Let's Burn One! - Playing Fast Tempos

Paul Bollenback teaches the concepts and practice routines he personally uses to play at burning tempos — demonstrated on "Cherokee" at around 310 bpm. Drawing on years of being put on the spot by players who could really handle fast tempos, Paul gives you strategies for the bandstand as well as concrete things to practice.

What's covered

• Four areas of concentration: how you feel the time, your rhythmic language and lines, your mechanics, and your fretboard knowledge
• Relaxing the time by thinking in 2 or even in 1, splitting the difference with a 16th-note feel, and practicing with the metronome on 1 and 3
• Taking rhythms from bebop vocabulary (a stock Charlie Parker lick) and shoehorning them in at tempo
• Left- and right-hand mechanics — alternate picking checks, hammer-ons and pull-offs that swing, and picking the upbeat to slur into the downbeat
• Checking your fretboard knowledge chord by chord on Cherokee, including Lydian dominant on the dominant II chord
• The fast–slow–fast practice method, plus keeping a notebook of problem spots and tools like iReal Pro and Drum Genius

This isn't a quick fix — as Paul puts it, you have to try fast tempos and be patient while they come together — but it gives you lasting tools to survive and thrive when someone calls Cherokee or Donna Lee at a jam. Includes 3 pages of PDF materials with table of contents and 2 examples in standard notation & TAB. Full video is 41 minutes.