What To Use Instead Of Common Guitar Finger Speed Exercises To Become A Killer Shred Guitarist

It’s a myth that using generic chromatic guitar finger speed exercises helps you develop massive shred skills.

We all know these kinds of exercises…

For example: Playing licks that move up string by string with the fretboard pattern of “1-2-3-4”.

There is nothing inherently wrong with practicing these things, but doing so is very unlikely to help you actually increase guitar speed or become a much better overall player.

So, what should you do instead?

Answer: Focus on strengthening the skills and small movements involved in fast, precise guitar playing.

Here are three good guitar speed exercises for faster fingers, accurate playing and killer shred skills:

Make Your Picking Technique Faster & More Locked-In With Double Picking

The key to playing guitar fast isn’t just moving your hands faster, it’s being able to move efficiently while keeping both hands locked together in sync.

For example:

Ever try playing a guitar lick really fast and some of it sounds good while some of it seems to fall apart due to missed/muffled notes?

This is what it’s like to play with your hands out of sync.

This indicates that your brain is unable to process what your hands are playing fast enough to perform the notes correctly.

No problem!

There are many ways to fix this issue to lock your hands in sync for fast and clean playing.

Here’s one:

Double pick the notes of the lick.

Compare the short guitar lick fragment on the left in the tab below with the right double-picked section:

Any lick can be practiced this way for quick improvement.

Play through the double picked section of the tab above at a slower tempo than what you would play with in the original lick, focusing on playing perfect notes.

After doing this for several minutes, playing the original lick magically becomes much easier because your brain has locked both hands together.

This makes double picking an excellent way to overcome speed plateaus.

 

Improve Your Guitar Technique In Both Hands At Different Times

As guitarists it’s very easy for us to get into the same playing habits and maintain those habits for years without questioning them.

Sometimes there is a TON of value in breaking these habits down and re-assessing them.

One of these habits is playing guitar without thinking closely about what each hand is doing in any given moment.

How does this help you play faster and cleaner?

I’ll tell you:

It’s easier to concentrate on fixing specific problems in your technique when you isolate the problem and practice it with intense focus.

Practicing any given guitar lick separately in each hand helps you do this.

Try these approaches with any guitar practice item you are working on:

·         Finger the notes of the item without actually fretting or picking them. Just lightly press your fingers on the strings.

·         Fret the notes and play them using legato technique only. This isolates the movement of your fretting hand.

·         Pick the strings that the notes of the item are on without fretting the actual notes. Use your fretting hand to mute the strings while you do this. This isolates the movement of your picking hand so you are able to consciously focus on it (most guitarists never learn about this approach).

Mastering A Guitar Scale Position By Position

How do most guitar players practice scales?

Answer: By playing a pattern from the lowest string to the highest string/highest position over and over.

Using a guitar practice approach has some benefit but is very limiting if that is all you do.

Mastering scales for faster and smoother guitar solos is about being able to effortlessly move through patterns across the fretboard.

What is a good way to practice this?

Practice guitar scales within a single octave, in two positions (that are two frets apart).

In the tab below, you have two scales that contain the same notes and are two frets apart.

With these two patterns, practice moving between them side by side on a single string for 30 seconds.

Next, move to the next string and repeat until you’ve played all the notes of the scales.

Then practice playing the first 5 notes of the first scale, then switch to the first five notes of the second scale.

Find as many ways to move back and forth between these patterns as you can.

This improves your ability to use them without getting stuck or lost in the middle of playing. As you improve, add more scales to your repertoire until you can move freely across the entire fretboard!

Note: Don’t forget to improvise and practice guitar phrasing with these scales! This adds extra musicality to your practice to improve your soloing, fretboard memorization and technique all at once.

Now that you know some effective guitar finger speed exercises for shred, it’s time to learn how to not only get faster, but do so with less practice!

Turn your speed way up by using the ideas in this guitar speed eBook.