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RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
I guess it's impressive that some guys have that kind of ridiculous control and speed. I imagine they sort of have to zen out and completely relax to pull something like that off. Otherwise it just sounds like a video game and has no real musical context.
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Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
I have never considered "speed for speed's sake" impressive in flamenco. Speed alone does not make a first rate guitarist, in flamenco or any other genre. I recognize a certain amusing quality to speed, much like that found in the old "Ripley's Believe it or Not" series: the man who could swallow two swords simultaneously; the bearded lady; etc. Sort of a cheap parlor trick to impress the easily impressed.
Cheers,
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
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From: Washington DC
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
Don't be jealous you tortoises!!!
Seriously, I think if he practices he can get to 321 next year.
Anyway, his true CLEAN speed on this thing is probably a lot lower without the muting technique. With that technique, every fast picker knows its "cheating" as you don't even have to fully depress a string into the fret, which it looks like he is not doing anyway. Guinness doesn't know that I guess.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
Forget about that metal guitarist with his dull fustigating.
Here is a real master, not only on toque but on cante, too! I´ve never seen a guy like this. Imagine there´s no heaven... An impressive skill demo, fasten the seat belts! Here comes Mr Vinh Bui:
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
My two cents : Well I think guitar is not really a great instrument at high speed, the main problem for me is that using tremolo for scales you loose the attack and it is the most important aspect (you can feel the underlying rhythm). That's why I love so much paco de lucia picado cause it is so staccato !
Secondly a really good picker will always be faster than a good player that played with finger (even grisha) it is just mechanical.
I think the best pickers that have a good tone (not mute like meola or the guy above and with a great attack not like malmsteen wannabes who rely on reverb and marshalls ...) are the gipsy players (for instance jimmy Rosenberg or angelo debarre : Ricardo has mentioned him in another tread). Here is stochelo playing a waltz unamplified you can see that the attack is way better than a finger player for single lines (to my mind)
Plus with a pick you can do lines that are much more complicated ant that can last longer (strings skipping (like Paul gilbert who has been mentioned by Ricardo again !)
I prefer piano players for extreme speed pieces cause : 1 : the lines can be much more interesting (you can actually have two voices :) ) 2 : t's cleaner :)
Liszt has written some amazing pieces which are still musical and interesting not like the flight of the bumblebee ...
Check Valentina lisitsa for speed, tone, musicality, the whole video is amazing :
The violin concertos by tchaikovsky are also really great.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
You guys who say it's not musical; have a listen. It's supposed to be a bumble bee flying.
THAT is a bumble bee flying. (Albeit from a SciFi movie - and movie directors would be crazy to miss such evocative stuff.) That guy is the dog's b o l l o c k s.
His left hand and his coordination are astonishing. Of course the guy has a fast setup. Of course he gets his stacatto from damping. But his fingers; they don't move. It's all coordination. I didn't believe the top speed though. I've done the same thing myself when I'm in over my head... In slow motion.
You are a tough crowd. Isn't one of our dirty little secrets that flamenco guitars are easy to play?
I would like to see this guy and Grsha share a stage. Circus act or not. These guys are musicians. Playing fast is fun to do and fun to listen to. If this guy is in a band it would work.
At least he played something by which we could judge. (Ricardo, call em and tell them they need sub-categories. This is the kind of thing that can get players in front of people. Crazy fast playing is mass market.)
And even though Grisha is a big fat cheater with all that easy tremolo pickin', (and this is not to dis his playing partner, because he sounds superb) but Grisha has a three finger picado (cheat) that could discourage a lot of up and coming metalheads.
Speed for speed's sake, say I. We can cry about our grannies with a dirge 'and' wonder at how someone without a fiddle stuck under his chin could project the core of the composition. (Yes, it's a Japanese monster bee but it does 'bumble'.)
On a stage though Grisha would look too cool for this crowd. The guy looks like he's at a classical guitar lesson, playing for his teacher.
