8th 16th 32nd 64th notes.Couldn't think of a good subject :)

[fred2367]

Can someone give me a link or explain how to play quarter, eight, sixteenth,etc. notes. Thanks.

[Rayman]

Grab a metronome for starters.

Set it to 120. That's a fairly standard kind of rock / pop speed.

If you play one note for each click of the metronome, you'd be playing quarter notes. If you play two notes, they're eighth notes. Four notes per click equals sixteenth notes. Eight notes gives you thirty-second notes, and sixteen notes gives you sixty-fourth notes.

When you do the maths, this is how many notes you're playing each minute at each speed with the metronome set to 120:

Quarter notes: 120 notes
Eighth notes: 240 notes
Sixteenth notes: 480 notes
Thirty-second notes: an extremely impressive 960 notes per minute
Sixty-fourth notes: an absolutely insane and unachievable 1920 notes per minute

[Coco(R)]

can anyone really play 64th / 128th notes?

[Mettra]

Absolutely, they certainly can. Listen to people like Malmsteen and Satriani, they really get speedy. Also people like Michael Angelo and Rusty Cooley and Francesco Fareri easily play stuff like that.

[Rayman]

Well, don't forget that it's all relative.

If you set the metronome to 60 bpm instead of 120, suddenly 64th notes are as simple (!) to play as 32nd notes. If you set it to 30 bpm they're as easy as sixteenth notes.

That's the first thing to keep in mind. There's 64th notes, and there's 64th notes. Check the tempo.

Secondly, there's a certain point where you've reached 'shred speed', and any extra increase in speed is just an academic exercise, in my opinion. Once you can play fast enough to knock people's socks off, why put yourself and your fingers through the pain necessary to speed the whole thing up by 20%? Why not spend the time trying to channel the technique into something that people actually want to listen to instead? Michael Angelo reaches insane speeds, but he's just not as fun to listen to as Malmsteen or Vinnie Moore or even Eric 'Slowhand' Clapton. Same with Paul Gilbert - brilliant technique, but beyond that the cupboard is pretty bare. Be happy with the speed you've got already, now play something that sounds good too! Shredding becomes extremely hollow after a while if it's not focused.

And flicking through a Malmsteen or Vinnie Moore tablature book, the upper limit is usually 32nd notes. The occasional bunch of 64th notes squeeze in from time to time (more noticeably in the slower songs on the albums). I don't know if I've ever seen a 128th note...

32nd notes at 120 bpm are very, very fast. Vinnie Moore plays sextuplets (bunches of six notes) at 120 bpm, which is equivalent to playing sixteenth notes at 180 bpm, or 32nd notes at 90 bpm. Those runs are very quick. On John Petrucci's video he loses the handle when he's trying sixteenth notes around the 200 bpm (32nd notes at 100 bpm). Anyone who can play 32nd notes at 120 bpm has a phenomenal technique.