USING HALFTIME IDEAS TO PLAY LINES AT FAST TEMPOS

My style revolves around shifting positions, shifting between major-scale ideas and blues ideas, varying rhythms, articulation, etc. It works well for me in slow and medium tempos, but in fast tempos I flounder-- mainly because at a tempo like 200 quarter notes per minute, eighths are hard to sustain. I've been frustrated that tempos like that tend to make me play bad ideas; I fall back on treading-water licks, repeated notes, and all the lame stuff that even great players sometimes use at fast tempos.

I came up with an approach that is starting to help. It involves thinking of the tempo in a different way. It's based on my theory that fast tempos intimidate me, causing my hands to tense up. Anything that helps you relax is good, and thinking in half-time seems to help.

1. If you are at a fast tempo (like quarter note equals 200), think of the quarter notes as eighth notes. (Tapping your foot on two and four in the half time tempo can help. This is the equivalent of tapping foot on three in the actual tempo. Practice the transition back and forth along with a metronome.)

2. Once you're thinking in half-time, play eighth-note lines. These are the equivalent of quarter notes in the actual tempo.

3. When you have the eighths together, switch to "double-time" runs for half a bar at a time. Now you're playing eighths for half a bar, and sixteenths for half a bar. (This means you're playing quarters and eighths in the actual tempo.)

4. If you can keep this up for eight bars or so, you've probably got something that will do the job when you have to solo. You can make it more interesting by making it less a rigid ratio between eighths and sixteenths, mixing it up a bit and being less symmetrical. Using some rests is also good-- practice starting ideas on something besides beat one.

5. Eventually, you'll be able to sustain the half-time sixteenths longer; in the meantime, you'll have a solo that sounds more musical. Ideally, by the time you can keep the half-time sixteenths going, you'll be using less treading-water ideas.