How To Play Fast Guitar Licks Cleaner By Practicing At FAST Speeds
Common guitar speed practice mistake: Slowing way down and speeding up gradually over time.
In many cases, this works briefly but then leads to very slow progress over a long period of time.
Going against this conventional approach gets better results.
How do you do it?
Practice at FAST speeds!
Seems easier said than done, but don’t worry, I’ll show you exactly what to do.
The first thing you need to do is identify where your playing breaks down during any given guitar lick, pattern, etc.
Here’s what to do:
How To Identify Where Your Guitar Speed Is Breaking Down
What do many guitar players do when they make mistakes?
Answer: They try to push through them, focus on repeating easier to play parts (because it feels good) or simply avoid difficult patterns altogether.
You want to develop killer guitar speed though, right?
Right!
This means you need to pay close attention to subtle and not-so-subtle signs that you’re making mistakes. This way you know exactly what to focus on to get better.
Use this exercise to quickly identify the mistakes you need to overcome while playing any fast lick to improve it:
1. Choose any fast guitar lick or exercise you want to play cleaner.
2. Break the lick into separate sections of 3-5 notes each.
3. Play through each section one at a time while paying close attention to the following to find your mistakes, such as:
Inefficiency – using too much motion in the picking hand or fretting hand than is necessary.
Examples could be lifting your fretting hand fingers too far from the fretboard between notes or using way too much motion in your pick attack.
Synchronization – Are you picking notes at the exact moment you fret them or is the timing off?
Tension – Are you using too much pressure to fret notes? You know you are if you use any more than the minimum needed to get the notes to sound. Also pay attention to tension in places like your neck, shoulders, arms or back. Focus on relaxing these areas as you play.
These mistakes often disappear at slower speeds because you are using different motions in your picking hand or fretting hand. This is why it is critical to practice at fast speeds, rather than slow ones.
Here’s how to do it:
How To Practice Licks At Fast Speeds To Play Faster & Cleaner
It’s easier to make massive progress in your guitar playing when you remove distractions and concentrate on perfecting a few notes at a time.
Once you’ve identified the mistakes you need to work on, isolate them using this principle to fix them and quickly improve your speed and cleanliness.
Here are some effective ways to practice notes in short bursts to perfect them:
Repeating a difficult part over and over at fast speed.
Practicing just a few notes of a lick over and over hundreds of times actually only takes a few minutes. Think about it, you could potentially practice something 1,000 times and it wouldn’t even take that long.
Using tremolo picking
Tremolo picking something that is normal picked one note at a time is a unique way to really bring hands together in sync.
Practice tremolo picking a lick 5-10 times, then play it like normal and notice how it starts to feel easier.
Using heavy articulation
Picking with heavy picking power is a powerful practice approach most guitarists never think to use. Doing this accents notes in a way that forces you to play in sync (otherwise the notes don’t sound clearly).
By simply picking with heavy picking power, you naturally begin cleaning up your guitar playing without taking any other steps.
Your speed improves using heavier picking too!
How?
A heavier pick attack slices through the strings, versus a weaker attack which causes the pick to be in contact longer with the strings.
The practice approaches on this page are very powerful at helping you improve any guitar lick to play it faster, without slowing down. However, there are more ways to increase your speed than what is mentioned here.