How To Get Faster On Guitar Using Laser-Focus During Your Practice
The quality of your guitar practice determines how fast you achieve faster speeds and cleaner playing. When you practice with laser-focus, you get faster on guitar more quickly than you ever thought possible.
Practicing effectively with great focus means doing three key things.
Use these practice concepts consistently to become a faster guitarist in no time:
Laser-Focus On Fixing Specific Mistakes And Movements
It’s not enough to simply move your hands to play the correct patterns in a mindless manner. This kind of practice is very ineffective and mostly wastes time!
Pay close attention to the movements in both hands as you play and listen closely for unwanted noise in order to fix your mistakes quickly and effectively.
Here is a short list of mistakes and inefficiencies to look out for during any given exercise:
*Notes sound muffled or unclear because you are not picking the string at the precise moment you are fretting the fretboard.
*Open string noise is being made by strings below the one you are playing
*Open string noise is being made by strings above the one you are playing
*Picking hand is moving too far from the strings after each stroke
*Fretting hand fingers are moving more than a couple inches away from the fretboard after playing a note
Focus closely on looking for each one of these mistakes so you know what needs to be corrected during your practice as you repeat the practice item you’re working on.
Pay Close Attention To Tension While You Play
Here tension refers to the tension in your body or the stress you feel while playing a certain number of notes or section within an exercise.
When you notice yourself tensing up in either of these categories, you can be sure that this is an indicator that you are either about to make a mistake or are unsure that you can play something cleanly.
…and this is good!
This information helps you easily identify the notes that give you problems so you know what to practice to get better.
For example, it’s common for guitarists to struggle during position shifts in scale patterns. During this shift, many people feel tension in their hands or become anxious:
Instead of looking for ways to sloppily rush through these notes, use the advice below to fix them for good and play guitar faster and cleaner than ever!
Isolate Problems And Repeat Them To Iron Them Out
Once you’ve identified your mistakes, don’t make the common practice mistake of playing through them until you can “get it right” once or twice.
Although you may not play something perfectly during one practice session, it is more than possible to make massive progress by repeating correct movement/playing habits MANY times in a row.
For example, which approach seems more effective:
Practicing an entire scale over and over until you play it well one time (but continue making tons of mistakes)?
OR
Practicing the first 3 notes of a scale 100 times within just a few minutes until they are perfect, then adding more notes and repeating the process?
Answer: The latter.
By breaking things into smaller chunks and using high repetition numbers, you fix imperfections and nail them into your muscle memory.
This helps you make insane levels of progress not just for speed but cleanliness of playing… all within a single practice session.
This video shows an excellent way to break down any difficult part of a lick and repeat it to master it faster:
The ideas in this article are very powerful tools for making your practice effective so you play guitar faster in less time. However, this is just the beginning. Learn how to double your guitar speed by practicing less.