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 picking up your guitar speed?
Beginning Guitar Lessons? Nice one! On this page you will find 6 cool strumming patterns that will help you out big time as you’re just starting to learn acoustic guitar.
Learning guitar chords is only have the battle. Once you know how to play a few you’ll need some strumming patterns to put them to work. If you have both then you can play loads of easy guitar songs with just that: Chords and Strumming Patterns. Visit our Easy Guitar Songs page if you want to learn a few acoustic guitar songs.
If you’re looking for some beginning guitar lessons strumming patterns then I suggest you start with the 6 rhythms below. Do you know how to read them? If not, fear not. You can watch the video at the bottom of this page. In the video you’ll learn how to read strumming patterns. You. Really. Need. This.
The reason you need to learn how to read rhythms is simple… You can learn new patterns quickly and easily and you can play along even if you don’t know the song. Reading basic guitar charts is far more effective than downloading acoustic guitar tabs that don’t show you the rhythms. Same goes for lyrics with the chords written above which generally is a waste of time as well. Let me explain. Music consists of the following three things of which you absolutely need to master two if you want to play acoustic guitar.
1. Rhythm
2. Harmony (Fancy way of saying chords)
3. Melody
So if you’re just beginning guitar lessons then you would need Rhythm and Harmony. If the acoustic guitar tabs and the lyric sheets don’t show you how to play rhythms or strum, then you’re left alone in the dark. So clearly you can understand that reading rhythms (which is super easy) is an integral part of acoustic guitar playing. Get going with these basic patterns and I’ll be posting more advanced ones soon.
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