3 Guitar Tips To Get Faster Speed Than You Ever Thought Possible Using Innovative Note Processing Training
Playing guitar with tons of speed feels easy when you train yourself to mentally process notes much faster. Most guitarists wish they could play faster… but never do either of these things and waste many years practicing ineffectively only to struggle while playing with speed.
Use these 3 speed guitar tips to develop faster, more effortless and sparkling-clean guitar playing in no time:
Speed Guitar Tip #1: Make Fast Playing Effortless By Keeping Both Hands In Sync
Why do so many guitar players struggle to play fast and clean? It’s not because they aren’t naturally talented or aren’t moving their hands fast enough… One of the biggest reasons why people struggle to play guitar with speed is their hands are out of sync.
Playing guitar with tons of speed and accuracy becomes easy when you focus on locking both hands in sync. This helps you play cleaner with the speed you already have, and makes it easier to take your speed to a higher level in the future.
This video shows you how to improve your speed by developing better two-hand synchronization with strongly accented notes:
Make it easy to play anything on guitar with speed using this exercise (based on the video):
Step One: Choose a guitar lick you want to play fast and clean.
Step Two: Repeat the lick many times while using a lot of picking force to accent the first note of the lick. This causes you to focus on playing with both hands in perfect sync for that note.
Step Three: Repeat the previous step while choosing a different note to accent.
Step Four: Now choose 2 different notes to accent and repeat this process until you’ve accented every note in the lick at least once.
Practice any guitar lick using this exercise and watch as it becomes easier to play than ever before!
Speed Guitar Tip #2: Play Fast With Accuracy By Focusing On One Note At A Time
It’s very difficult to play guitar with speed and accuracy when you aren’t able to mentally follow what you are playing. This is like trying to juggle 5 tennis balls at once when you can barely juggle 2.
Your guitar speed and accuracy start going through the roof when you train yourself to focus on playing perfect notes one at a time. This trains you to hear subtle mistakes (that most people miss) and opens you up to a whole new world of guitar skill.
Here is how to do it:
Choose any guitar lick you want to work on (preferably a shorter lick). Choosing a shorter lick makes it easier to concentrate on what you’re playing.
For example:
Next, play through the lick continuously at a fast speed while actively listening to the first note. Pick the note several times by itself so you know exactly what to listen for.
Listen closely as you play through the lick to make sure this note is perfect and make any necessary adjustments to play it clean (even if the other notes are a little sloppy). Note: play fast through the entire lick. Do not slow down.
Once you are able to play the first note perfectly, focus your attention on the second note of the pattern and repeat the process.
After going through this process with each note, the quality of the lick goes way up and you are able to play it with speed and accuracy like never before!
This video demonstrates how to quickly improve your clean guitar speed using focus rotation as explained above:
Speed Guitar Tip #3: Increase Your Playing Speed By Mentally Processing Notes At Faster Tempos
Another way to play faster and cleaner is to practice things in short bursts of speed. This takes the idea of focusing on one note and expands it to several notes at once.
This video demonstrates how to improve your guitar speed using short bursts of notes:
Practicing in bursts like this helps you mentally process more notes at faster speeds while quickly correcting the mistakes that slow you down.
For example, the tab below shows a speed guitar lick that uses both scales and arpeggios together. Trying to play the entire lick at once over and over is challenging if you aren’t used to patterns like this.
Breaking the lick down into short 4-note groups helps you correct mistakes more easily without becoming overwhelmed when many mistakes happen at once (causing the entire lick to fall apart).
Play through the first four notes at a fast speed, then pause for a moment to process what you just played. Repeat this 10-20 times, correcting your mistakes after each repetition.
Now focus on the four notes that start on the next string:
Next, isolate the sweep picking arpeggio starting on the G string:
Continue this way through the entire lick (both ascending and descending). Then combine different groups of notes together and keep expanding note-by-note until you are able to cleanly play the entire lick.
This makes practicing for clean guitar speed fun and less frustrating because you see yourself correcting mistakes in the moment rather than slowly over the course of many practice sessions.
For the best results, combine all three of the practice methods in this article together. This gives you guitar speed that is clean, articulate and effortless!
Want to learn more ways to become an incredibly fast guitarist in no time? Check out this free guitar speed resource to double your playing speed while spending less time practicing.