Ok..I would like to preface this question by giving a clarification of what I'm looking for. I am asking this from a Non-Musical point of view and purly out of technical curiosity.

How many notes per minute can a couple of you top guys play. For example, if you are doing a finger excercise using four fingers to play 16th notes in 4/4...how many BPM can you do this for 60 seconds without screwing up?

The reason I'm asking is I saw a post about a bassist in India doing a crazy slap techniue and playing insanely fast. It got me thinking that we can get fast as heck too using the tap method...but...how fast???

I realize that the musical applications of playing a bazillion notes in 60 seconds is pretty nil...it IS, however, an interesting fact about the instrument...sooooo...

If you are interested, get out your metronome or drum machine, start at 150 BPM, pick a fingering pattern you dig and give it a go. Keep rasing the tempo until you can't do it or your wife gets mad...whichever comes first.

Post here the BPM and Time Signiture and how many fingers on each hand you were using to do this. The type of stick would be cool to know too. Feel free to add any other pertnant information for this study.

Remember, you must be able to hold this pattern for 60 seconds, not just a brief two bar sprint.

I'll start it off...but of course all you guys that have been playing sticks longer than me will probably easily leave me in the dust...lol.

225 BPM. Sixteenths in 4/4. Three fingers on right hand and one on left. Using a NS/Stick.

Thanks fellas...I just want to get an idea of a top speed for our instrument family.

I managed some two-handed arpeggios with both hands on the melody strings for the tune "Paint it Black". They were very angular and hellish to execute as 16th notes. The tempo was 170 in 4/4. Pretty brisk for those type of arpeggios.

On "Freebird", I again used both hands on the melody side and managed a couple of climbing 8-note scale patterns (16th notes again) in 4/4 at 175. These were tough licks; I'd venture to say they'd be impossible with one hand on the melody side. I guess that's my "sound barrier". I push it every day with the bluegrass stuff I'm learning.

Yeah...bluegrass is gonna push you there...lol. I like Psychograss a lot. I also have a CD called Strength in Numbers that I like that has Sam Bush, Marc O'conner, Bela Fleck, Edgar Myer, and some other beasts on it. Pretty cool.

You be ripping sir. Thanks for contributing.

It's cool that you started this thread,actually. Speed is a tool and in some cases an essential one. I've been focusing heavily on right-hand speed for the better part of a year now. I want that Yngwie/ DiMeola kind of speed. I can do it with both hands on the melody side, while Mark is covering bass and chords, but I want to be able to do it with one hand. SERIOUS challenge.

When I played guitar, it wasn't a big deal. You worked on economy of movement with both the pick and fretting hand. Then it happened. Voila!
But on Stick, we don't have that pick flapping its wing like a hummingbird. The right hand has to select AND activate the note. That subtracts a lot of speed, when we're talking about uber speed here. So far, I haven't heard anyone come close. Not Bob C., not Jan L., not anyone. The Stick needs its first shredder!

Went to school with a guitarist that could sweep pick sixteenth notes at 250 bpm. He was then working on sixteenth note triplets at 250 (as fast as his metronome would go). Honestly though he was pretty much a one trick pony.

Indeed Matt, thats a big challenge, we dont have an Yngwie of the STICK yet, some may say thats a good thing! I still have Rising Force and others on Vinyl, so many Harmonic Minor arpeggio's on the one record!
Cheers B

I LOVE Yngwie's playing. His vibrato is one of the best I've ever heard on guitar. His use of the volume knob for swells is unrivaled as well, imo. I just wish he had more instrumental songs

I definitely think it'd be inspiring to hear some neoclassical type stuff with the stick. Think of the possibilities with voicings/counterpoint!