Beginner Guitar Lessons
How To Play Guitar Fast! 5 Tips to Increase Speed
In my post “Thoughts on Practice from a Wise, Old Guitarist,” I asked Bill, a well-aged retired, professional guitar player how to increase my guitar speed after hearing how fast he played on his old recordings. He just told me to “practice, practice, and practice.” But how do we practice when we want to learn how to play guitar fast?
1. Start slow, Speedy
This couldn’t be more important. Practice playing guitar scales slow at first with proper fingering, posture, and technique. Set a metronome at a slow speed then practice at faster speeds. It’s really boring at first (I won’t lie to you), but it’ll be harder to play guitar faster if you don’t have good technique. You must walk before you run.
2. Alternate Picking
As you pluck the individual strings with your pick, pluck each string alternately with a down pluck and an up pluck with the pick. When you play a guitar scale or lead line, don’t pluck every single note with a downwards pluck. You’re losing speed. Alternate your picking.
3. Relax
Any tension in your arms, wrists, hands, or fingers will hinder your speed. When you’re playing guitar fast everything should be relaxed. If you notice yourself getting tense when you get faster, slow it down, eliminate the tension, and then gradually speed back up.
4. Develop a Nervous Twitch
Okay, so I’m referring back to my previous post here about Bill. Bill not only told me to practice but to develop a bit of “nervous twitch” in my picking hand. I don’t have any ideas on how to do this. Do you?
5. ”Patience, young skywalker, patience.”
Eat Yoda’s words. While you should notice results if you try these things, don’t expect that your guitar speed will jump to that of Van Halen overnight. Be faithful in your practice and keep these things in mind and you’ll progress.
These are just some things that have helped me learn how to play guitar fast. What are things that have helped you pick up your guitar speed?
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3 comments for “How To Play Guitar Fast! 5 Tips to Increase Speed”
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[...] mentioned this earlier in my post about how to play the guitar fast, but the same can apply to eliminating [...]
The tips given by you is very helpful to the beginners. I am feeling great to know all these from you.
I’ve been wanting to increase my speed. One thing I’ve done that I believe has helped, is in the way I pick. I use do hold my pick between my thumb and index finger with the my other 3 fingers in a relaxed but some what straight position (kind of like Slash) and I would use my wrist in conjunction with my thumb and index finger to move the pick up and down. What I do now is curl and tuck my fingers into my hand, stacked against my thumb, and I strictly use my wrist to make the up and down pick strokes. I think Randy Rhoads picked this way…