In my early 20s I went through a Shawn Lane period and I took his advice on speed to heart (…and it was kind of what I was doing already lol). It works, kids. Try it.

I've heard the same kind of argumentation from Frank Gambale, Martin Miller, Guthrie Govan, Michael Angelo Batio. It's not crazy at all.

I agree 100%. You don't pick a passage the same way at 60 BPM that you do at 160 BPM. I used to practice slow and work my way up and couldn't understand why I'd hit a wall. Once I realized that you pick and play differently at really fast speeds, I changed the way I practiced. I had a teacher that suggested playing the first two notes of a phrase at speed, then add a third, fourth, etc. There isn't one single way to do this. Another trick I picked up along the way is to alternate playing the passage at full speed and half speed.

@@clarkkent6482 Totally right. If you learn at a slow tempo, your right hand will cheat and bring the pick above the level of the strings in a movement that won't translate to high tempos. Then you're just embedding inefficient string hopping instead of correct escape movements, and tension because you can feel that something isn't right. Professionals can get away with learning passages at graduated tempos because they already know the correct technique; they just want to learn the notes. But if you're plateauing, it really is like learning to sprint by walking faster and faster. It won't work because the movements are fundamentally different (unless you're pushing your pick through the strings really slowly). Even Petrucci recommends playing at silly tempos to break through speed barriers.

@@obligatoryprofile Never heard the walking to running analogy, but you explained it perfectly.

That's great to hear! I have already lost too many colleagues to drinking and drugs.

Thank you very much! That is really motivating to hear :)

Personally not a fan of the pop up fun, but I agree, Jens owns this niche. He covers a gargantuan amount of subjects, nothing is irrelevant.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Great to hear!

I don't actually think when I am playing jazz 🙂

Thank you 🙂

You're very welcome!

Glad you enjoy it!

My pleasure!

😁

Exactly :)

Thank you! Actually a fair amount of the older clips are from my channel :)

@@JensLarsen I will have to check more of your music out. I pretty much follow your lessons and haven't looked at what you're doing. Thanks for the reminder, look forward to listening.

Thank you 🙂

Glad you enjoyed it!

I found the Steve Morse stuff super useful for this, so maybe look that up. I talk about those types of exercises in this video and the next one: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bNGKfdBn0JfGYJs.html

@@JensLarsen Dank je wel :)

Glad you like it :)

Thank you Ron!

My pleasure! 😁

Thank you 🙂

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you T.W.

Great! :)

Thanks! Are you talking about muting? I think you will find that most of that is in the left hand actually :)

@@JensLarsen Ohh i see! I am a right hand sided player and on just playing chords i am pretty comfortable with muting with my left hand but when it come to play soloing plugged in on an guitar amp my left hand struggles to keep the unwanted noise muted ^^ Thanks for your reply!

@@brunoteixeira5912 Yes, and the hand doing most of the muting is the left hand 🙂

Wow I see, thanks a lot man! 🙏 💪🥳

Glad you like it!

I don't have videos on free form improvising with open triads, that is just playing open triads and putting them together. Maybe this is helpful: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bNGKfdBn0JfGYJs.html And otherwise search for spread or open triads on the channel

This video has a section on it as well: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r7iPqZOrub_bj5s.html

Glad you like them!

Glad to hear it!

Glad you think so!

Glad it was helpful!

Haha! Thanks :) That is an interesting story!

Glad you like it!

Great lesson and great advice as always Jens. I think McLaughlin, Dimeola and Paco established the whole ramped up tempo playing . Friday night at San Francisco is an album where you can hear some riffs. But I don't think that's straight up jazz.. maybe more Mediterranean fusion... some non functional harmony. You are an incredibly skilled guitarist Mr. Larsen and extremely humble too.

Of current jazz guitarists that can shred, Joscho Stephan is my favorite. His ideas always go somewhere & I love the way he quotes & he just has a lovely sound. If you haven’t heard him play Isn’t She Lovely, you should.

Brad Mehldau on the way you look tonight from the art of the trio album is pretty cool. I think he plays it at like 400 but his approach is so relaxed

I like Pat Methenys "All the things you are".. some ripping Jazz guitar.

😁

Thanks Ben! :)

Glad you like them!

I think you are misunderstanding the method that I describe in the video? Because it is not what you describe

@@JensLarsen from what I understood it looked like you were promoting the start slow and then speed up practice method, as you literally stated in your video. Of course there are many ways to interpretate that. Just wanted to highlight what my teachers (which some of them where yours as well 😉 ), that although the 'gradually speed up' method you're talking about, does work for a very small amount of people. For most guitar players (especially those who are able to play fast and explain how they got there) it doesn't work

@@ChrisDv849 Well, the method I am talking about here has you play at the top speed of your ability every day, and I get the impression that you don't think that is the case? And I actually mention using smaller patterns as well, though that is not what I did that much,

Thanks! :)

Glad you like it!

