Quite often in life, its the smallest things that make the biggest differences. Playing the guitar is no different. Countless times I've seen someone make a small change to their guitar playing; a change of position, a change of speed or a change of thought process and I've seen it made a huge difference to their overall tone, consistency and speed.
Get The Most Out Of Your Playing Time
If you're like most people then you want to get as much for as little as possible. Everyone loves to bag a good bargain; and everyone wants to practice as little as possible and play as fast as possible. (If playing technically fast doesn't float your boat then how about being able to string great improvisation phrases together or learn songs quicker. This will help all of those areas too)
A few years ago I noticed that a lot of the people I taught would always play everything way too fast. They would play riffs that were too difficult at that speed and as a result had to stop and start all the time; their tone was terrible and the rhythm was all over the place etc etc. I noticed that I instinctively knew what speed to practice at.
Faster Means You Can Fit More In
If you think very practically, the faster you can practice something, the more practice you fit into an alotted time. However, most of us have ears bigger than our playing ability and so attempt to play stuff that is way too difficult for us. This doesn't do us any good; we only practice playing something very badly and so it's almost worse than not practicing at all.
Your Key To Practicing Better
What we want is to play a riff or lick as fast as possible for our ability at the time. The easiest way to figure our optimum playing speed is to use a metronome. If you don't know what a metronome is; its a small device that provides a constant beat for us to play along to. It's measured in Beats Per Minute (or BPM). For example, if it was set to 60BPM it would play a click or beep every second because there are 60 seconds in a minute. If you don't have one, you can use a free one here
Think of a riff you are currently learning or trying to play and lets take the first 4 or so notes of it. Now let's start the metronome at a completely random BPM. (I've gone for 60) Try playing your riff along to it. Now ask yourself, is it really easy or hard?
Practice 'Perfectly'
Practice 'Perfectly'
Whenever you practice, you should be able to play whatever you practice absolutely perfectly. Think rhythm, tone, feeling, dynamics etc. Ask yourself honestly if you can play it at that speed. If the answer is yes, keep practicing and gradually increase the BPM from anything from 1-5BPM. Rinse and repeat until you start to feel it affecting how relaxed you are when playing.
Make a note of the optimum BPM for that riff and next time you practice start there and gradually increase as the riff gets easier as you practice.
There you have it. Each riff or progression you play will obviously be unique and so you need to do this each time. It will become habit if you make sure you do it each time. I can guarantee this will revolutionise the way you practice and increase your guitar playing speed in a ridiculously short space of time!
There you have it. Each riff or progression you play will obviously be unique and so you need to do this each time. It will become habit if you make sure you do it each time. I can guarantee this will revolutionise the way you practice and increase your guitar playing speed in a ridiculously short space of time!
Check out The Secret of Effective Guitar Practice for more practicing tips!
