Increasing finger speed when playing lead!

dsouza

dsouza

Experienced
Is this just a matter or repetition? I.e. the more repeats of practicing a song the more efficient your fingers move and less the resistance to negative forces?

Or are the better ways to increase speed?

Cheers!
dsouza
www.AdrianDsouzaRocks.com
 
There are really no shortcuts to gaining speed, repetition is your friend. Only tip I would offer is use a metronome and play the licks/solos slow enough to play them easily without mistakes. When you're able to play a lick/solo 10 times with no mistakes, increase the tempo 3-5 bpm. Repeat as necessary to reach the speed you want. Personally, I like to be able to play the licks/solos at least 10 bpm faster than what is required to get really comfortable with them.

As far as exercises, the old chromatic 1, 2, 3, 4 exercise across all strings and up/down the neck as well as in reverse is probably the most tried and true method to gain speed and dexterity.

Change the order as you become more comfortable with each pattern; 1, 2, 3, 4 - 1, 3, 2, 4 - 1, 4, 2, 3 - etc....

https://www.musicindustryhowto.com/5-chromatic-scale-exercises-for-guitar-with-examples/#:~:text=Chromatic Scale Exercise #1 – Finger Exercise,-This is a&text=So, you would play the,strings as you move down.
 
I agree with Joker. Repetition is critical. With the approach he discussed and utilizing a metronome It won’t take long before you’re flying through common scales like your major pentatonics. To piggyback on his advise I’ve attached this video. This has help me tremendously. Speed is nothing unless you can control it. This exercise will actually help you think of where you’re going next before you get there. It can be difficult at first. Even for advanced players. Don’t get discouraged!!! If you do this for 30-60 minutes a day for a month you will be amazed at how much progress you’ve achieved.
 
All the above are excellent tips and don't neglect your picking techniques - alternate picking and sweep picking are both crucial for speedy runs. Something I do to add difficulty is to practice my scales and runs on my acoustic everyday. Heavier gage strings, thicker neck, and higher action all add a good amount of difficulty over the opposite characteristics on electrics - lighter gage strings, lower action and slinkier necks.

Once I can shred something on my acoustic at speed moving the riff/lead to electric makes it orders of magnitude easier and thus faster to play due to the improved ergonomics on an electric guitar. Just remember to avoid tension and rest for a while to avoid any carpal tunnel or tendonitis issues. If you are feeling strain and discomfort it is time to take a break. This is true whether you are practicing on electric or acoustic.
 
I’m going to play devils advocate here and say when you’re practicing, to throw in periods or bursts of speeds faster than you’re comfortable with. And let your brain clean it up over time. Your right hand will feel and look different at a slow tempo vs medium vs fast tempo. And then also throw in repetitions of an intermediate speed that’s a hair out of your comfort zone. Not saying the other posters are wrong, just my subjective opinion. Shawn Lane shed some light on this topic as well; he explains it much better than I can lmao

 
Seems like this has come up before. I know some memorization helps, but I sort of think about how any other athlete develops muscles early in life. Nobody decides at 30 to compete in the 100 meter dash, when they weren't a runner before. Or if they did, they never developed the muscles when it was possible to develop those fast twitch muscles.

Has anyone become a shredder late in life? Genuinely curious. It seems like most started playing at a really young age, and were pretty fast in their teens. Of course, the obvious question is, what is considered fast.
 
I used and keep using all the approaches above. All of them are working and results are satisfying. And "Shawn Lane"s approach is not to be missed, it is really a shortcut to speed. The hardest part is to be consistent with the approach, day after week after month after year.

I tend to use the apps instead of simple metronome to solve this, cause I'm lazy and easily get distracted. It allows me to get rig of a ton of hand-written and printed pages with exercises and keep focused on specific areas for much longer time than if I use the usual "Excel with the practice routine" approach I worked with for years.
And my wife doesn't go crazy over the whole wall of "Just for the curious" sheets with chords, scales and Allan' solos (I literally took the book and put the pages on the wall many years ago - it looked like a terrible wallpaper!).

I use Guitar Pro for my own licks - when I come up with the idea, I make a practice point by putting it in GP and practicing along the click and the playback.
I use https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guitar-driller/id1332062503 for pretty much everything else technique-related, the best tool I've ever used for this.
And I use https://www.sessionbandapp.com apps for practicing with "the band" and/or rehearsing. And iReal Pro, of course. These two are the last step when I feel comfortable with the technique or lick and want to practice it against the 2-5-1 or some song. I really believe that without the last step it's not even worth trying to become "fast".
 
