How To Play Guitar Faster And Super Clean Using No-Distortion Training
Playing guitar fast means nothing if everything sounds like a hot mess when the tempo goes up.
Playing with distortion all the time often keeps you from hearing the subtle mistakes that make your fast guitar playing sloppy.
Good news:
Training some of the time without distortion is a great way to find and eliminate your biggest mistakes.
This makes anything you play with distortion sound better and improves your overall technique significantly (when you do it correctly).
Use the clean settings training approaches on this page to clean up your guitar playing and play faster without mistakes:
Note: Use clean settings training in short bursts, but don’t fully replace distortion training if you play using mostly distortion. This is a supplement for your normal practice routine.
Make Your Playing More Articulate By Syncing Your Hands Together
Playing guitar on clean settings/without distortion makes it much easier to hear when your hands are out of sync with each other.
You probably already notice this.
Why?
Ever pick up an acoustic or acoustic electric guitar and tried to play what you normally play with distortion? Much harder to keep everything lined up.
Partially this is because of the size of the fretboard compared to electric, but it is also a major product of not having fuzzy distortion to help you hear notes better when they aren’t articulated well.
Training without distortion not only makes your clean settings playing better, it makes a massive difference in your distortion playing too.
Use these practice approaches without distortion for just 5-10 minutes per practice session:
Heavier Picking Attack Practice
Picking with heavy power forces you to articulate notes well AND keep your hands in sync (otherwise it sounds sloppy).
This trains you to play louder, more articulate and more cleanly without any complicated practice method.
Just play the licks, exercises or patterns you normally would – only pick them using a lot of power.
Here are some tips for how to practice using a heavier picking attack:
·
Pick all notes with power
·
Pick only one note with power (helping you focus
on making that note perfect)
·
Pick with power for a few notes, but not all
· Only pick with power when accenting a beat. For example, every first beat or every fifth beat.
Efficient Picking Training
Picking efficiently is critical for smooth and effortless speed. Master efficient picking on clean settings and your distortion playing sounds amazing!
Integrate this technique into your everyday playing faster using the simple chromatic exercise you saw in the video.
This helps you focus purely on the picking hand to make it easier.
Practice this just a little bit each day and increase the amount of time you use this picking approach in your everyday playing, until it is your default style.
This way you can retain the current speed you have, while improving your technique little by little (without needing to start over from square one).
Break Arpeggios Into Sections And Play Them With Heavy Articulation
While playing sweep picking arpeggios with distortion, it’s often easy to get notes to sound by simply fretting notes with your fingers.
In other words:
You can be slightly out of time in your picking hand, but the notes still sound in your fretting hand by you putting your finger on the fretboard.
Training without distortion helps you lock your hands together and clean up your arpeggios in a way that distortion doesn’t.
Try this:
Take any sweep picking pattern for guitar and break it down by only playing 2-3 notes at a time. This often means only playing two strings in a given pattern.
While playing through these notes, accent the first note heavily in your pick attack for several repetitions. Then accent the second note for several repetitions and so on.
Then pick every note with power.
Applying this approach to arpeggios on clean settings helps lock both hands together to make playing them with distortion easier. After 5-10 minutes of clean practice, turn on distortion and see how it feels.
Note: Playing arpeggios on clean settings is great for bring your hands in sync, but playing with distortion is critical for helping you better hear when notes bleed together or muting technique is not applied well.
Double Pick Notes For Better Accuracy
Simple way to improve your two hand sync, articulation and guitar speed:
Play through it several times, then play through the double picked section several times.
You will immediately notice how double picking requires much more focus and is difficult to play at the same speed. This is fine. Slow down a bit and try to double pick the notes perfectly.
This trains your mind to catch up to the movement in the fretting hand.
Increasing your ability to double pick notes over time helps massively improve your ability to keep your hands in sync, making it an excellent practice approach for achieving accurate and smooth speed.
However, there many other great approaches that help you increase your speed quickly.