Rapidly Increase Your Guitar Playing Speed in 5 Minutes

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'

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!

Check out The Secret of Effective Guitar Practice for more practicing tips!

The Secret to Effective Guitar Practice

Over the last 16 years of playing different musical instruments I've realised that improving doesn't happen overnight. I used to spend hours  and hours with mates watching ridiculously brilliant guitar solos by Paul Gilbert and let me think, more Paul Gilbert. I spent a lot of time practicing, and not very much time enjoying my playing! Let me share with you the secret to effective guitar practice that enables you to practice a little, and play a lot!

The Law of One

Right now, wherever you are, you're only one step away from being better at playing the guitar. What are your aims? What are your goals? Instead of trying to be 'better at the guitar', why don't you be more specific? Aim to be 50% at the riff you can only play really slowly at the moment. It took me a while to get this; I kept trying to play 100 steps ahead of where I was at but now I just focus on improving one thing at the time.

Recently I went through a big phase of improving my acoustic guitar playing; fingerpicking, percussive playing and tapping but right now I'm concentrating on fast licks and shredding to build up stamina and strength. You see, the best way to learn quickly is to do one thing at a time. You'll actually find the benefits of practicing that one thing will spill out into all aspects of your playing anyways!

The problem with multitasking

The problem with multitasking is that it's physically impossible. Yes, you might think that you're multitasking when you're strumming and changing chords but actually you're flicking between both of them very quickly. The simple truth is that you lose concentration a lot quicker than you think which makes your guitar practice weak and ineffective. Let's face it, we want to practice as little as possible so we can play as much as possible. I used to practice and never really achieve anything in my practice time because I was trying to practice 10 different things. You need to stop multitasking and focus on the one thing you want to improve.

It's different for all of us; for some it might be just managing a chord change and for others it might be to learn a new riff. Your goals are going to be different to mine; that's absolutely fine! Have a think right now of the one thing you want to build up and improve!

Here's a few examples of what your one thing might be:

• Strumming in time (use a metronome)
• Alternate picking
• Chord changes
• Improvisation
• Ear training

Don't just read it; give it a try and test out what I'm saying! Happy Playing!

To increase your speed quickly try Rapidly Increase Your Guitar Playing Speed in 5 Minutes