How To Start Playing Guitar Fast Right Now With 3 Creative Tremolo Picking Tips

Want to start playing guitar fast but don’t know a bunch of scales or have a wide range of technical skills yet?

Don’t worry.

You don’t need all that to play fast.

Yes, these things are important, but you can do many other things right now to get that shred sound without too much of a struggle.

Using tremolo picking is a great way to do it…

…and it’s not to hard when you learn how to use this technique creatively through unique practice methods.

First step: Watch this video that shows you how to pick with speed as efficiently as possible:

Second, understand the keys to playing with excellent bending technique:

It’s important to keep your bend in tune for your vibrato to sound expressive and professional.

This means bending the string to the exact target pitch (such as a half step or whole step away) or releasing the bend to the exact target pitch.

Letting a bend go too early or bending slightly too much makes your playing sound out of control and ruins the expressive effect of the bend.

This video about vibrato discusses bending the string to keep your playing in tune.

Use the exercise discussed at the time marker to practice your bending technique so it is consistently perfect:

Working on this exercise for just a few minutes per day has a massively positive effect for your bending and vibrato technique.

Take this a step further by first bending the string and THEN picking it (playing the exact target pitch in the process). This takes time to get used to, but helps you develop the feeling of what a perfect bend feels like without needing to hear the pitch first.

How To Integrate Bending With Speed Picking For A Cool Sound

Once you have mastered the basics of alternate picking and bending, it’s time to get creative and play some guitar solo licks! Use this idea to make your lead guitar playing more expressive and intense:

Use A Variety Of Approaches To Bending Technique

Your lead guitar playing becomes more expressive when you use variety in your bending technique instead of always bending the same way. Here are a few ideas for how bending can be performed for different expressive effects:

· Strike the string, then bend immediately

· Strike the string, then slowly bend up

· Strike the string, let the note ring for a moment, then bend

· Pre-bend to the target note, strike the string and release the bend

· Pre-bend to the target note, strike the string, let it ring for a moment and release the bend

Practice each of these bend approaches for a few minutes and observe how each one feels. Notice how letting the note ring for a moment before bending adds extra intensity and suspense to the note.

Play Expressive Guitar Licks Using A Unique Vibrato

Using vibrato adds life to the notes you play and sustains the pitch longer. It also serves to resolve all the tension created after bending a note. This creates a powerful, expressive effect that sounds awesome and demands people’s attention.

Bonus: How To Improve Your Overall Picking Attack With Little Effort

Striking the strings with a weak picking attack wreaks havoc on your playing in subtle ways.

How?

It makes it sound less clear and allows mistakes to slip in under the radar. Picking with conviction solves both of these problems and makes your playing sound much better as well.

Practice intentionally hitting notes MUCH harder to have the notes ring with more conviction and power don’t be afraid to hit the notes WAY harder. Work on this for just a few minutes per day using any guitar lick or pattern you want to practice. This makes for a great warmup as well before diving into a practice session.

Now you have several powerful tools to use to make your guitar playing sound intense and expressive at any time.

However, this is just the beginning! Learn how to express yourself freely through guitar using the other ideas in this resource about how to make your guitar playing musically expressive.