Building Guitar Speed - Guitar Practice

How To Play Guitar Fast – Free 14 Day Mini Course – Part 5

Welcome back to the 5th lesson of the mini course about building guitar speed. In the last part of our training, I shared with you several insights about how to approach practicing guitar when faced with guitar speed plateaus and periods of temporary frustrations in your guitar playing.

In this lesson, I want to tell you about several important myths relating to building guitar speed that prevent many guitar players from ever reaching their full technical potential on guitar. I will also share with you another highly effective guitar practice strategy that will improve your guitar speed and will make it easier for you to play consistently well at faster tempos.

One of the reasons why guitar players often struggle with building their speed is due to believing in one or more myths relating to playing and practicing guitar. These incorrect assumptions and beliefs steer their guitar practicing efforts in the wrong direction towards frustration and limited guitar playing ability.

What I want you to do, as you go through this lesson is to analyze your own approach to practicing guitar for speed and see if you happen to believe in any of the following misconceptions about guitar playing. If you do, you will have discovered a major obstacle preventing you from building your guitar speed to the level you want.

Myth 1: Belief that guitar speed is achieved by 'moving your hands faster'.

Many guitarists think that guitar speed can be achieved by learning to move their fingers faster. The truth is that guitar speed only comes as a result of refining your technique to a very high level so that faster playing happens naturally as a result. Focusing on the 'elements' of guitar speed such as articulation and synchronization and tension control is what ultimately develops the ability to play guitar fast. This is why in this mini course about building guitar speed, I have not given you dozens of various 'guitar speed' exercises to play and instead showed you several highly effective guitar practicing approaches that will enable you to build your guitar speed with whatever exercises you happen to work on.

The internet is already filled with thousands of guitar licks and guitar speed exercises for you to practice and yet despite the overabundance of such exercises, there are also thousands of guitar players who struggle to build high levels of guitar speed with them.

One of the reasons why I am very successful in teaching guitar students to play guitar well (and develop high levels of guitar speed for those who have that goal) is because I show them exactly HOW to go about practicing guitar in effective ways that make building their guitar speed a reality.

Myth 2: Belief that using low action on guitar, thin guitar strings or tuning the guitar down helps to play faster.

While doing the things above (using low action on guitar, playing with thin guitar strings or tuning the guitar down) does create 'less resistance' for your hands and enables you to use less pressure to play the notes, these things do NOTHING to help you learn to play accurately, cleanly or to improve your synchronization and articulation. As you have seen throughout this mini course, building guitar speed is largely a result of consistent training of specific guitar technique elements rather than a result of some tricks or shortcuts.

Playing with thin strings or tuning down simply gives you a brief 'illusion' of speed but doesn’t make your guitar playing sound any better. If your playing was sloppy to begin with, taking the above mentioned shortcuts will not solve the problem, it will only make it easier for you to continue playing sloppily.

Myth 3: Belief that copying hand positions of one's favorite guitar player will help with building guitar speed.

If you have ever gone on any public guitar forum, you have no doubt seen discussions about the picking techniques used by different guitar players. Some argue that a certain way of picking (or holding one's pick/picking hand) is best because player ABC uses it and others say that a different way is better because player XYZ uses it.

The reality is that 'copying' hand positions of any guitar player while practicing guitar is useless because guitar players often have slightly different picking motions due to having different hand sizes, using different types of picks and of course due to playing different musical styles. The reason why the great guitarists are able to play well in general and play fast specifically is not due to their hand positions or the way they hold the pick. Their biggest guitar practice 'secret' is in their ability to master the elements of speed we have been discussing in this mini course and apply to them to their playing effectively.

So instead of focusing on the micro details that are not very important, you must instead learn about the critical elements that go into building guitar speed and train to master them. You are taking the correct first step by studying this mini course (and becoming aware of the right things to focus on), but in order to truly take your guitar playing to the next level, you should also get guidance and training from a master guitar teacher who can help you to master them in the shortest period of time.

Now that we have discussed the false myths that can hold you back from reaching your guitar speed potential, I want to tell you about another guitar practice tip that will help you to increase your guitar speed. This advice is very simple but highly effective and is one of the many ways I train my guitar students to practice more effectively and build their guitar speed. Here it is:

This is a variation of several guitar practice methods you have already practiced in this mini course but it will challenge your hands in a different way. I will once again be using the scale sequence you learned in lesson 1 as an example here.

As we did in lesson 3, you will need to break up the scale sequence you learned in lesson 1 into shorter fragments no longer than 1 measure each. Take each fragment and practice it in the following way:

Step 1. Play the fragment very slowly at first to warm up and get comfortable with the notes/movements your hands need to make. Do this at a metronome tempo that is about 30-40% of your current maximum guitar speed and concentrate on making super efficient motions in both hands. Make sure that the technique is as perfect as it can be (since you are practicing slowly, you have the time to make sure you are playing everything correctly). Also make sure that your articulation is totally flawless at this tempo and that you are able to play each note with a lot of dynamic power while still staying relaxed. Do step 1 for about 1-2 minutes.

Step 2. Turn the metronome to 110% of your maximum guitar speed and play the short fragment for 5-10 seconds. Don't worry about making mistakes or sounding sloppy. Push yourself to experience this higher level of guitar speed for several seconds.

Step 3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 in alternation for a total of 5-15 minutes.

Important: you are going to need to make sure that you warm up adequately for this. This practice method is VERY demanding on your hands and wrists, so make sure to warm up thoroughly before starting this routine and make sure to STOP PLAYING if you feel ANY joint/finger/hand pain! Do not ever push through physical pain!

The point of this guitar practice method is to offer your mind another way of getting used to experiencing guitar speeds beyond your current maximum limit. By playing shorter fragments, it becomes easy to play in this way even at very fast tempos. In addition, the fact that you spent 1-2 minutes playing slowly and perfectly before doing a faster burst with the scale sequence allows your fingers to reproduce these perfect motions at fast tempos.

Make this guitar speed building strategy a part of your guitar practice routine for 3-4 weeks and your guitar picking speed and accuracy will greatly improve as a result.

The fastest way to become the guitar player you want to be is by studying with a master guitar teacher who can help you to overcome all of the challenges guitar players face in a much shorter period of time. To learn how to start making much faster musical progress towards your guitar playing goals, visit this online guitar lessons page.

I will see you soon with part 6 of the mini course!

Go here to review Lesson 1 of this mini course.
Go here to review Lesson 2.
Review Lesson 3 here.
Review Lesson 4 here.