How To Use Speed Picking Guitar Technique To Enhance The Creativity & Intensity Of Your Solos

Using speed guitar picking just for “speed” leaves tons musical expression and creativity on the table.

You don’t want this…

Using speed picking to make your guitar solos sound both intense and musically creative takes the technique to the highest level. THIS is what makes your playing sound awe-inspiring to anyone who hears you.

Pro players know how to use speed picking to play killer solos and you will too when you consistently apply and practice the following approaches:

 

Use speed picking to build tension at the end of a phrase

Speed is an amazing tool for creating intensity that makes anyone feel massive levels of anticipation for what will come next in a musical phrase.

Learning to harness this tool makes your guitar solos much more gripping and interesting than if you just use speed constantly (a common mistake many guitarists make).

Try this:

·         Think of any guitar lick you are already familiar with (preferably one without tremolo picking).

·         Play the lick a few times to warm up.

·         Play through the lick several times again, only now, add tremolo picking to the last few notes of the lick.

Watch as suddenly it feels much more dramatic.

Use this video to make your guitar speed picking faster and more consistent:

Add speed picking to bends to make them more intense

Bends already sound awesome by themselves (for help making your bends sound awesome if they don’t already, check out this article on playing guitar bends and vibrato.).

Adding tremolo picking to them takes them to a whole new level and demands attention from anyone listening.

Try this by:

Applying tremolo picking to bends of all different types.

For example: Slow bends that gradually reach the target note, pre-bent bends, fast bends, etc.

Find which one sounds best to you and integrate into your guitar playing and improvisations.

 

Use speed picking to make the second half of a phrase unique from the first without changing any notes

It’s a common mistake to constantly add more notes while playing a guitar solo instead of making your phrases higher quality.

Fact:

Sometimes you don’t even have to use new notes to make your solos sound awesome!

How is this?

It’s all about HOW you play the notes.

Here’s one way to do it:

1.   Create/improvise a short guitar phrase using no more than 3-4 pitches (from a scale or arpeggio for instance). Develop this phrase for several minutes until you are satisfied with how it sounds.

2.   Play through the phrase you create once, then play through it again using tremolo picking to play the notes.

3.   Now, think more creatively and only apply tremolo picking to one or a few notes.

4.   Focus on creating 5-10 different variations of the original phrase using this approach.

Practicing this helps transform your speed picking technique into a powerful musical tool that adds drama to your soloing/licks without needing the change any notes.

 

On clean settings: speed pick and change the power you use to pick with to utilize dynamics

Dynamics in music refers to how loud or soft a note is played.

While playing guitar with distortion, it is hard to use this aspect of music (although you can imitate it well using palm muted versus unmuted notes).

However, playing guitar on clean settings allows you to experiment with dynamics to make your playing sound much more musical and engaging.

Speed picking gives you a unique tool for this as well!

Try this out:

Improvise a guitar lick or play a familiar guitar lick several times.

Add speed picking to any note or notes of the lick. As you do this, pick with heavy picking power.

Here is a demonstration of how to really pick guitar with power:

Next, repeat the previous step, except use speed picking that gradually uses less and less power in the pick attack. After doing this, you notice a difference in the way the notes feel when played with loud versus soft dynamics.

Play the guitar lick again for several minutes and focus on using loud versus soft in your speed picking as much as possible to begin integrating this phrasing approach into your playing.

Using dynamics like this creates a really cool, expressive effect like nothing else on guitar!

Want to learn more ways to play fast and creative guitar solos?

No problem.

Check out this resource about playing emotional guitar licks.