Learn To Play Guitar Scales Fast Like A Virtuoso Using Simple & Fun Speed Picking Exercises
Playing fast guitar scales sounds awesome and helps you make any solo or lick feel intense. Learning to play guitar scales fast is easy and fun when you use a variety of exercises to improve your playing in different areas.
These 5 exercises quickly help you master guitar scales at fast speeds to make your playing sound impressive:
- Make Playing Fast Guitar Scales Feel Effortless With Efficient Picking Technique
Have you ever struggled to play scales fast? You’re likely making the same common mistake other players make: using inefficient picking technique. For example, most guitar players use only alternate picking to play every note of a scale.
There’s nothing wrong with alternate picking in general, but limiting yourself to this approach makes playing guitar scales fast and clean harder than it should be. Playing fast scales becomes effortless when you pay close attention to the movements in your picking attack.
This video shows you how to play fast scales on guitar with picking technique that feels effortless:
It becomes easy to play guitar scales clean at fast speeds after using this picking approach for just a few practice sessions.
Use this exercise to quickly get used to efficient picking:
It’s easier to integrate a more efficient picking technique into your playing when you isolate the picking motion. This helps you focus on what your picking hand is doing without needing to worry about moving too much in your fretting hand.
Slowly play through the chromatic lick below. Important: Instead of using two separate downstrokes while transferring strings, use ONE single stroke (like sweep picking the notes). So, combine the downstroke on the last note of each string with the downstroke of the first note of the next string.
As you play slowly through this lick, it becomes easy to feel when both hands in perfect sync. This is the feeling to look for when you are playing at fast speeds. Play in sequences of 3-4 notes rather than trying to play the entire lick at once.
Next, begin integrating the same picking approach into scales. This is a little more challenging, because you must think more about what your fretting hand is playing to get the notes right.
Read this article about playing guitar fast to learn more about how to master this picking technique and play scales at lightning-fast speeds.
- Master The Ability To Play Guitar Scales Fast In Unique Patterns By Training With Contrary Motion
Most people only play guitar scales by using notes that ascend in pitch while moving from thicker strings to thinner strings (and vice versa). By reversing this, you make your scales sound more interesting and challenge yourself in a way that most people never do.
This turns you into a more creative guitarist and makes playing scales like normal feel much easier.
Practice these cool guitar scale patterns to give your playing a unique sound:
Pitch of the notes is descending while you are ascending the strings
Pitch of the notes is ascending while you are descending the strings:
To add extra challenge (meaning you become a better and faster guitarist), use efficient picking to play these scale patterns as mentioned in point one.
- Improve Your Picking Technique And Accuracy Using String Skipping
Practicing string skipping is one of the most powerful ways to improve your overall picking technique and make playing scales on guitar (like normal) feel easy.
C major scale:
C major scale broken into string skipping sequences:
By skipping strings, you force yourself to keep both hands in sync in order to play notes without making mistakes. This is more challenging than playing guitar scales like normal because you must be more precise both in the fretting hand and picking hand.
Practicing string skipping not only gives you more creative options with scales, but makes it easier to shred through normal scale patterns (especially while using efficient picking).
- Train Your Mind To Process Notes Faster Using Double Picking Technique
Playing guitar scales fast is only difficult when you are unable to process what your fingers are doing. Training your mind to process notes better helps you keep both hands in sync so playing guitar clean at fast speeds becomes effortless.
You lock your hands in sync like the gears in a watch by using double picking. Double picking simply means picking each note in a scale two times instead of one. This slows down the information your brain has to process in the fretting hand so your picking hand has time to catch up.
Practice with double picking for just a few minutes a day and watch as your fast scale runs become incredibly clean.
- Learn How To Use Guitar Scales In Music By Practicing Musical Integration
If there’s just one thing you take away from this article, make it this: Practice using guitar scales in a musical way! After all, that is the main point of learning them.
Don’t make the same mistake so many others make of only learning how to play scale exercises… only to struggle when the time comes to solo or improvise with them.
Here are a few simple ways to integrate guitar scales into music so you are able to use your skills to play cool solos:
- Improvise with the scales you learn over a backing track. Practice within a single octave range and focus on making them sound as emotional as possible.
- While practicing guitar scales, spend time playing them as strict exercises (running up and down the scale) AND by adding other techniques together with the notes. For example: bending, vibrato, slides, etc.
- Combine scales together with arpeggios and learn how to freely move between them. This makes soloing feel effortless.
You now have 5 incredibly powerful practice approaches to use to play guitar scales with speed and accuracy. Practice with each point for just 2 minutes per day (10 minutes in total) and watch as you master scales faster than you ever thought possible!