Learn How To Get Rid Of Tension While Playing Guitar Fast For Clean & Accurate Speed

Now you know how to get rid of tension while playing guitar fast. This is great to know, but is only one element of playing guitar fast and clean. Make any fast guitar lick or solo cleaner and better using these tips:

Tip #1: Prioritize Playing Rhythmically Tight

Guitar players often focus on playing fast and with great technique while neglecting the rhythmic aspects of their playing.

This produces guitar playing that sounds a little off beat and amateur.

Don't go down the same path.

Start making tight rhythmic timing a priority in your guitar practice.

What is one way to practice making your guitar playing more rhythmically tight?

I'll tell you:

Step 1: Determine a short guitar lick or section of a guitar lick that you want to play.

Step 2: Find a comfortable tempo to play the lick at using a metronome.

Step 3: Play the guitar lick you chose over the beat and pay attention to any subtle mistakes in your timing such as playing too much in front of or behind the beat. By looking for these mistakes, you train yourself to naturally listen for them whenever you play guitar.

Note: Practice this simple exercise using clean settings or distortion with very few extra effects. Using effects is fun to do, but it also covers up subtle mistakes in your timing and two hand synchronization - This makes it difficult to hear precisely how well your timing is on every note. Make it your goal to make the beat of the metronome disappear underneath the notes you play.

Tip #2: Push Yourself Outside Of Your Comfort Zone

It's common for guitar players to get into habits. Sometimes these are good habits, but often they are habits that come from avoiding mistakes by making things easier.

This can be fun and enjoyable but it can also keep you from getting better for long periods of time.

While playing fast guitar licks, pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone helps you gain clean speed much more quickly.

There are many ways to do this but here are some simple ideas for you to try out:

If you play a fast guitar lick or exericse at a specific speed, break the lick into small 2-3 note segments and play them at a much faster speed. This takes you out of your comfort zone while programming you to think at faster speeds.

Double pick all the notes of a given guitar lick you want to work on at a slower speed than what you would normally play the lick at. This locks your hands together in sync and makes playing at the normall speed feel much easier in comparison.

Pick the strings of the guitar with a lot more power than you usually would. This makes the notes sound better and helps you to improve your two-hand synchronization. This is critical for playing fast guitar licks cleanly.

Tip #3: Always Look For Subtle Mistakes You Can Correct

A lot of guitar players become very discouraged when they start making mistakes and avoid them by playing easier licks or by taking shortcuts that keep them from having to deal with their problems.

Rather than doing this, treat mistakes like gold because identifying them tells you what you need to do to get better.

Make sure you listen for mistakes while you are playing at fast speeds.

For instance, when you are playing a scale on a single string and feel your hands becoming out of sync, you must understand things such as which note is causing the break down within the scale and what the underlying causes are of the mistake.

To do that, you need to practice guitar with intense focus.

One way to do this:

As mentioned above, practice by breaking up tough guitar licks into much smaller groups of 2-3 notes. This makes it much easier to process the mistakes your are making.

Another method that will help you play a lick cleaner is to move between fast guitar playing and slower guitar playing for many repetitions. This helps you see the specific areas where your playing is breaking down by challenging your muscle memory to go over the right slow technical motions before playing fast.

Over time, this trains your brain to start giving the correct signals to your fingers so playing guitar fast and clean become second nature.

That said, it is understandable that you may not always know what to focus on or how to go about practicing in order to correct bad habits like playing without tension during fast guitar licks (from the video) or fixing other mistakes that make fast guitar playing sloppy.