Guitar Exercises To Help You Increase Speed While Playing Tough Licks And Solos

One of the most underrated practice approaches for increasing guitar speed is to challenge yourself by making hard things even harder. This may sound counter-intuitive at first, but it’s not. Making difficult guitar licks/exercises harder forces you to take your playing to an even higher level, just to try to keep up.

After taking yourself well beyond your playing limits, coming back down to the original speed you struggled with isn’t so bad.

The following guitar exercises help you increase speed and play challenging solos or licks by forcing you to expand your comfort zone and try new, creative practice approaches:

Develop Better Hand-Eye Coordination To Fix Difficult Notes Using Octave Jumping Practice

Playing guitar cleanly with speed takes very precise movement in small spaces. Expanding that space while still playing the same pattern forces you to increase your hand speed and mental processing speed to play the notes correctly.

This is the idea behind octave jumping practice that helps you increase your guitar playing speed for a specific lick and works as an excellent warmup as well.

·         Break down any guitar solo lick into the notes you struggle the most with.

·         Then find these notes an octave away from the position they are in currently.

For example: The second note is one octave higher than the first:
Guitar Slide Technique

You find notes an octave away (on the same string) by moving exactly 12 frets higher.

·         Next, practice the problem notes along with a few surrounding notes by slowing them down and moving quickly between each note and the note an octave away from it.

For example:
Guitar Speed Exercise

Practice this using slides and by simply picking each note with perfect timing.

·         Next, practice entire groups of notes first at the regular position, then immediately an octave away.

Practicing in this manner improves your ability to play anything at any position on the fretboard while making difficult notes easier by getting you to focus on them closely.


Power Through Difficult Parts In Any Guitar Solo Or Lick Using Picking Power Training

Picking strings with tons of power takes a lot of energy in your picking hand. This brings the side effect of much clearer and articulate notes. It also reveals inconsistencies in your guitar technique so you know what to work on to get better.

Think of this like putting a weight on a baseball bat and taking a few practice swings before you walk up to the plate to face the pitcher. After doing this for just a minute, hitting the ball with perfect timing becomes much easier.

Apply this concept to the notes you are struggling with by picking everything within the solo/lick with normal power except for the difficult notes. Pick these notes with tons of power to really articulate them and emphasize your mistakes.

Doing this makes picking them with normal power feel easier, while also helping you adjust more easily to correct mistakes that hold you back from playing cleanly.

See how picking strings with more power improves your guitar playing with little effort by watching this video:

Eliminate Problem Notes That Hold You Back Using Tremolo Isolation Practice

One or two problem notes have the ability to hold back an entire guitar lick or solo. Isolating and perfecting these notes clears everything up to make your playing flow smoothly.

Tremolo picking is a great way to isolate notes and fix them fast.

One great way to use tremolo picking in this manner is to plan ahead a specific amount of pickstrokes you will use while picking a note (or notes):

This forces you to process every pick stroke mentally, improving your ability to track the movement of your hands more closely.

Strengthening this skill makes fast picking feel effortless and natural.

1.   Start by tremolo picking a note just 3 pickstrokes at a time (as fast as you can), then pausing for a moment before picking again.

Use either of these patterns: downstroke-upstroke-downstroke or upstroke-downstroke-upstroke

Important: While doing this, accent the first and last note using a heavier pick attack. This locks the picking motion together with your brain to help you closely track what your hand is doing.

2.   From here, continue adding more pickstrokes until you are able to tremolo pick 7 or more times while correctly accenting the first and last note.

3.   Then, remove the pause in between repetitions to really lock your mind in sync with your hands!

Apply this exercise to the problem notes in any given solo for just a few minutes and watch as they slowly become easier and easier to play.

Ready to learn more ways to increase your guitar speed? Play guitar twice as fast in no time using the information in this free guitar speed guide.