Slowing down with age.

leave it in the sun here and it'll never get warm

leave it in the fridge where my dad lives and it'll still come out warm.. lmao
 
I'm 53 and I'm as fast as I've ever been, but I practice some technique stuff most days. I do find that I have to ratchet up up my speed gradually when I've been out of practice. It's also good to start at well less than max speed on a given day. If I force myself to go fast too quickly over a ramp up period, and my technique gets a little sloppy, one or 2 joints on my fretting hand will start to hurt. I also sometimes feel a little tendon stuff. When those things happen, depending on what helps, I either stop doing technique exercises for a day or 2 or I slow what I'm doing
WAY down and focus on being as efficient and tension free as possible. None of that pain is new though as it's been like that for decades in terms of needing to ramp speed up over time to avoid pain. Fortunately by slowing down and/or resting when I've felt any pain, I've never developed any serious or sustained pain in playing and feel better than ever as a player.

I can't "shred" at all, but I do aspire to be able to play jazz functionally and that takes a fair amount of technique. A former teacher of mine, Mike Elliott, who had about as much technique as anyone at one point (before snapping a tendon in his picking hand) in his career talked about being able to do 3 octave scales 16th notes at 138 and arpeggios at 120 as being "professional" level technique, though many can play much faster than that.

I like improvisation a lot and what I find when my chops are up is that I can hang on the edge of my ideas and "surf" them much more effectively when I have chops. When I don't, I play much more safely as stay within the bounds of what I know I can execute which tends to be more boring. I also find that my ability to express more within a note or phrase increases as my speed does. It's easier to ornament phrases, to put more complex bends in and generally have more expressiveness to my articulation when my chops are up. Individual notes just sound better, too, so practicing for speed also has the consequence for me that I'm more expressive when I play slower, too.
 
There are some neurological issues here that vary - I had some car crashes and now get occasional numbness in my left hand due to nerve constrictions in my neck and shoulder
Because of this, I often type the space between words in the wrong place, or capitalise the wrong letters within words. I am not sure what this does to my playing.

Far worse, in one accident, a car pulled out in front of me, and my left thumb heel was hurt on the steering wheel, doctors said no big deal, but I found out much later the pain was down to a chipped bone in the middle of my palm, this limits playing angles and playing time, and means if I do big stretches, it hurts sooner - we all have lesser minor injuries too, but usually we can adapt

We all lose little bits of nerve conductivity or bits of brain randomly over the years. I was always excellent at spelling, but an emergency appendectomy 4 years ago saw me having trouble spelling straight away after the op. A small clot must have knocked out a bit of brain. I seem mostly OK now though. My Mom had strokes, and I saw how different functions got messed up. My Dad had an abandoned stent operation for his heart that caused a stroke that was fixed immediately, but he went from sharp as nails humour to not quite the same. My wife has MS, which teaches me a lot about nerve conduction problems, her friend with MS can't play anymore

Consider the life of a Pro athlete, some carry on longer than others, based on injuries and joint issues, it varies
Looking around the web today, "normal" nerve conduction speed does not drop hugely with age

Assuming we are lucky enough to avoid major issues, what then?
You would need drills to keep muscle memory fast, you don't play the fast stuff from your brain, you have to keep your fingers programmed. I think that most people will let this drop as their tastes change (since most of us mellow with age)

Modern rock and pop music puts a premium on youth, but I don't think many other genres think a musician has peaked until their 40s
Certainly my playing sounds much more tasteful and accurate in my late 40s than in my 20s. I have better kit, but my #1 strat is the same I had at 20, so I have improved with age. Is it slower? I will have to check

I should dig out my old recordings from 1986, the ones from 1984 are dreadful, and check the speed. Having said that, I remember once using the "slow the tape down during recording" trick that I used to teach my mates the reason that some metal stuff was so fast but high-pitched-sounding back then, so I'll be aware that one track might be faster than normal

btw, I went to see Segovia play a full concert in Manchester when he was 91 or 92, in 1984 or 1985
He took ages walking onto the stage with a frame, had fingers like sausages, but played much faster and more accurately than me.
He had to restart a couple of phrases during the concert, but played them all fine second time. This looked like a strength issue on barre chords to me
 
Paul Ryan from Origin is 43 or something. I dont think age has much to do with speed - not in your 40s anyway. Maybe late 50's 60's
 
hmm...it seems everybody here is in his/her 40s..
me too by the way, 45 years young.
whilst i don't think i have slowed down noticeably, i definitely do not feel i have improved on my speed (which is nothing to shout about btw) at least since i turned 40..
 
