Okay, so here's how it went down. Some clown who thinks he's pretty quick at guitar (He's not. In fact, he may be one of the slowest of the "fast" guys...) threw down the gauntlet.

He said, "Self! Why don't you try and see if you can play an Yngwie Style harmonic minor lick in a sequence like this (Rattles it off at 192BPM despite being slightly hungover and exhausted from a particularly ugly game of Tennis the night before...) So, since I think this guy is really not all that great, and I think I have a much cooler instrument I decide to take a stab at it... Neither of us could find a pirate shirt, ahh well..

Well, the results are in. After a few hours of hammering this sucker I am only about half as fast with my right hand and tapping as my left hand and picking is. Not that it's a race. I'll give it a few more weeks to see if I can push the tempo a bit... Plus, that other guy has, like 35 years of practicing speedy stuff like that, and I haven't even attempted to develop any sort of "speed chops" on the Stick. But...

You win, "other Scott". You win. May you burn in hell, and get stuck with a pink guitar. Also, may you be forced to only listen to Yngwie and NEVER get to hear the new Jeff Beck record! (Evil curse that only a guitarist would understand...)

I did learn, however that my hand bends up like a m'fer up at the high frets if I use 4 fingers thusly hurting like a sumbitch; much easier to use 3, and way less painful (I can do it with 4 also, but this time I decided to wimp out!) My right hand is way less developed than the left, and the arm moves around in slow motion it feels like, however there were some benefits to messing around with this I thought. I am a lot more familiar with A Harmonic minor on that string, and I can use that lick in conjunction with any of the riffs I like to play over. Those notes are now burned into my DNA, which makes for some pretty fun solos that I couldn't do before today.

lol I paid for those notes, dammit I'm gonna play 'em...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGO_AJqU1M8
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGO_AJqU1M8[/youtube]

I knew right from the title whose awesome post this would be!

A worthy attempt but doomed from the start: you have one hand tied behind your back!

I'm just gonna point out that you could use both hands and typeright that mf'er down pretty quickly, if you wanted. I don't know if that's cheating, but think about it: you're using two hands pretty furiously on the guitar already! One is tremelo picking or speed picking and the other is fretting, so it's not cheating to use that second hand on the Stick. That's what I would do to get out my Yngwie (or my Kerr as I call it now).

Keep pushing that envelope and creating that Funkenstein monster! You're my hero, Scott!

Lol I could have "two handed" it on Stick, and matched the tempo, but I have been doing that sort of thing for years on guitar, it just doesn't seem right to do that on Stick.

I can actually play that lick with my left hand and match the tempo. Gotta get the right hand in shape!

It was fun, thanks for checking it out!

(Anyone else noticing that Youtube video embeds aren't working?)

RH picking like a bee's wings buzzing, at least a hummingbird's - the guitarist's awesome weapon. Downstroke downbeat, upstroke upbeat, but at 32nd note speed. Then you just lay your LH fingering down a bit ahead of time, no easy reflex, more like an act of faith.

And now on Stick - hmmm, limpy and wimpy. How to arrive at 192BPM, or at least arrive at ones personal max finger drumming synapse capacity? Not on a single string, not unless you slide downward and peal off, which brings in unintended expressive "finger effects" (not a basic technique). Best to use the fretboard's great advantage, its width, tapping "vertically" across strings.

Practice scales and modes, which have repeatable patterns on uniform 4ths. Almost all scales and modes have three notes per string. In 4/4 rhythms, this amounts to "hamboning", an old game. (One clap and a slap on each knee, then count it off in four.)

Add some fancy distortion, some one-finger trills across frets, hammer-offs to earlier fingers (or to LH fingers), some slides and vibratos, and all the resources are there for a blazing R&R lead voice with just your RH.

Oh Oh Oh! This was fun to watch. I agree, we always learn a lot by transposing stuff from other instruments and playing then on the stick. Actually, as I've been trying to emulate the Portuguese guitar tremolo picking and double string effect this past week, I realized that, if for no other reason, it sounds more musical just using both hands playing the same note on different strings. This also allows me to further develop the concept of visualizing both sets of strings as a whole (although each set goes thru different fx, I still listen to it mono - one instrument, one sound source), in this case, the development was further seeing the higher string on the bass side as another string for the melody instead of just the higher notes of the chords. Does this make any sense? Too tired!


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I enjoyed this. Thank you.

lol Funny stuff.

The Stickist furiously toils away, but before heading to the local crossroads to make a "deal" he decides to practice for a few more weeks with the metronome.

16ths at 112BPM.

Great that you're attempting this! We need to see more tappers that can throw down! Nice Guitar playing by the way.

Thanks, man. (Gambale, Paul Gilbert and Malmsteen obsession... lol)

16ths at 126BPM. 3 finger and 4 finger approach, messing with a slide too.

144 BPM.