Tip: fast forward to the playing if you watch it. The presenter sounds like a keynote speaker at a corporate team building weekend.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to aeolus)
quote:
ORIGINAL: aeolus
what's faster than a bee? el colibrí
Love the quote and the video but there's room for discussion :-). As far as flying speed is concerned both are listed around 15 meters a second, the humblebee "up to 54 km/h" and the hummingbird "exceeding 54 km/h" so i grand you a very very small plus there. But when we look at wing beats per second the speed difference is way more noticeable: hummingbirds reach 12-80 wing beats a second (depending on the species) and humblebees do around 200. The honey bee (that belongs to the same group) can even reach over 250 wing beats a second.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
quote:
The honey bee (that belongs to the same group) can even reach over 250 wing beats a second.
Well scale has to enter into it as the bee is much smaller with tiny wings. Don't think it's a fair comparison as after all we are talking about straight line speed. The sad thing is here is the bees have disappeared completely from our area and apparently throughout the USofA possibly due to pesticides but I wonder. I don't live in an area of intensive farming tho there is some but the county has been fogging to combat west Nile virus for some time and not only bees but most other insects and small creatures have vanished: snails;ants;wasps; toads; spiders; doddle bugs; praying mantis; leaches. crickets; ear wigs; all gone! Perhaps it's a small price to pay for not dying from west Nile virus...but I dunno.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
quote:
Manolo Franco is awesome. I highly recommend him. If you haven't heard it already, check out his really cool buleria called Alijbe.
Yes, I was checking some other pieces out by him on youtube (for instance amazing solea as well); strange that he is not so well known. The tremolo part of that minera is really beautiful - i have heard beautiful tremolo in minera before (they tend to be fantastically mysterious and dark in minera, these kind of falsetas were the reason I fell in love with flamenco and started the painful and long road to playing flamenco).
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Playing music is not difficult - you just have to play the right note at the right time (J.S. Bach)
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to aeolus)
quote:
ORIGINAL: aeolus
Well scale has to enter into it as the bee is much smaller with tiny wings. Don't think it's a fair comparison as after all we are talking about straight line speed.
In that case the Perecrine Falcon beats the colibri by far.... its way bigger and can reach speeds over 350 km/h without even flapping it's wings ! I saw one 2 days ago during my postal delivery route in Rotterdam.
quote:
The sad thing is here is the bees have disappeared completely from our area and apparently throughout the USofA possibly due to pesticides...........
That's a huge problem indeed and, even worse, it's happening on a world scale.
The same happens in argentine agriculture were soy beans are cultured that are genetically modified to make them resistant to a poison that kills everything else. As a result they can apply monocultures expanding areas bigger then the netherlands, killing all possible predators by frequent fogging with poison. Unlike a couple of years ago you can ride for hours there without hitting a single insect on the windscreen of your car :-(
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
quote:
As a result they can apply monocultures expanding areas bigger then the netherlands, killing all possible predators by frequent fogging with poison
I guess we're next! This science business has gotten creepy. Like a Frankenstein monster. I thought I hadn't seen many migratory birds like Blue Jays, Red Birds and come to think of it Mocking birds that are native. Birds that live on bugs are in trouble and only the seed eaters like mourning doves survive. It's all Monsanto's fault.
Another example of Monsanto’s chemical folly came in February when a French court declared Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of French grain grower, Paul Francois. The farmer suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller in 2004, and blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
He's been practising some more, blown up every metronome known to man and now here he is doing 750 BPM. I think I have discovered his secret. If you look closely he's holding an actual bumblebee with a little pick glued to each wing. He injects the bee with caffeine then squeezes it just right to make it buzz and produce this phenomenal speed. He's been stung a few times but the results are worth it.
RE: Guitar speed world record (in reply to Turron)
Poor guy.
I always think of music as a banquet, a buffet if you will.
I cant quite work out what the point of seeing who can eat the most prawn crackers is. And they are usually too full of it to get to the good stuff later.
But the one's who say they have 'won' whilst standing knee deep in cracker crumbs cheer me up again. Even better the ones with a hidden pouch in their trousers.
Anyway I'm gonna work away some more on my poorly prepared steak.
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