How To Get Faster In No Time With 5 Guitar Picking Exercises


Wish your guitar picking technique was incredibly fast, accurate and impressive for anyone listening?

No problem!

I've got 5 guitar picking exercises for you that are sure to massively improve your technique in no time.

These exercises focus on improving your technique from many different angles so you are able to speed pick, sweep pick and play string skipping licks fast like the pros.

Sound good?

Let's begin.

Watch this free video with 5 powerful guitar picking exercises to play with speed and precision like never before:

Click on the video to begin watching it.

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Now you have exercises to practice that are sure to improve your picking technique very quickly. However, guitar picking technique can be improved and practiced in many other ways too.

Use these additional tips to refine your understanding of guitar picking technique and get faster in less time:
 

Guitar Picking Technique Tip #1: Master Using Efficient Motion In Your Picking Hand

It's very hard to play guitar with clean speed if your picking hand motion is inefficient. This causes sloppy mistakes to ruin otherwise awesome guitar licks and solos.

Plus:

Getting rid of extra movement in your picking hand makes fast guitar playing feel effortless so you play smoothly just like the pros do.

Check the efficiency of your picking hand's motion while playing by:

  1. Paying attention to any extra or unnecesary upstrokes or downstrokes (see video again for an explanation on this).
     
  2. Observing how far you bring the pick up/away from the strings after playing a note (keep it as close as you can).

Make sure to watch your picking hand as you practice to identify any mistakes. Do this especially during difficult guitar licks or exercises where it is easier to lose focus due to multiple challenging tasks.
 

Guitar Picking Technique Tip #2: Pick Scales At Fast Speeds By Isolating Tough Notes

Do you ever notie yourself stopping or slowing down during a scale (such as during parts where you need to change fretboard position on the B string moving to the E string).

Very frustrating, right?

What is going on here and how can you smooth out your scales?

Answer:

Often during difficult guitar runs, your picking hand efficiency breaks down because both hands are not in perfect sync.

One way to correct this is to practice the difficult parts of the scale (and the notes that lead into them) in isolation from other parts you mastered. Practice a few notes at a time by playing them at your max speed, with a rest in between each repetition. Then combine them with the rest of the scale until it is fast, clean ad smooth.

Also:

Double picking is a powerful way to keep your hands in sync.

Try double picking every note of a scale at a slower tempo than what you normally practice it at. Then slowly increase to improve your two-hand synchronization.

This helps lock both hands together, making playing scales with tons of speed feel effortless. Practicing this exercise for just a few minutes before you practice a specific scale makes it much easier to pick like normal (only picking each note once).


Guitar Picking Technique Tip #3: Focus on learning to hear your mistakes in real time at faster tempos.

For example, when you are playing a scale sequence at or near your top speed and notice that your hands aren’t in sync, you need to be able to tell which note(s) are not clean while you are playing.

To do that, your listening needs to become much more refined.

Practice breaking up difficult guitar licks into smaller chunks of a few notes at a time. Then practice these few notes at your top speed. This makes it easier to spot your mistakes.

Another strategy that will help you during faster playing (especially with legato) is to go back and forth between faster playing and slow playing many times (in 15 second intervals).

When you only play fast for some minutes at a time, eventually your hand becomes tired and your technique gets sloppy (reinforcing bad habits).

So if you go back and forth between very slow and very fast playing in shorter bursts of effort you will have a chance to reset your muscle memory by reviewing slow/perfect technical motions before playing again at your top speed.

This helps the muscles to learn the correct motions faster and ingrain them into your top speeds.


What Is The Next Step For Getting Amazing Guitar Technique?

Get started working with a guitar teacher rather than learning all by yourself.

It's frustrating to get stuck in your guitar playing progress and clueless of what you need to do to get better without someone experienced to help you. This is a big reason why I encourage all guitarists take lessons with an excellent guitar teacher.

This is very useful for helping you make fast progress, because a really good guitar teacher is reliable at getting you to understand when you are going down the wrong path, how to improve any existing poor playing habits and get new perspectives about playing guitar that you may not have known about if you learned completely by yourself.

Not only does this make playing guitar more exciting, it makes it much less frustrating.

Also, you become a greater player, faster.

Here is what my guitar students say about taking lessons and how it changed their musical lives for the better:


Playing with excellent guitar picking technique is only the beginning for becoming a top-tier lead guitarist. Learn more ways to play guitar like a pro with interactive guitar lessons.