One of you posted that 'you didn't think age had anything to do with it '. I agree for some people they never slow down, but others do. Take me for instance. I will be 56 in 12 weeks or so, and I've picked mandolin, guitar and banjo since I was 10. I can not play fast anymore like I used to. I think the reason is a combination of arthritus in both hands, plus taking massive amounts of heart meds because I have a weird heart disease thet basically is making my heart grow larger and get stiff, had surgery in '06 that helped and the damage is on the left side of my heart. Now I didn't know that which ever side the damage is in a heart it will effect the opposite side of the body, in my case my damage being on the left results in my right leg staying swolen, my right arm is weaker plus my right hand will not move past a certain speed no matter what I do so these things do effect my ability to increase tempo. My left hand is as fast as when I was 18 years old, no problems at all. Last year a old picking pal gave me a cd of a jam we recorded one night about30 years ago. I played it a couple days after he gave it to me, I could not even keep up with myself on the chops on a few of the tunes much less take a break ! It was funny, I had to laugh because I had forgotten that at one time I was fairly swift, one of the tunes we played was 'Daybreak In Dixie'. I don't know how many bpms we were going but as they say down here in the mountains 'we had 'er in the wind !'.. As I said before you have to have 'drive' or what some call 'punch' or dynamics in music, esp. Bluegrass. Over the yesrs I have seen many BG bands, and quite a bit of them play some stuff way too fast, so that it actually loses energy in the song/tune. To me the 'drive' and the ability to play each note clearly is more important than speed. Of course some of us can do both, my hats off to you, I used to be one of 'those'. The band I play in now consists of a guy I've picked with all my life, he plays banjo, and he is as fast as ever, the other two are youngters in their early '30's. They know I can't play fast, so they accomidate me in some ways, but for what we lack in speed on a lot of stuff we do, we make up with it because we have a TON of drive on every song/tune we do. I like to hear these young guys now who can play fast, but only if they can do it cleanly. Sam Bush is my hero, he's about my age and he HAS NOT slowed down !
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