 'Oh. I could've played that on a flute. What am I DOING!'

Warren

Opinions sure differ ?

I read an interview with John Frusciante where he said something like "It's about the music, it's not about showing people what you can do with a piece of wood with strings attached..."

Of course, for some folks shred is king, and that's cool. Personally, I tire of protracted shred-fests (a la Malmsteen) very quickly. I do think that fast, fluid runs can be amazingly expressive additions to a piece of music, but when the entire piece is pure shred it loses most of its impact.

I resonate with music where the artist is able to consolidate lots of different elements into one amazing whole, creating something truly greater than the sum of its parts. A song where the lyrics, the melody, the vibe, the rhythm, and the musicianship all come together into something that you can listen to again and again, and will still be listening to in years to come. Almost like the music ages with you, and somehow stays fresh.

Any very technical pursuit requires a great amount of effort and dedication to master, so there's no taking that away from the shred-meisters. I think I'm just more interested in stuff that's more holistic; less focused on a single aspect. Because to focus on that one aspect means you have to sacrifice other things, and your playing and your music becomes a bit one-dimensional as a result.

That's why I like guys like Eric Johnson so much: he can play perfectly authentically in almost any style. His shred technique is amazing, but also listenable and melodic. His chord work is always so interesting, so stuffed full of detail. His tone is equally full of nuance and detail. And then he pulls it all together to create fantastic compositions. It's like the ultimate combo of mad skillz and musicality.

Squonk

Warren wrote: Opinions sure differ ?
That's why I like guys like Eric Johnson so much: he can play perfectly authentically in almost any style. His shred technique is amazing, but also listenable and melodic. His chord work is always so interesting, so stuffed full of detail. His tone is equally full of nuance and detail. And then he pulls it all together to create fantastic compositions. It's like the ultimate combo of mad skillz and musicality.

Just a pity that Eric ruins everything by adding vocals every now and then. When I first heard Eric I though this is the best tone I have ever heard. I played "Ah Via Musicom" until it fell to pieces(It was on Tape ?) He hasn't broken any new ground since though!!

Have you heard Carl Verheyen, very similar to Eric in tone but seems to risk a bit more in his playing if that makes sense. Eric spends so much time perfecting his albums, that's why there are so few albums. When he was first on the scene, Guitarist dubbed him "The Tone Ranger"

"Cliffs of Dover " on the Live in Austin DVD has such excellent tone and played with such precision, and as you say it's fast, melodic, chordal and at least another half a dozen flowery words that I cant think of just now!!!!

How are the lessons with Jeff Dix?

Warren

Squonk wrote:
Have you heard Carl Verheyen, very similar to Eric in tone but seems to risk a bit more in his playing if that makes sense. Eric spends so much time perfecting his albums, that's why there are so few albums. When he was first on the scene, Guitarist dubbed him "The Tone Ranger"

"Cliffs of Dover " on the Live in Austin DVD has such excellent tone and played with such precision, and as you say it's fast, melodic, chordal and at least another half a dozen flowery words that I cant think of just now!!!!

How are the lessons with Jeff Dix?

I haven't listened to Verheyen, I'll have to give him a go. Actually, my guitarist knowledge is quite limited beyond the fairly mainstream dudes ?

I've been wanting to get my hands on a DVD of his (or two) for a while now...and it was payday yesterday...hmmm...

Lessons are going ok so far thanks, just trying to bridge some theory gaps. I must be honest: I think a half-hour is too little time to really get stuck into anything. I think I would rather do a full hour every two weeks, or something like that, and just take away more homework. ? Enjoying it though, I need to cover this ground.

Malkav

Well to me here is the exception to the rule - Shawn Lane, he clocked in at 19 notes a second according to some speed test thing I read where apparently recordings where slowed down in Cubase and peaks where measured etc (this was strictly for alternate picking). He was the fastest on a list that included Guthrie Govan, Rusty Cooley, Jason Becker, Bumblefoot and John Petrucci (There were 50 big name shredders in total).

Now for those people who don't know him, he's been this fast since he was 16 and he's probably got one of the most distinguishable and musical styles and feels known to the guitaring world as a whole. He wrote some of the most amazingly emotional music and utilised speed in all the ways that we admire, his life was unfortunately cut short and at the age of 40 he passed away owing to lung disease. He started off making Jazz fusion when he came into his own as an artist and later joined Jonas Hellborg (ex-bassist to Mahavishnu Orchestra and John Mclaughlin I believe) and went heavily into Indian music.

The scariest thing about Shawn Lane was not simply his blinding speed but the lines he played, he had an amazing theory knowledge and played incredibly complex harmonies at these speeds even scarier was the enormity of some of the intervals he used (apparently if you aren't double jointed in your hands it's basically impossible to learn his stuff). What also scared the hell out of me is his rythmic groupings of phrases for instance we'd run scales in straight 4s maybe 6s, he'd alternate from 4 to 6 to 5 to 4 etc in some of his most astonishing moments. On top of this he had incredible feel, beautiful dynamics and emotive well composed music.

Della Vega may be faster in a straight line but I highly doubt he could equal Shawn Lane when it comes to the actual phrases he used. I've only ever heard Guthrie Govan come close to doing a Shawn Lane track justice and even then he didn't *nail* it.

This is a video of a track called Grey Pianos Flying and it was the first Shawn Lane track I had ever heard ?

This is a track called Not Again and it's an incredibly beautiful melodic song and at the end Shawn Lane goes off on the scariest Diminished tangent I've ever seen, not particularly musical at the end when the diminished stuff starts but hey we've all gotta let it out sometime ?

This song called Get You Back has an end solo that takes my breath away every time I hear it, this is the track that Guthrie Govan tried to emulate and though he did a great job he didn't capture Lane's style in the way he manages to capture other players.

and here's a video of him dominating on a white strat (just before we get the regular, well he can play fast on fast playing guitars but can he do it on a strat? because there's always someone over 40 trying to be clever...) ?