How To Develop Faster Guitar Speed Using Dexterity Exercises

Getting faster guitar speed isn’t just about finding cool licks online and playing them until you can do it without making mistakes.

I mean, that’s fun too – but there are more efficient ways to get faster (in less time) than this!

One of these approaches is practicing to train your dexterity.

Dexterity means being able to quickly move your fingers to correct match up to the signals given by your brain. This can be trained, and with great dexterity, playing fast guitar licks becomes much easier.

Training for dexterity is highly effective when done separately for each hand.

(This is something very simple, yet many guitarists never think about it.)

Train yourself to play guitar faster using the ideas below.

Get started by picking a guitar lick you want to improve, then use the advice given to practice it:

Practice Using Your Fretting Hand Only By:

Fingering the notes with your fretting hand

Doing this helps you get your fretting hand used to the motions needed to correctly play the lick.

However, this does not mean using legato to play the notes.

It means you are pushing your fingers down on the frets.

This programs you to play with raw speed while developing your coordination.

Don’t worry about hearing the sounds of the notes you are playing (it will be quiet), just focus on making the movement needed to fret the notes.

This also helps you learn exactly how much force is needed to play notes (not much!)… giving you the opportunity to reduce the overall pressure you use to fret notes.

Why is this important?

Most guitar players use too much pressure to fret when only a small amount is needed.

This causes sloppy playing mistakes at faster speeds due to wasted energy and movement. Plus, it may cause injury or other complications in the future.

Try it with this:

1. Fret the notes by moving your fingers through the pattern at fast speeds for a minute.

2. Now use legato to play the notes of the pattern while using only as much force as necessary to get the notes to sound.

This video explains how to play guitar legato fast without using a ton of force:

Practice Using Picking Hand Only By:

Using the picking hand only means picking the strings while using your fretting hand to lightly dampen them so only a muffled sound is created.

Once this is done, pick through the guitar lick just how you would as if you were playing it normally.

Here is how to practice like this:

1. Pick through the strings of the guitar lick.

2. Focus on picking through them as fast as you can.

3. Picking as efficiently as possible.

*Here is an example of efficient picking with tremolo picking technique:

*Here is an example of efficient picking while playing through a scale:

4. Keep tension to a minimum in your picking hand, arm, neck and other areas of your body.

Bring Both Hands Together By:

Once you’ve practice each hand separately, let’s bring it all together.

Practicing just a few notes at a time helps you concentrate more closely on what your hands are doing so you can apply the skills you’ve trained without becoming overwhelmed (by too many note choices).

However, this does not mean you have to practice guitar at slow speeds!

Take just a few notes from the guitar lick and play through them as fast as you can while inserting a brief rest at the end of each repetition.

This allows you to practice for many repetitions while still being able to hear, identify and fix your mistakes (without slowing down).

Try this out right now using the arpeggio below, which has been broken up into short bursts:

Practicing both hands separately and together makes your practice so much more efficient not just for improving your dexterity and speed, but for becoming a better overall guitarist in less time.

Of course, this is just one practice approach of many that gets big results.

Another excellent guitar practice approach is that of “circuit training.”

Learn how this works and start using it to improve your guitar playing fast by reading this guitar practice article.