Nov 13 2008
World Record for Fastest Guitar Picking
Tiago Della Vega sets the Guiness World Record for fastest guitar picking clocking an impressive 320 bpm(beats per minute). For those of you who aren’t major math whizzes thats about 4 notes per SECOND. This is quite an amazing video. There is an alternate version on Della Vega’s website that begins with a short, subtitled tribute. Not only does he burn his fretboard off at 320 he plays it three times in a row possibly not giving his fingers a break. It starts off at a tame (by his standards, not mine)170 bpmwhere the guitarist can be seen hamming it up for the crowd as if it were no challenge at all.
The song in this video is a classical number called Flight of the BumbleBee. The first time I heard this song played on a guitar was by Dream Theatre’s John Petrucci. Although it was still quite impressive I think this rendition blows it out of the water.
I believe the article has some facts wrong.
320 BPM stands for 320 Beats per Minute. That comes around to the region of 5.33 *beats* per second. Doesnt actually sound that much, but when you take in consideration that The Flight of the Bumblebee is mostly at least 16th notes you get a speed of above 20 picks a second, never mind the possible 32th rolls which i would have to confirm from the note sheet (which i do not posess) Now that’s a little more impressive than the 4 notes a sec quoted in the article.
Here’s the math:
320 beats per minute equals to 5.33 4th notes a minute.
5.33 x 2 to get the 8th’s equals to 10.66 notes a second.
10.66 8th notes a second doubled gives us a whopping 21.32 16th notes per second.
I’m not sure, but there may be 24ths and 32nds which would be about 32 picks per second and 42.62 picks per second respectively.
Fire up the windows calculator and check for yourself.
Thanks for that calculation. I suppose it wouldn’t be constant either going by the different parts of the song.