How To Play Lead Guitar Fast With Less Frustration By Avoiding Common False Beliefs
There is a lot of harmful information out there when it
comes to playing
fast lead guitar.
This causes players to play inefficiently, uncleanly and with more frustration (when things don’t sound like they should).
This article is here to help you avoid this bad outcome and
play lead guitar fast and clean like you want.
False Belief #1: Alternate Picking Is The Best Way To Play With Shred-Level Speed
It’s true that some of the famous shred guitarists from the 80’s and 90’s use alternate picking exclusively to play their licks and solos.
However, this is not the best and easiest way to play guitar fast.
Why?
Using strict alternate picking causes you to frequently waste movement in your pick attack while moving from one string to the next.
This results in harder, more potentially-sloppy guitar playing that slows you down at times when you’re trying to play fast!
This video explains exactly why this happens and how to pick more efficiently for fast and effortless speed:
False Belief #2: Practicing With A Metronome Is Critical For Building Speed
Many guitarists believe that the metronome is an essential tool for increasing your guitar speed.
Actually, the metronome is more of a measuring tool than anything.
The metronome itself doesn’t do anything to help you get faster.
What does?
Answer: Mastering fundamentals of technique.
Even if you must practice guitar without a metronome, it’s okay as long as you are improving your fundamental technique.
This comes down to finding the “feeling” of playing with everything in sync together, then moving on from there.
How do you do this?
False Belief #3: Playing With Speed Prevents You From Playing With Emotion
This false belief is based on the common mistake that fast guitarists make: practicing technique all the time without learning how to integrate their skills into music.
It’s not that fast playing is less emotional, on the contrary, fast guitar playing brings tons of intensity and emotional expression into your licks and solos.
It’s that when speed is used constantly (like playing solos by only shredding up and down a scale pattern with no rhythm or reason) it becomes robotic and lifeless.
How do you fix this?
Simple.
Practice guitar scales, arpeggios and techniques both in isolation (to master the technical aspects) and in musical situations to work on how you use speed to express yourself.
This helps you begin to develop better guitar phrasing for higher quality solos and licks.
Here’s one way to practice this:
1.
Choose any guitar scale or arpeggio you are
familiar with
2.
Start from just the first few notes of the
scale/arpeggio, improvise freely to create a short phrase
3.
Create 15 variations of this phrase using
different note rhythms, picking techniques, legato, vibrato or any other
technique you can think of
4. Next, add one more note and repeat the process (add no more than 5 notes at a time)
Practicing this simple exercise only takes 5-10 minutes and is an excellent way to jump start your phrasing and help you begin playing musically expressive solos and licks.
False Belief #4: Developing Shredder Speed Takes Many Years Of Practicing Hours Every Day
Ever hear the stories of how X famous guitar player practiced 5 hours a day for years until they became an amazing guitarist?
That’s cool, but not everyone has the time to do this…
Plus, practicing guitar this way isn’t necessarily productive or effective.
Why?
Getting better and faster with guitar is about being effective and efficient with your time. It’s about quality over quantity.
The good news about this is, you can practice as little as 30 minutes per day and get amazing results very quickly.
Want to learn more ways to make fast guitar solos sound incredibly expressive?