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4 Killer Guitar Speed Practice Ideas For Mastering Scales

/ Ryan Buckner
How To Play Guitar With Speed

4 Killer Guitar Speed Practice Ideas To Help You Quickly Master Scales

Mastering scales gives you the ability to get cool, unique and expressive sounds with your guitar. This gives you a wide array of options to choose from when you want to express emotions during a guitar solo. Being able to play them with fast guitar speed adds intensity to the emotion you are able to express.

However:

There is more to mastering scales than just repeating the entire scale pattern up and down the fretboard over and over to the beat of a metronome.

This is what most guitarists do, and it provides limited results.

Master scales using the following guitar speed practice drills to quickly improve your ability to solo all over the fretboard and express yourself:


Guitar Speed Practice Drill#1: Develop Killer Picking Technique To Make Fast Scales Feel Effortless

Playing smooth and effortless scales at fast speeds feels amazing.

Good news is, there are many ways to train this and you can probably improve your current skill level much more than you think in just a few minutes per day.

Drill: Train yourself to use efficient picking technique for easy speed by breaking scales down into 3 note groups.

Step One: Choose any guitar scale that uses 3 notes per string in its pattern.

Step Two: Play the first three notes in the scale and repeat them over and over for 30 seconds or so at a fast speed. Add a moment of rest after each 3-note repetition.

While ascending in pitch, begin with a downstroke, then an upstroke, then a downstroke again. If descending, use the opposite approach.

This prepares you to use the most efficient picking technique possible for the rest of the scale.

Note: If you need to brush up on this concept, learn how to play with efficient guitar picking technique for speed.

Step Three: Move onto the next three notes in the scale and repeat the previous step.

For example:

Continue this process until you have played the entire scale. This makes it feel much more fluid while playing it and reveals any mistakes/tough spots to focus on to get better.

Practicing in this manner allows you to continue playing guitar with speed, so you don’t have to slow down and gradually speed up over a long period of time like many guitarists do.


Guitar Speed Practice Drill#2: Practice Using Scales To Express Emotion To Make Every Note Count

Practicing guitar scales for speed shouldn’t just be about playing up and down the pattern over and over. You get the most out of scale practice when you learn how to use them in a musical manner while practicing for speed at the same time.

This makes practicing scales MUCH more enjoyable because you improve in multiple areas at once while becoming more creative.

Drill: Get started using any guitar scale to play expressive music with this simple exercise:

Step One: Choose any guitar scale and record yourself playing the first chord of that scale as a backing track. For example, playing the A minor chord if you chose the A minor or A minor pentatonic scale.

Once the backing track is made, play the scale over it note-by-note at a slow pace. As you do this, listen closely to how tense or relaxed each note feels.

Step Two: Now choose any 3 notes from the scale. Pick at least 1 note that felt tense/unresolved and 2 that felt either tense/unresolved or resolved. For example, in A minor play over an A minor chord: F – G – A

Step Three: Improvise over the backing track for several minutes with these notes while trying to express as much emotion as possible with each note. This means using techniques like vibrato or bends to make the notes “sing” like a voice.

Repeat this two more times with different note choices.

Step Four: Now add one or two more notes and repeat the previous step. Feel free to play with speed sometimes while slowing down to play more melodically other times. Listen for how tension is built and released as you play. The better you control this, the more you master emotional expression in guitar soloing.

Practicing this exercise leads to more controlled and expressive soloing that helps you get the greatest level of intensity from your guitar speed.


Guitar Speed Practice Drill#3: Master A Scale In Multiple Positions Using An Intense & Innovative Practice Approach

Playing killer guitar solos is easy when you are able to move across multiple fretboard positions to play the same scale. This makes your guitar phrases flow effortlessly. Additionally, practicing this is one of the most fun and creative things to do on guitar.

Drill: Study guitar modes and practice moving between them.

“Modes” are easier to understand than you think. A mode describes a scale that contains the same notes as another scale (usually the major or minor scales), only arranged with a different note as its center.

For example: E Dorian mode contains the same notes as D Major, only it is centered around (begins and ends on) the E note, rather than the D note.

As a guitarist, this means you are able to use both the E Dorian or D Major pattern to give yourself multiple fretboard positions to work with while soloing.

This is how guitar players are able to move effortlessly up and down the fretboard while playing cool and unique guitar phrases.

This tab shows you 3 different modes combined together:

The 7 main modes to learn are:

·         Ionian (major)

·         Dorian

·         Phrygian

·         Lydian

·         Mixolydian

·         Aeolian (natural minor)

·         Locrian

For more context, here is an example with letter names:

·         A Ionian (major)

·         B Dorian

·         C# Phrygian

·         D Lydian

·         E Mixolydian

·         F# Aeolian (natural minor)

·         G# Locrian

Work together with your guitar teacher to learn all of the patterns for the modes above.

As you first begin using these modes, focus closely on just two modes with adjacent patterns on the fretboard. For example, D Major and E Dorian.

Practice each pattern separately, the improvise while playing them together. This creates a map in your brain that makes it easy to connect different parts of the fretboard together.

Result: You are able to burn up and down the fretboard while soloing with effortless speed.


Use Any Scale To Make Your Guitar Solos Expressive And Full Of Emotion By Combining All 3 Drill Concepts Together:

All the guitar speed/soloing exercises on this page help you make huge improvements. Combining them together is a great way to practice more efficiently and make progress in multiple areas in less time.

Once you have learned each drill, practice all three in 5-minute intervals (one-after-the-other) each day. In just 15 minutes, you get better at playing guitar scales fast with efficient technique, improve your ability to expressive yourself musically and map out the fretboard to make soloing smooth and effortless.

Learn more ways to play guitar scales and any other pattern faster than ever with this free eBook about doubling your guitar speed while practicing less.