How To Improve Your Guitar Speed Without Moving Your Hands Faster
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Yes.
As crazy as it sounds...
... you totally can improve your guitar speed without moving your hands faster.
(And you don’t need to increase your guitar practice time to do it, either.)
This guitar speed article will show you how.
How do you do it?
It’s all about making a few simple guitar technique (and guitar practice) adjustments that help you to practice smarter (instead of harder) and have more fun in the process.
BY AT LEAST 100%
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
Plus, as a pleasant side effect...
In the process of improving your guitar speed...
... you’ll discover how to improve many of your other guitar playing skills.
(This will happen as you get better at practicing guitar).
To begin...
Watch this guitar technique video that shows you how to easily improve your guitar speed without moving your hands faster:
Now, let’s go deeper.
Here are 5 additional ways to improve your guitar technique (and make everything about your guitar playing feel easier and sound better) as you practice guitar:
Guitar Practice Tip #1: Use Directional Picking
One of the fastest ways to improve your guitar speed without practicing more is to make your guitar picking technique more efficient.
Directional picking is the ultimate guitar technique for those who want to play guitar fast without spending hours on guitar practice.
What is directional picking?
It's where you move your pick in the direction of the next note you're about to play, regardless of what pick stroke you used for the previous note.
When you play notes on a single string, you use alternate picking (down-up-down-up).
But when changing strings, you follow this simple rule: when ascending (moving to a thinner string), always change strings with a downstroke. When descending (moving to a thicker string), always change strings with an upstroke.
Directional picking makes it much easier to play guitar fast because it eliminates the inefficient "outside picking" motion that happens with strict alternate picking.
Your guitar practice becomes more effective because you're no longer wasting energy on unnecessary picking motions. Instead, you're taking the shortest path to each note.
Most of my guitar students see significant improvements in their guitar speed within just a few weeks of practicing with directional picking, even without increasing their practice time.
Watch this video to see how to practice directional picking the right way:
Question: "Tom Hess, isn't directional picking the same as economy picking? They sound similar to me."
Answer: No, they're actually quite different guitar techniques. With economy picking, you have to pre-plan your guitar licks to make sure every string change is done with a sweep picking motion. This restricts what guitar licks you can play.
With directional picking, you don't have to pre-plan anything.
You simply pick in the direction of the next string, no matter what pick stroke came before.
This gives you total freedom to play any guitar lick while still maintaining maximum efficiency in your guitar practice. To see even more reasons why directional picking is better than economy (and alternate) picking, check out this guitar technique article.
Question: "But Tom Hess, won't changing my picking technique slow down my guitar speed progress temporarily?"
Answer: Yes, there's typically a brief transition period where your guitar practice seems to go backwards.
But once your brain develops the new neural pathways for directional picking, your guitar speed will quickly surpass what was possible with your previous technique.
I've seen this pattern with thousands of my guitar students who made the switch.
When you practice guitar with directional picking, make sure you commit to it completely for at least 100 days.
Switching back and forth between picking styles during this period will only slow down your progress.
Guitar Practice Tip #2: Relax Excess Muscle Tension
Excess muscle tension is a silent killer of guitar speed.
When your body is tense, your hands can't move efficiently, making it impossible to play guitar fast—even with perfect guitar technique.
Here's a simple guitar practice method to eliminate tension: do a "tension audit" throughout your body as you practice guitar.
Start by checking your jaw. Is it clenched? Relax it.
Then move to your shoulders. Are they raised? Drop them.
Continue through your arms, hands, stomach, thighs, and even your feet. Each area of tension you release allows your guitar speed to increase without your hands moving any faster.
Watch this video to see what a tension audit looks like when done the right way:
Another effective guitar technique for reducing tension is to exhale right before playing a fast passage. This simple act helps release tension throughout your entire body.
You can also temporarily exaggerate tension (tensing up even more for 3-5 seconds), then completely relax before playing.
This creates a stronger relaxation response and can make your guitar practice more effective.
Remember, your goal isn't to play guitar with zero tension—that's impossible. The goal is to use only the minimum tension needed to play the notes, allowing you to play guitar fast without wasting energy.
Question: "Tom Hess, I've been playing guitar for years and never thought about tension. How do I know if I have excess tension in my playing?"
Answer: A simple test is to record yourself playing a challenging passage, then watch your face and body. If you're grimacing, raising your shoulders, or holding your breath, you're playing with excess tension.
Another sign is fatigue – if your hands or forearms tire quickly during guitar practice, tension is likely the culprit.
Many of my guitar students are shocked when they realize how much tension they've been carrying in areas completely unrelated to guitar playing, like their jaw or stomach.
When they learn to eliminate this tension during guitar practice, their guitar speed improves dramatically without any changes to their actual guitar technique.
Guitar Practice Tip #3: Get Your Hands In Sync
One of the biggest obstacles to guitar speed isn't how fast your hands can move independently—it's how well they can stay synchronized at higher tempos.
Many guitarists can move their hands plenty fast separately, but their usable guitar speed (the speed at which both hands stay perfectly synchronized) is much lower.
