How To Finally Quit Saying “I Can't Play Fast Guitar Solos” And Play With Incredibly Accurate Speed

Telling yourself “I can’t play fast guitar solos” creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that causes you to stop trying to improve. Even worse, it’s simply not true! Even the fastest guitarists in the world were once at (or below) your current level… so anything is possible.

One of the real reasons why you feel frustrated about your guitar speed is you aren’t sure how to correct your mistakes and move forward. Identifying common guitar playing mistakes is the first step towards getting your speed on the right track so you play faster solos than ever before.

Use the ideas below to identify and fix the problems keeping you from playing fast and clean guitar solos:

How To Play Fast And Clean Guitar Scales By Transferring Smoothly From String To String

The noise made during the transition between strings is often a source of great frustration. Mastering this transition has a massive impact of cleaning up your guitar soloing at fast speeds.

How To Play Guitar Fast And Clean By Fixing This Problem:

While practicing scales (or scale runs) isolate the notes of the pattern involved during a string transition. For example: the last note of the string you start on and the first note of the string you are moving to.

Play every note of the scale once, while stopping to pick the notes of the string transition twice like this:

1. As you do this, listen closely to make sure the notes do not bleed together.

Lift your finger slightly off the fretboard (while still in contact with the string) to release the note you just played. This mutes it, so it doesn’t ring out with the next one.

2. Use efficient picking technique.

Note: You do not even need to pick the entire scale. Simply focusing on the transition point itself is a very efficient way to practice.

Playing guitar scales fast, clean and smooth feels much easier after you perfect these string transitions.

How To Play Fast Guitar Arpeggios By Making Every Note Sound Individually

One of the biggest causes of sloppy guitar arpeggios is not being able to mute the strings properly using your fretting hand.

This makes the notes run together (like discussed in the previous point), and sounds more like a chord than a clean arpeggio.

This video demonstrates how to mute perfectly while playing sweep picking arpeggios:

Develop Fast Guitar Tapping Technique By Cleaning Up Unwanted String Noises

Learning how to mute correctly with your picking hand while tapping requires making an adjustment that normal playing doesn’t. Mastering muting technique in this way takes your technique to the highest level and makes your tapping licks perfectly clean.

The Best Way To Mute Strings While Tapping

All strings below the one you are tapping on must be muted by the lower part of your tapping hand’s palm. The pinky-side part of your tapping hand palm should mute the string just below the one you are on.

It takes practice to get a feel for muting strings using this part of your palm.

Master this style of muting by playing a simple tapping pattern on the high E string. Pay close attention to the location of your palm and any noise that is occurring.

Then move the same tapping pattern you played to the B string and repeat.

Move back and forth between strings until you are able to mute perfectly while moving from string to string 10 times in a row.

Learn more ways to clean up sloppy guitar playing by reading this guitar technique article.

Play Fast Guitar Ideas In Perfect Time So Your Playing Sounds More Professional

It’s common for guitarists to get out of time while playing fast rhythm guitar riffs, licks or solos. This problem comes from not enough general rhythm guitar practice and not enough practice to a strict beat (or metronome).

Set aside time during each practice session to not only play practice items to a metronome, but to improvise over a backing track or play songs note for note to the live track.

· While practicing items such as scales or arpeggios, focus on getting the notes to line up perfectly with the beat. When you do this, they will seem to disappear or blend in with the click of the metronome. This is when you know your timing is locked-in.

· While improvising, focus at first on getting the beginning and ending notes of your phrases lined up perfectly in time. These are the notes that stick out most, and are usually played slower than the rest of the phrase.

· While playing to a song, try to make your notes “disappear” under the notes in the song because they are played perfectly in time. Work on individual phrases at first (or smaller note groupings) to keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed by trying to perfect an entire song at once.

Now you have learned many solutions for the common problems that cause people to give up on playing guitar fast. Working to perfect the skills in this article quickly cleans up your speed and makes playing fast less frustrating.

Now learn how to increase your guitar speed in less time:

Play guitar faster and cleaner by practicing 50% less using the info in this free guitar speed eBook.