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spagthorpe said:
Seems like this has come up before. I know some memorization helps, but I sort of think about how any other athlete develops muscles early in life. Nobody decides at 30 to compete in the 100 meter dash, when they weren't a runner before. Or if they did, they never developed the muscles when it was possible to develop those fast twitch muscles.

Has anyone become a shredder late in life? Genuinely curious. It seems like most started playing at a really young age, and were pretty fast in their teens. Of course, the obvious question is, what is considered fast.
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I promise you the comparison of guitar/instrument playing to actual sports is very apples to oranges. I firmly believe most people can learn to play guitar somewhat fast. The thing that separates the people who learned as kids or teenagers is that they were somehow able to key in on what worked vs what didn’t work mechanically and figure that process out quicker. I’m sure there are a few guys like Jason Becker, Shawn Lane, etc… the elite of the elite if you will… who have a little extra talent In their bodies that carry them a few extra percent higher than most but I really think that’s it lol
 
Just regard speed as a by-product of accuracy. Synchronization is key.
Pick a lick or pattern and play it at a speed you are comfortable with, no matter how slow this might feel, as long as you can play it accurately.
Then get a metronome and figure out what speed you’re at. Now, the next day, increase that speed with just a couple of bpm. How does that feel? Stil accurate? Good. Struggling? No problem, take it back a notch.
Over time slowly increase the bpm every time you feel like you got the new speed down. This way your mind has time to catch up with your hands and your hands get time to “catch up with eachother.

Accurate playing is what separates speed from the illusion of speed.

Just my two cents of course, but it worked for me and it got me to the point where I wanted to be, brain and both being so used to working together so I’m able tot get new fast shit down in no time and I can improvise fast things.

Last but not least, olympic sport, speed can be a legitimate vehicle to get your ideas across, but your guitarwork should always fit the song, theoretical, technical, but first and foremost artistically. And again, it’s not a contest, which is a good thing cause there will always gonna be Yngwies, Nunos and Bucketheads (you know what I mean 😳).
 
Chromatizm said:
I used and keep using all the approaches above. All of them are working and results are satisfying. And "Shawn Lane"s approach is not to be missed, it is really a shortcut to speed. The hardest part is to be consistent with the approach, day after week after month after year.

I tend to use the apps instead of simple metronome to solve this, cause I'm lazy and easily get distracted. It allows me to get rig of a ton of hand-written and printed pages with exercises and keep focused on specific areas for much longer time than if I use the usual "Excel with the practice routine" approach I worked with for years.
And my wife doesn't go crazy over the whole wall of "Just for the curious" sheets with chords, scales and Allan' solos (I literally took the book and put the pages on the wall many years ago - it looked like a terrible wallpaper!).

I use Guitar Pro for my own licks - when I come up with the idea, I make a practice point by putting it in GP and practicing along the click and the playback.
I use https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guitar-driller/id1332062503 for pretty much everything else technique-related, the best tool I've ever used for this.
And I use https://www.sessionbandapp.com apps for practicing with "the band" and/or rehearsing. And iReal Pro, of course. These two are the last step when I feel comfortable with the technique or lick and want to practice it against the 2-5-1 or some song. I really believe that without the last step it's not even worth trying to become "fast".
Click to expand...
SessionBand is Apple only, yes?
 
still learning and not qualified for giving advice really, but fwiw, one thing I've found that's key is to be careful not to groove in technique issues - to watch out for this I try to stop my practice every few minutes during a session and execute whatever I'm doing in extreme slow motion while watching very carefully what my hands + fingers are doing - seems to help as I frequently see movement inefficiencies... I think part of my attention to this is based on golf which is the one precision physical skill I learned in my life to what I'd call a more advanced level (I'm not even close in guitar but trying to get there tho time is getting short (have pretty well resigned myself that I will never be a fast player)). A number times during my 40 years of golf, I basically had to start over in order to progress: unlearn my grooved golf swing, and relearn a revised golf swing from the ground up. These restarts took months / years to do and could have been avoided somewhat by being a bit more attentive to what I was doing precisely in my swing right from the beginning as I went out almost daily for years and hit 100s of golfballs (and thus entrenching and solidifying those movements into my mind and body).
 
