Simple & Fast Guitar Licks That Give You Unbelievable Playing Speed That Makes Other Guitarists Jealous

Playing fast guitar licks doesn’t have to take years of extensive practice. Using simple, yet creative techniques and exercises makes it easy to play with tons of speed. This sounds impressive while helping you improve your playing skills at the same time.

Use these simple & fast guitar licks to become a faster player, impress your friends and develop better technique in no time:

Fast Guitar Lick #1: Make Difficult Guitar Licks Easier By Playing With Bursts Of Speed

Playing fast guitar licks doesn’t require long, unending strings of notes. Many times, the coolest use of speed is to insert short bursts in between slower phrases. Increasing your speed by practicing in short bursts of notes is a very effective way to make playing fast feel easy.

Here’s why:

The more notes you play at a time, the more concentration you have to maintain throughout the entire lick to play without mistakes. It’s easier to focus on what you are playing when you break down longer licks into small groups of notes.

This way you are able to hear and correct the mistakes that keep you from playing guitar fast and clean.

For example, the following sweep picking lick may be hard to play fast and clean at first:

Breaking it down into smaller, 3-note segments let’s you concentrate on perfecting the lick with the precision of a laser beam. This helps you identify and fix any mistakes along the way.

Try playing through each of these smaller segments at max speed for 10 repetitions per segment:

Now try playing through the original sweep picking lick. It has become much easier! After using this practice approach over a few sessions (or less), the lick becomes effortless.

Fast Guitar Lick #2: Easily Add Fire To Any Scale Run Using Tremolo Picking

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that fast guitar licks require playing many different notes (i.e. scale runs or arpeggios). The perception of speed comes from how many times a note is played within a set period of time.

This includes playing the same note OR different notes. So, you can play a scale run of 7 notes using triplet rhythms or a single note 7 times using triple rhythms and both are perceived as “fast”.

Practice adding tons of speed and intensity into your guitar playing by picking just one note really fast with tremolo technique. The more creative you get with this, the cooler it sounds.

For example, play through the scale below by adding tremolo picking every 3^rd note:

This sounds cool while simultaneously improving your speed picking and scales. Apply this concept not just to scales, but to any guitar lick you want to play with more intensity.

This video helps you improve your tremolo picking to add tons of speed into anything you play:

Fast Guitar Lick #3: Add An Eruption Of Speed To Your Licks With Tapping

Tapping is one of the coolest sounding guitar techniques that is also easier to perform than it sounds. Using this technique helps you add tons of speed without needing to performing complex movements or use complicated timing in both hands.

This short lick demonstrates the power of tapping to add tons of speed into your playing with little effort:

Fast Guitar Lick #4: Play Killer Sweep Picking Arpeggios That Sound Creative

Think the only way to play fast and intense sweep picking arpeggios is to use 5 or 6 string patterns? Think again! It’s fun and easy to play super-fast and creative arpeggios using smaller patterns when you simply add a note or two on top and repeat it several times.

Play through this 3-note sweep picking lick:

Note: For help playing this lick, check out this article about sweep picking rolling technique.

This sweep picking lick is cool, however it quickly becomes stale after only a few repetitions.

This lick sounds MUCH more creative and fast when you simply add one or two notes on top of the arpeggio and repeating them. Play through the lick below and see the night and day difference:

The result is a cool sweep picking arpeggio that sounds intense without needing to be played across 6 strings. Experiment with different note rhythms by holding some of the higher notes for varying lengths of time. This makes the lick more creative and interesting.

Now you know several simple and fast guitar licks to help you play with amazing speed. Even better news: it’s not that hard to increase your guitar playing speed while practicing 50% less.

Check out this page about doubling guitar playing speed to learn how to do it and become an unstoppable shredder in no time.