3 Advanced Guitar Speed Exercises Every Shredder Needs To Know
Playing guitar with tons of speed doesn’t have to be a struggle (despite the fact that so many guitarists have a hard time with it).
Truth is, all “advanced” guitar licks can be made easy no matter how difficult they may seem at first.
This means that no matter what guitar lick or exercise you are struggling with right now, it can be made easier to master when you apply the right practice approaches.
Consistently practicing exercises that incorporate these approaches helps you integrate them into your playing fast to overcome any challenge in your way.
Study these three guitar speed exercises to learn the valuable lessons within them that every shredder needs to know:
Guitar Speed Exercise #1: Speed Tapping Over Multiple Strings
Most people tap in the same way:
They use their fretting hand to play fast legato lines to make the tapping sound really fast.
No doubt, this sounds awesome!
However, very few people tap fast with their picking hand finger.
This sounds really cool too!
Plus –
It works as a great practice tool to give you tons of repetitions compared to normal tapping licks.
This helps you get better faster and normal tapping feel much easier by contrast.
Here are some examples:
·
Tapping the highest note in a tapping guitar
lick rapidly, instead of just one time.
·
Tapping out scales and improving the cleanliness
of the transition from one string to the next by rapidly tapping the last note
of the string, before moving to the first note of the next string.
· Rapidly tapping the highest note of a lick while moving the fret hand with legato to play lower notes on the same string.
Play a single note with rapid speed has the effect of helping you focus better on what your hands are doing. This is similar to playing in “speed bursts” like in the following video:Guitar Speed Exercise #2: 6 String Sweep Picking Arpeggio Breakdown
Playing massive 6 string sweep picking arpeggios sounds badass!
However, you don’t just jump right into these large patterns if you haven’t even tried them before, do you?
Sure!
When you practice them the right way.
What way is this?
Breaking down the pattern into smaller, bite-size chunks that you can master individually before combining them together to play the whole thing.
This makes it much easier to practice and less frustrating too!
Let’s do this right now with a common 6-string arpeggio:
See the different colored lines at the bottom of the tab.
These represent the notes to practice in isolation from the rest of the lick (these are just examples, you can practice whichever notes you like of course).
Practice these different segments using the speed bursts method in the video from exercise #1, then combine one, two or more segments together when a single segment starts to feel easy.
Eventually, you are able to conquer the entire arpeggios this way without the frustration that comes from trying to initially play the whole thing at once and failing.
Guitar Speed Exercise #3: Lock Your Hands In Sync With Clean Settings
Having your hands in perfect sync is critical for making your guitar speed feel smooth and effortless like how the pros play.
What’s a great way to do this?
Easy.
Take any guitar lick you want to play faster and pick the strings with a LOT of power using clean settings.
What does this do?
Picking with power helps lock both hands together in sync because when you pick with power, your mistakes are much easier to identify and fix. By simply picking with more power, you’ll even adjust to correct your mistakes over time even without thinking about it.
Using clean settings amplifies this effect.
After practicing in this manner on clean settings, playing the same guitar lick instantly becomes much easier while using distortion!
To amplify the benefits of this, try double picking the notes like this:
Heavy picking power + double picking + clean settings = hands locked in sync like the gears of a watch.
After practicing in this manner, the speed and cleanliness of your guitar playing starts to go through the roof!
Learn more ways to play guitar faster and cleaner than ever by reading the advice in this article about playing guitar fast.