If you want to do it finger style like Steve Harris, he has a little trick. Will still take practice, but it should help. Steve turns his amp way up and very lightly and gently hits the strings with his fingers. He doesn’t have to move his fingers as far or use as much energy to get the string to sound off, which increases his speed. He says he “lets the amp do the work”.
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I understand that John Entwistle did that also . . . letting the amp do the work.
I’ve tried it (very briefly in my apartment) and it seems to work . . . 
Cheers
Joe
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It allows you to play lightly and still be dynamically audible.
Nice one - I’m practicing it at home at the moment, so I’ve gotta have it quieter, but yes, the best I can get is by very lightly going over the strings which lets me play a bit quicker. I’m somewhere around the 100-110bpm stage at the moment, so I’ll just keep going.
And I’m at the studio tonight, so I’ll whack it right up and see if I can get it sounding half decent.
Cheers!
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That’s a tough one to get to, I haven’t clocked my top speed, but probably couldn’t do 16th notes at 135. I don’t tend to play fast other than in fills, get that from double thumbing, but I became more a groove player than speed. Love Maiden and the people who do it though!
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Have a crack at it and see what you think - it’s the noteflight link from Josh’s video. If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see Powerslave and you can move the cursor’s starting position with your mouse. It’s only for one run through of the starting verse, but listen to it first and then try and recreate it
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And the fill at the end sounds hard, but it’s not that difficult.
The difficulty is the pure speed for me
Thanks! Yeah I remember that song now. So for sure a few tips. It says to play the 5th fret on E string before the fill…but that is the same note as the open A…so like, that is just unnecessary fretting and slows it down. It also doesn’t say to hammer on during the galloping part onto the 3rd fret or 1st, but I’m pretty sure Harris does and that would also speed things up.
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Yup - I started with the A on the 5th fret, but it’s a total pain in the arse to move around it, so I swapped it out with the open A. I went back to Josh’s vid and noticed he played it on the open A by the looks of it, so I’ve got that bit.
And I’m definitely hammering on the C and the B as they play in that time slot right at the end before the next bar and as you say makes it a bit quicker.
Now I’ve concentrated on that bit so much, I’m messing up the fill again haha. I need to practice it all at the slower speed first, instead of isolating it, as it’s all got to hit the right speed regardless.
It’s a nice fun thing to piss about with though. I can already see where I use this gallop in some of our songs here and there
Maiden is always fun to play, and that’s an awesome gallop. I worked one into a song recently and it’s fun and always sounds cool. This is a great song to practice it on, especially having to jump to the higher part for the fill.
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Yeah, it’s a great warm up / workout too as I’m learning the gallop, changing the finger placement, melody fill to nail at the end - it’s all a really good practice vid.
However, I’ve been at it for about 2 hours now, so I’m going to take a break.
I mentioned to the guitarist about the gallop and he’s up for giving it ago, so I’ll have a crack tonight louder at the studio and see what kind of mess I can create 
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Keep going! Good luck at the studio, it’s always fun!
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I know for a fact that for extended chugging I am below 93bpm for 16th notes, because I cannot do Hysteria all the way through (with good timing and tone). I can keep it up for maybe once through the riff at that speed and then it goes to shit.
Josh has an excellent tutorial:
