Using Lower Guitar String Action And Thin Guitar Strings To Build Guitar Speed

Have you ever considered lowering the guitar string action on your instrument and using thinner strings in order to increase your guitar speed?  If you go to almost any guitar forum and ask the question: "How can I learn to play guitar faster?", you are almost guaranteed to hear someone quote the above advice.

If you believe that following this approach will make you a better guitarist, I want to share with you an excerpt from an article written by one of my highly advanced guitar students (Mike Philippov) that explains why the above belief is nothing but a myth. 

Enjoy the excerpt below:

"At first glance, the argument of using low guitar action and thinner guitar strings to increase guitar speed seems to make sense.  After all, doing this (using thinner guitar strings and lower guitar string action) does create less resistance for your hands when you play guitar.  

However, if using low guitar action and playing with thin strings is a significant part of what enables one to play guitar fast, why are there so many virtuoso guitar players who play acoustic guitar or a nylon string guitar with VERY thick strings and high guitar action and still display amazing guitar technique? If you listen to guitar players such as John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola and a lot of other jazz guitar players, you will notice that they do not rely on using thin strings and low guitar action to play guitar the way they do. The reason why is because virtuoso guitar playing only comes as a result of developing good technique while practicing and acquiring the needed amounts of strength to play guitar with any string action or string gauge. The great guitar players mentioned above practiced guitar until they developed the required amount of control.

The guitarists who advise playing guitar with low string action and thin strings do so because they often experience an "illusion of speed" when they set up their guitars in this way.  Although their hands are able to move faster due to lessened resistance from the strings, the ACCURACY and CONTROL have still not been trained yet. If your guitar playing was sloppy to begin with, using low guitar action will only make you faster at playing sloppily. Remember to never sacrifice accuracy for speed!

In addition to the above points, thinner guitar strings also give you a much weaker tone and very poor sustain.  Furthermore, low guitar action makes it more difficult to sweep pick arpeggios cleanly.

Bottom line: Although it is possible to play guitar at a virtuoso level using low guitar action and thin strings, it is important to not use these things as a crutch to create an 'illusion' of speed on guitar."

You can read Mike's full article here: https://tomhess.net/Articles/MythsAboutGuitarPlaying.aspx

Now that you understand why using low guitar action and thin strings only masks sloppy playing but does not help you to get rid of it, what should you be doing now?  You should instead be focusing all your energy on searching for effective guitar practice methods that WILL help you to play guitar fast.  

To learn more about how to become a great guitar player, visit this page with free guitar playing resources.