Cool Finger Speed Exercises Using Guitar Tapping Technique To Improve Your Skills & Quickly Warmup Your Hands
Guitar tapping technique is one of the coolest sounding things you can do on the instrument. Knowing how to use it adds fire to your licks and makes you sound like a virtuoso player. Tapping is also a powerful way to warm up your fingers using speed exercises. This makes any guitar practice session more productive, so you get better results.
Below are three powerful ways to practice guitar with tapping to quickly warm up your fingers, improve your technique and develop speed in a creative manner.
For each one, utilize the concept of playing in speed bursts to challenge yourself, warm up faster and quickly identify any flaws in your technique. Playing with speed bursts simply means playing a given lick as fast as possible for a few repetitions, followed by a brief moment of rest.
Repeat this 10-15 times per lick to get in as many reps as possible, making your practice more time-efficient.
Watch this video to see the concept of speed bursts in practice:
Finger Speed Exercise #1: Tap The Same Note While Quickly Alternating Different Notes In Fretting Hand
It’s common for guitar players to use tapping by tapping one note and repeating the same notes in the fretting hand over and over.
For example, a lick that taps the 12th fret of the high E string and frets the 4th and 7th frets in the fretting hand.
A great exercise to improve finger speed in the fretting hand and warm up your hands fast is to use different notes in the fretting hand while keeping the tapped note the same.
For example:
Practice this by:
- Playing each group of notes using speed bursts separated by a brief rest.
- Playing all groups at once and separating each repetition by a brief rest.
- Adding and subtracting notes to the general lick to create more variation in your fretting hand.
Use this main concept to create your own licks for several minutes using tapping to play scales or arpeggios. This improves your creativity with guitar tapping technique while also keeping your finger speed at a high tempo.
Finger Speed Exercise #2: Use String Skipping While Alternating Or Changing Tapped Note But Keeping Fretted Notes Same
Adding string skipping to your guitar tapping technique takes it to the next level. It also helps you improve your ability to mute unused strings on guitar so your playing sounds clean whenever you tap.
Changing the notes you play in the tapping hand forces you to think on your toes, quickly warming your up mentally (by having to process a lot of information fast) and physically. This also improves your tapping hand finger speed to take the technique to a higher level.
Practice this by:
- Isolating each variation of the arpeggio and practicing it before adding the next one.
For example, play the arpeggio in the tab with the highest note on the 12th fret several times before changing it to the 13th fret and 16th
Once you are comfortable with the pattern as a whole, perform all three variations in a row followed by a brief rest in between repetitions.
Next, think of your own notes to add.
Additionally, add sliding using your tapping finger to slide back and forth between two notes to make the lick sound totally killer!
Finger Speed Exercise #3: Clean Up String Transitions During Tapping Using A Chromatic Approach
Mastering the ability to transition cleanly from string to string is critical for playing awesome tapping licks. Fail to do this, and everything is ruined by sloppy noise.
A great way to work on this is to use a chromatic scale across on the strings to master string transitions with just one exercise. This engages every finger on your fretting hand, requiring precision and good timing to make every note sound clearly (while quickly warming up your fingers in the process).
For example, start by using a chromatic run over just two strings at a time:
Focus on making the last note of the first string and the first note of the next string as seamless as possible. If needed, isolate these notes and the notes just before/after them and repeat them over and over until the transition is flawless. Do this at fast speeds and try to adjust in the moment to clean the notes up.
Next, work your way up the strings by adding one string at a time until you’ve covered each one, like this:
After mastering this exercise, you not only develop killer guitar tapping technique, but you fully engage your fingers to speed them up and get more benefit out of anything else you are about to practice.
Understand that there are tons of other exercises that speed up your fingers and help you become a faster guitarist. However, you don’t need to accumulate tons of exercises and practice hours on end every day to make fast progress.
Learn how to become a super-fast guitar player while cutting your practice time in half using this resource on how to double your guitar speed.