Guitar Speed Exercise Checklist: How To Get Better Results From Your Practice Time

Want to make your guitar speed exercises more effective so they help you get faster quickly rather than slowly?

Most guitarists have no idea how this works, but it’s quite easy.

Use a short checklist with any guitar practice item you are working on to make sure you get the biggest results from it.

What should you include on this checklist?

I’ll tell you!

Check off each of these 4 points for any exercise to improve the effectiveness of it for increasing your speed:

 

Checklist Point #1. Determine The Exact Purpose Of The Exercise

What do most guitar players practice for speed?

Answer: They play things like licks, scales or arpeggios over and over.

Nothing wrong with these practice items, however; practicing them over and over and hoping to eventually get faster is not a very effective practice approach.

Why?

Here’s one reason:

Eventually, you hit a plateau and something in your technique is holding you back (which you are more likely to overlook using this practice approach).

Instead:

Determine the precise purpose of any guitar speed exercise you work on.

This means:

Whenever you select an exercise, determine what skills are being trained and how this works into your overall guitar playing goals.

 

Checklist Point #2. Break The Practice Item Into Smaller Pieces To Make It Easier

Don’t fall into the common trap guitarists fall into of:

Practicing exercises, licks or other items by repeating every note of the lick every time you practice.

However, most of the time, you will be able to play some aspects of the item better than others.

There is no need to constantly practice things you have already mastered while practicing things you haven’t. This only makes your practice less efficient.

A more efficient approach is to break exercises into small sections.

When you do this, it’s easier to:

·         Find your mistakes

·         Isolate problems

·         Avoid wasting time practicing things you’ve already mastered

For instance:

Imagine you are practicing an exercise that contains 10 notes.

Break this item into groups of up to 3 notes at a time.

Then play through each one individually for many repetitions using this approach:

After each smaller section sounds good, move on to combine the smaller sections together until you can make sure that the whole item flows smoothly from start to finish.

 

Checklist Point #3. Determine How You Can Track Your Progress With The Item

Making sure that your practice items are really helping you is critical for getting better (although most guitarists don’t really do this).

How can you tell exactly?

By tracking your progress consistently.

Doing this is a quick and easy process that only takes a little bit of time.

Here is one way to track your progress with any practice item at the end of the weeks:

Take any guitar exercise and play it 20 times.

While doing this, observe:

·         How many times you played the exercise all the way through without making a mistake

·         The total number of mistakes you made

·         The particular notes that you struggle with most (and # of mistakes made on them)

·         The number of times in a row you were able to play the exercise without mistakes

·         The tempo at which the exercise is being played

After taking note of these things, keep practicing like normal. Then next week, check these areas again to see how much you improved and adjust your practice approach/exercise to focus more in the areas that need it.

 

Checklist Point #4. Think Of 3 Ways To Use The Item Creatively

Guitar players often make the mistake of practicing one skill or item completely in isolation from other areas of their playing. This is the number one cause of guitar solos that sound more like exercises than actual music.

You develop your lead guitar creativity quickly by practicing combining and integrating your skills together in a musical manner.

How do you do this?

Here are some ideas to try with any guitar speed exercise of your choice:

·         Improvise for a few minutes using only the notes in the exercise along with different note rhythms

·         Improvising with the exercise over a backing track (that you make or find online)

·         Look for creative ways to practice things like scales, arpeggios or other techniques together with your exercise

·         Create 20 variations of the exercise using different rhythms, one or two new notes and other guitar techniques

Checking off these points helps you make your guitar speed exercise much more effective for helping your play guitar faster than ever.

Want to learn more ways to play guitar fast?

Learn how to become a faster guitarist while practicing 50% less using this resource on how to double your guitar speed.