To improve your 2-hand synchronization during guitar practice, try these methods:
Double picking: Pick every note of your guitar licks twice. This challenges your synchronization by making your picking hand move twice as fast as your fretting hand.
Practicing unplugged: This forces you to articulate notes with more power and makes it easier to hear when your hands aren't perfectly in sync.
Single-string practice: When playing guitar on just one string, you have no string changes to "reset" your synchronization, forcing both hands to stay in perfect sync for every note.
Focus on what it feels like when your hands are in sync as you practice guitar. You'll feel the string slapping against your fretting hand fingers at the exact moment you pick each note.
This feeling - more than anything else - is the key to knowing when your guitar technique is working correctly to play guitar fast.
Question: "Tom Hess, how do I identify my 2-hand synchronization threshold when I practice guitar?"
Answer: Your synchronization threshold is the fastest tempo where your hands start to get out of sync. To find it, gradually increase your metronome speed while playing a challenging lick.
The point where you start hearing sloppiness or feeling like your hands aren't perfectly together - that's your threshold. The most effective guitar practice happens just below this threshold.
Most guitarists have a significant gap between their potential guitar speed (how fast each hand can move independently) and their usable guitar speed (how fast they can play with both hands in sync).
Closing this gap through focused guitar practice is one of the fastest ways to improve your overall guitar speed.
Watch this video to understand more about finding your 2-hand synchronization threshold (and raising it):
Guitar Practice Tip #4: Practice With One Hand Only
This unusual guitar practice technique is incredibly effective for improving your guitar speed: isolate each hand and practice its motions separately.
For your picking hand: Rest your fretting hand across the strings (to mute them) and just focus on the picking motion. Watch how your hand moves and eliminate any wasted motion.
Pay attention to:
- Is your pick moving outside the string trench?
- Are you using wrist motion for single-string picking and arm motion for string changes?
- Is your pick attack consistent for each note?
For your fretting hand: Don't pick the notes—just practice the fretting motions in silence. Focus on pressing the strings with minimum pressure and releasing each note precisely.
When you bring both hands back together after this type of guitar practice, your guitar technique feels much more coordinated, allowing you to play guitar fast without working harder.
Many of my guitar students who struggled with guitar speed for years made dramatic improvements after just a few weeks of including this one-hand isolation practice in their routine.
This approach to guitar practice is powerful because it lets you focus 100% of your attention on refining one aspect of your guitar technique at a time.
This video shows what it looks like to practice with your picking hand only:
Question: "How long should I spend practicing with one hand at a time during my guitar practice sessions?"
Answer: Even 5-10 minutes of focused one-hand practice can bring substantial improvements in your guitar technique. I recommend dividing this time between both hands, perhaps spending 5 minutes on your picking hand and 5 minutes on your fretting hand.
Do this consistently for 30 days, and you'll be amazed at how much your guitar speed improves without having to push your hands to move faster.
Guitar Practice Tip #5: Control Sloppy String Noise
Nothing kills good guitar technique like sloppy string noise. Even if you can play guitar fast, unwanted noise makes your playing sound amateur.
The three main sources of string noise to eliminate during guitar practice are:
- Noise from lower (thicker) strings you're not playing
- Noise from higher (thinner) strings you're not playing
- Notes bleeding together (not being properly separated)
To control noise from the lower strings, use thumb muting. Rest your picking hand's thumb on the thicker strings and slide it up and down as you change strings.
For the higher strings, use your fretting hand's index finger to lightly touch them (similar to a partial barre chord position).
To prevent notes from bleeding together, focus on the precise moment of transition between notes. Each note should stop exactly when the next note begins—not before, not after.
Practice your guitar technique with distortion, not clean tone. Distortion makes string noise much more obvious, allowing you to identify and fix problems that clean tone might mask.
When you eliminate string noise, your existing guitar speed suddenly sounds much more impressive—no need to play guitar fast if it sounds sloppy!
Question: "Tom Hess, what about palm muting instead of thumb muting? Is that just as effective for controlling string noise during guitar practice?"
Answer: While palm muting can work, thumb muting is superior for three reasons.
First, thumb muting keeps your pick positioned inside the string trench, making your guitar technique more efficient.
Second, the thumb provides more precise control over which strings are muted.
Third, the skin on your thumb is firmer than your palm, creating more consistent muting.
These advantages make thumb muting a better choice for guitarists who want to play guitar fast and clean.
Now that you know how to practice guitar to improve your guitar speed without moving your hands faster, I want to help you improve the rest of your guitar playing and fully reach your musical goals. I can help you do that in my personalized Breakthrough Guitar Lessons.
Here is how it works: first you tell me everything about who you want to become as a guitar player and your musical background.
Then, I create a personalized guitar lesson strategy (and lesson materials) specifically for you.
And in between, I give you a ton of support every step of the way to make sure you are improving fast, while having fun in the process.
If you can practice even 30 minutes per day 5 times per week, you'll be surprised at just how fast you can improve when you know exactly what to do to reach your goals and have guidance every step of the way of getting there.
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