Question: Hi Tom Hess. My question is: Should I practice the same guitar lick or exercise until I reach the goal for that lick or exercise? Or should I alternate and learn lots of exercises on a lower speed and then go back and increase the speed for all the guitar exercises again and gradually increase my speed until I reach my musical goal?

Tom Hess's Answer: The answer partly depends on “what” the musical goal is for a specific guitar lick or exercise. However, I will assume that you meant a pure guitar speed goal. In this case, it is better to work on a variety of exercises targeting a variety of guitar techniques and focus on accuracy, control and clean guitar playing in all of them. Increased guitar speed will be a gradual by product of all of this. If you spend too much time on any single exercise or any single guitar technique, you will become out of balance among your various skills, which is not good.

For more information about how to develop guitar speed check out this guitar speed training video. Then begin to actually implement the advice on building your guitar speed.

Finally, it’s really critical to have and effective and efficient guitar practice schedule so that you can be sure that you are developing all the areas needed to reach your musical goals in a systematic way.

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