How To Use String Skipping & Other Techniques To Get Faster Guitar Picking Speed
Getting faster guitar picking speed isn’t just about playing scales to a metronome or trying to move your hands faster…
It’s actually about:
Making every movement as efficient as possible.
Faster picking speed is also much easier to get when you integrate your picking technique with other techniques or areas of your playing.
A unique example of this is using string skipping to improve your picking approach and make things like tremolo picking seem like a breeze in comparison.
Below are 3 powerful ways to improve your picking speed with string skipping.
Watch this video about efficient picking technique first, then use the exercises to massively improve your playing:Speed Picking Exercise # 1: Integrate String Skipping With Sequences
Playing with note groupings in sequences and performing with string skipping technique are not that unheard of for guitar players.
Nevertheless:
Integrating these two items together is an interesting way to improve many areas of your guitar playing simultaneously.
This can make it an incredibly reliable practice item that goes a long way to help you acquire speed in no time.
The solution to getting the biggest gains from this type of practice is breaking patterns into tinier bits so you do not feel bogged down and disheartened by too many new ideas at the same time.
This makes it easy to split up your time into getting the hang of the motions needed to play cleanly (and you can do this at much faster speeds than when trying to play an entire lick at first).
Speed Picking Exercise # 2: Start Speed Picking Sweep Arpeggios
Playing arpeggios is commonplace for lead guitar players that love to play with tons of speed.
Having said that:
Mixing arpeggios with bursts of speed picking not only boosts your sweep picking technique, it takes your overall picking technique to a new dimension regardless of what material you are playing!
Learn what to do now.
Start adding speed picked notes to the last note (on the thinnest string) in the pattern while performing the other parts of the arpeggio as you usually would.
This causes you to be precise (because you have to stop immediately) to instantly focus on one string.
Hint: Switch up the note in the pattern that is being stressed by speed picking. This changes your focus and creates a change to the phrase in various ways that requires you to improve to get better. Furthermore, practice this idea on each note at slower speeds.
Speed Picking Exercise # 3: Harness The Power Of Single String Licks
Single string scales are possibly the most basic, yet efficient methods for improving your speed (if you understand the right ways to utilize them).
The strength of practicing these kinds of items hinges on how accurate you are at keeping the fretting and picking hands in perfect synchronization to perform notes without mistakes.
Practicing them tests you in ways that other licks generally won’t.
After playing single string patterns, your hands end up sync’d up like gears in a watch causing playing guitar with speed to feel totally effortless.
Play the notes in this guitar lick: Make the lick easier by using the very same “piece-by-piece” process from the other tips in this article. For instance: play only the first few notes, then notes four through six, seven through nine, and so forth
While playing in limited bunches of notes, play them with your maximum speed.
To get even more results, use tons of power to play the notes. This raises the difficulty of keeping everything synchronized, which helps you to strengthen this skill-set much more.
Now you have knowledge of a handful of valuable ways to become a faster and more accurate shred guitar player.
It’s to learn an even more overlooked approach that enables you to raise your guitar speed to higher levels than you ever thought possible, while requiring even less time to do it!