Which makes sense since that is often a recipe for problems with your arm 🙂

Thank you 😁

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you Frank! Yes, those two principles are both incredibly helpful! :)

Thanks! I think I demonstrate how that is pretty true in this video, I am soloing over Giant Steps, but I can't say the chords in time.

They are in here: kzfaq.info/sun/PLWYuNvZPqqcGhA7WjDTjYJ5EfTJ_rdwHY 🙂

Found it - thanks, Jens. You're a treasure.

No, I don't think so. If you compare guitarists like Metheny, Adam Rogers, Kreisberg etc they all have different approaches to how they hold the pick.

Glad you like it 🙂

A jazz guitar teacher I once had always told me it’s harder to play slower than faster. He would make me do scale practice with the metronome set at forty.

@@GoFigure621 DUDE! Funny you should comment about this now. Because that's EXACTLY what I'm trying to do at 35 right now! And that's just picking one note. Subdividing it faster then slower. It's very humbling.

Indeed 😁

I tried to make videos like that for a whole year, but the audience was really not interested, so I gave up. Here are some of them in a playlist: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/m7p_h7JlqK3Wqqc.html

Thanks

No! Not the toan!!!!!

My balls can handle it.

Een beetje.... 🙂

@@JensLarsen There you go! At least knowing the word pindakaas will get you something to eat in case of alimentary emergencies.

@@BassGuyNL Exactly!

Certainly!

😁👍

Probably, I never tried

@@JensLarsen No, me neither. But I've been asked that more than once. There were times when I'd put a well-known classical melody in a solo. That's when some drunk would say it, or something similar, like "The Minute Waltz" , especially if I was flashy in the solo. I worked in supper club settings a lot in the mid 1970s. It was the stiff equivalent in prog rock / blues / of "play Melancholy Baby. "

@@kwgm8578 were you also drunk when you commented?

@@JensLarsen No, I'm never drunk. I may have a glass of wine with dinner to be sociable, but I haven't been drunk in over 40 years, since my grad school days. I don't really enjoy how that feels. But, I guess I've done it again. If you're joking in return, that's fine. I have had a good friend, a Norwegian, whom I met at a Silicon Valley startup in the early 1980s. We were both working on our Masters degree in Computer Science at the time and shared a fascination for a computer operating system being developed at Berkeley called Unix. Helge played bass and I jammed some 12-bar and 16-bar blues forms with him for about 15 minutes before my fingers screened loud enough for both of us to hear -- I had lost all my callous by then. But after that, Helge kept encouraging me to get a guitar again and play. He was very kind -- as has been my experience with many Scandinavian people over the years I've met in my professional life, including yourself. When I told Helge that I bought a couple of new guitars and was again building callous, as well as watching your lessons on KZfaq, he was very pleased. In fact, I still owe him a return letter. Helge had a funny, dark personality. Now that he's in his 60s, and his lovely wife has been fighting with a blood cancer, he's lost the dark edge. I like the sincere Helge even better than the Helge I knew in his 20s and 30s. Jens, if I've offended you, please allow me to apologize. You are one of the last people I want to hurt. The honest truth is that I like you, and respect you a great deal for a number of reasons. Although I'm usually a perfect sweetheart 90% of the time, I have an unusual sense of what's funny, and as my wife has reminded me for 45 years, I can be "inappropriate." Although I may claim perfect innocence, she's unfortunately right most of the time. I'll share this here, too. At this time in my life, I've been struggling with what seem to be insurmountable problems that have nothing to do with my reemergence as a musician. Sometimes my pain and frustration come out sideways, and inappropriately. That's no excuse, but it happens. I don't recall that day I wrote about flight of the bumble bee, but I may have been struggling. I'm not going to open up about my inner life in public, but I would have no qualms about discussing my personal life with you, so if you are interested, please send me an email. I believe that you have my email address. Thank you for your interest, whether that was a serious inquiry or not, and again, I apologize if you felt like you were being pelted on stage with rotten fruit, as I've been told they once did in the rowdy music halls around the turn of the 19th Century.

@@kwgm8578 Don't worry about it! I was mostly curious because it seemed a bit random and off topic 🙂 Hope you get through it all without too much trouble

I think you are missing how I implement it, but I do cover that in the video.

paul gilbert still beats petrucci anytime crazy fast

​@@ShpookyMetal Petrucci consider "Intense Rock" REH by Gilbert his primary school. ...but few famous Guitar rock players play "into"the tempo and not "up"on tempo without rythm sense!

Haha! Come on, it is not THAT difficult :)