I've noticed a significant change in speed/accuracy here lately just because I dusted off a Troy Stetina DVD and started practicing some of the drills. I'm 45 by the way. There are still musicians out there playing very fast (whether guitar or other stringed instrument, etc.) well into their 60s and beyond. I know Tommy Emmanuel, Eric Johnson, and Pat Metheny show no signs of slowing down and they're getting into their late 50s. I think it's more a matter of what you work on and how many other distractions you have. In your early 20s you are typically more single minded about these types of pursuits but as we get older we have families, jobs, etc.
 
The bigger question is, does it matter? Why is speed, or any technical 'wow' valued so much more in music than soul? A lot of fast players bury me in a blizzard of notes, but I often think they're not saying much at all...
 
while there are plenty of shredders with no feel to their music out there its not always the case. a lot of things sound good because they are fast.
 
funny_polymath said:
The bigger question is, does it matter? Why is speed, or any technical 'wow' valued so much more in music than soul? A lot of fast players bury me in a blizzard of notes, but I often think they're not saying much at all...
Click to expand...

Speaking personally, that's part of my development I think, as a teenager, I'd be impressed with the speed more, now it's more the feel.
I learned to play fast, then intentionally slowed it down, switching to 3mm stubby picks, and only played lines I felt, then I rebuilt the speed, probably inspired by the phrasing of Dave Gilmour and Billy Gibbons
It's good to throw a few fast passages in, but feel is king for me now.
Jeff Beck is my favourite for sheer complexity in feel, he can play fast but that's not the main attraction

To risk stoking controversy, 10-15 years ago, I bought a lot of CDs of Martin Taylor - on some of which he is playing all the parts, and enjoyed them for some time, until I realised that it would sound better with a band playing the other parts, the faster and more complex the part, the harder it is to add emotion to the part- if the notes are too short or there are too many other parts to be able to use the best vibrato and plucking, etc

Some classical pieces suffer from this (on many instruments), someone arranges a piece that just sounds like a feat rather than an emotive piece.
I try to constrain my compositions and what I learn to pieces I believe sound good on the guitar, since I now play a little on Tenor and Baritones, I really can see that some parts just don't work on the wrong instrument

I know Tommy Emmanuel can play nicely in a way I enjoy, but all the youtube links friends send me of him playing at 100mph (thinking I'll be impressed) just seem like entertainment to me rather than music
All these things together made me conclude: it's about the music for me, whilst for some audiences it's about the circus, the performance. Showmanship is fine, but we as musicians should be able to be able to tell which is which
Hendrix could do both, as can a lot of players since, but some still do focus on the technical aspects of the performance exclusively, which I think is a missed opportunity
 
scruffydoo said:
probably fiscal

teens - completely potless
20's - broke
30's - semi broke
40's - hey.. doin alright, time for treats
Click to expand...

The logic I tell people is:
Aged 40 or so I realised " I've been playing since I was 14, it's my lifetime main passion and avocation (I think I learned that word on here), and yet my new sofa cost me 20 times the price of best acoustic guitar, that must be wrong"
Since then I've bought boutique (when I can tell the difference), as economically as possible, and I am so glad. My playing has improved significantly, and I wished I'd spent more when I was younger
 
I played fast when I was in my teens. I've always played and practiced. I play a lot faster now than I did then and I'm almost 57. I have a lot more interesting stuff to play now too. I think age doesn't play into it. What can play into it is hard living, alcohol, drugs and mainly loss of the desire or know-how to improve and learn more stuff. Most people I think kind of stagnate and stop being students of the instrument. It can get really old playing the same old stuff for 20 or more years.
 
I don't equate "speed" with awesomeness when it comes to guitar playing. So to me it's irrelevant as to the age of the fingers on the fretboard.

Phrasing, touch, tone - those are the elements that separate the wheat from the chaff.
 
There are some awesome, technical and FAST players out there who leave me totally cold........yet Gary Moore could hit ONE note and it would send shivers down my spine! I know what ability I'd rather have!!
 
For me and the way I play speed has always been an important component. But it's only relevant if its relevant to you. It all depends on what you want and need to express and how you need to express it. For how I play, I have to have very fast in my tool box. I need to have slow in my tool box too. But none of that was related to the question at hand.
 
I tend to think of speed as an expressive effect just like any other [delay, wah etc]
when the moment calls for it, I'll turn up the note density
so it's good when you need to inject energy or excitement..
so there are times to be minimal..
times to be lyrical and melodic..
times to lay down some angst and rage..
and likewise.. times to shred the neck to splinters..

oh yeah.. and live on stage...
it's also fun for all to show off a little here and there..
purely in the interests of entertainment of course.. lol..
 
Yes Clarky, that's what I was getting at. Saying it isn't important, for me, is silly. There are times when it may be required. Some of the music I play requires speed. It's another tool in the chest. You need all kinds of tools. Sometimes what's hard is to NOT play fast. Pull out the speed just at the right moment where the contrast is most effective. Then put it away.
 
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