Chords for Fastest violinist in the world - BBC News

[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[N] What gave you the idea of playing, I mean obviously you've been probably playing the violin since you were a kid, but playing it fast?
Well I was knocked off in a bike accident cycling around London about four years ago.
I really hurt my wrist.
My bandmate in the band Fuse said, Ben why don't you see this as a target of rehabilitation?
Why don't you go for this Guinness World Record?
It had been set and I aimed to break it.
So, just give it, just give us a few bars [C] of at normal pace. _ _ _
[D] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ Now that looks pretty fast to me anyway.
Now, [Abm] you upped it a bit.
Absolutely, we practiced.
If you can play something slowly, you can play it quickly.
So I played it very slowly and then I got it a little [C] quicker.
_ _ Bit faster.
_ And eventually I got to 15 notes a second.
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That kind of thing.
That is extraordinary.
[N] Presumably you could do that with any piece that you chose.
I mean are there any that are almost sacrilegious that it's a slow piece, it should never be played at speed?
Well I think Paganini was one of the first violin rock stars and his music, like Flight of the Bumblebee, is full of quick notes that are continuous.
Flight of the Bumblebee has 810 notes that are semiquavers.
You have to play four per click for the Guinness World Record.
And like that, to be able to play 810 notes in under a minute, you could do the same with Paganini.
Something like moto perpetua, which means always moving. _
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[Cm] _ _ [N] Do _ _ classical violinists, and I was told when we were doing this piece that there was this incredibly valuable violin.
It is an incredibly valuable violin, but it's not what I expected.
I expected some 18th century Italian masterpiece to be coming into the studio and you've got a very modern violin there.
I just wonder whether classical musicians think that what you're doing is _ sacrilegious almost.
Do you get any criticism?
No, well we have a lot of discussions with people.
What we aim to do with Fuse is to inspire people and introduce them to lots of different styles of playing the violin.
You can play the violin in wonderful jazz styles, in romantic styles.
You can play it very _ percussively like_
Go on, give us a go.
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[Bb] _ [G] You can make it sound romantic. _ _
_ [D] _ _ [G] _ _ _ You can play [Db] it jazzy.
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[N] So there's lots you can do with a violin.
You take a violin like this, this is made of Kevlar and carbon fibre.
Which is, when I go to a war zone, what _ our body armour is made of.
Right, you could take a bullet in the violin.
But what we've done with this is we've hand applied 50,000_
And this is one and a half million dollars is it, this one?
And you've got another one that's worth two million.
We've just released the world's first 24 carat gold electric violin in collaboration with the jeweller Theo Fennell.
So you're a violinist and you're bling as well?
Absolutely, why not?
Fantastic.
And _ do you still keep the musical kind of integrity if you're playing at great speed?
You do.
Flight of the Bumblebee is a fun piece of music.
There is, I think that is the musical integrity, is to have fun and to wow people with it.
Yeah, and so _ what gave you the first idea of going for the world record?
So, sure, sure.
There was a wonderful violinist called David Garrett who set it back in 2008 at one minute and six seconds.
66 seconds if you like.
The challenge was to take it in under a minute.
Can we do that?
Well I'm the first person to ever do it.
Right, hold on a second, I'm just going to set my watch.
If I say go, will you go?
Absolutely.
Okay. _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ _ Go.
Wow, _ _ _
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_ [B] _ _ fantastic.
[C] I made that 50, 45, 46 seconds thereabouts.
I mean_ Fantastic.
Yeah, that was absolutely sensational.
Thank you very