sprint said:
still learning and not qualified for giving advice really, but fwiw, one thing I've found that's key is to be careful not to groove in technique issues - to watch out for this I try to stop my practice every few minutes during a session and execute whatever I'm doing in extreme slow motion while watching very carefully what my hands + fingers are doing - seems to help. I think part of my attention to this is based on golf which is the one precision physical skill I learned in my life to what I'd call a more advanced level (I'm not even close in guitar but trying to get there tho time is getting short). A number times during my 40 years of golf, I basically had to start over in order to progress: unlearn my grooved golf swing, and relearn a revised golf swing from the ground up. These restarts took months / years to do and could have been avoided somewhat by being a bit more attentive to what I was doing precisely in my swing right from the beginning as I went out almost daily for years and hit 100s of golfballs (and thus entrenching and solidifying those movements into my mind and body).
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The problem with this is: how do you know what you are looking for? And with guitar playing, for most people (if not all but I can’t objectively say that since I have no way of knowing) your technique will be different when playing slow vs fast. It’s just the nature of it
 
Reducing tension is everything. Ever notice how the fastest shredders make it look so effortless? That's because with proper technique you will learn to use the lightest touch. Proper fretting hand position can have a lot to do with lighter touch. Then you match that with alternate picking patterns which will eventually become automatic muscle memory - especially practice these patterns: 2 notes per string, 3 notes per string and 4 notes per string - up and down. There's plenty of exercises on the interwebs to practice these alternate picking patterns. Plenty for sweep picking too. After that learn how to mix and match them - that's all the phrasing you will ever need.

I can't stress enough to remember when you feel tension or strain when trying to go fast you are doing it wrong. Your muscles and tendons will literally end up fighting against you in short order. Slow down a little and try to lighten your touch on the fretboard. When the tension is gone at that speed then crank the throttle a little - wash rinse repeat.

Shawn Lane was an amazing player. But he admits himself that he was always fast. So maybe he didn't feel a lot of tension when he was playing fast and then "cleaning it up"?

But in that video his 2,4,5,6 notes per string were his way of describing alternate picking patterns across the strings. It all leads to the same rainbow no matter how you say it.

And while we are on the subject, Steven Wilson's perspective on shredding is interesting regarding it's lack of musicallity:



Of course he did hire Guthrie Govan for some of his stuff so he may have contradicted himself there.
 
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There are other things to consider. I believe we each have a personal speed limit as to how fast our fingers will move. Like a wide receiver in pro football is a very fast runner, if you don't have that type of innate ability when it comes to speed, no amount of practice or training tips are going to enable you to catch him. But there are techniques you can work on to improve the results you get, with the velocity of your own fingers.

If you know anything about internal combustion engines, you may know that higher-revving engines have shorter piston strokes. The shorter the distance the piston needs to travel before it needs to completely stop and turn around, the more up/down motions it can do per minute before it flies apart. The pistons in that engine will actually be moving slower than pistons in an engine that has a longer stroke, at a given rpm.

Similarly, the closer you keep your fingers to the fretboard, the faster you'll be able to play. As I never developed speed as a young player, it's the only thing that helps me play fast licks at 59 (years old, not BPM, lol.)
 
Repetition is great but if you practice with the wrong technique you will never get faster. After all of these years later I fixed my right hand grip by switching from a hitchhiker thumb technique to a traditional grip. My god I can play so fast and accurately now. I use to practice tons of exercises for hours but always hit a hurdle. Now almost everything I used to struggle with is a breeze.

edit: I was able To play fast before with the hitchhiker thumb but now it’s faster
 
Dave Merrill said:
sionBand is Apple only, yes?
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Apps are Apple only, correct.
Packs are in WAV format I believe.

Rex Rox said:
Of course he did hire Guthrie Govan for some of his stuff so he may have contradicted himself there.
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If he hired Guthrie for his musicality first, than ability to shred is just a nice bonus without contradiction!
Fixated said:
I fixed my right hand grip by switching from a hitchhiker thumb technique to a traditional grip. My god I can play so fast and accurately now
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I took Stephen Taranto masterclass for the last mile of my picking technique. The most important outcome for me was to keep adjusting the angle of the right hand when changing direction. Something I thought is the mistake in my playing is a normal thing and doesn't need to be fixed. But I have a proper grip too :) And switches to swybrid anyway.
 
Infuseguitar said:
Speed is nothing unless you can control it.
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This^^^ Years ago I was told by an instructor that slow is fast! Couple that with timing and practice will equate to progress! Technique I find to be more of a personal deal to a point, example: Glenn Tipton vrs EVH Vrs George Lynch vrs Paul Gilbert. All have very different techniques that fit their hands and playing styles yet all can play pretty fast and do it accurately.
 
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