What To Do When Your Guitar Speed Is Not Improving After A Lot Of Practice In Order To Get Faster Right Away

Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to improve your guitar speed, but seeing little or no results after practicing for a long time. This frequently causes guitar players to lose motivation or stop practicing although… don’t fall into the same trap!

There are likely common reasons why your guitar speed is not improving that can be quickly and easily fixed. Once fixed, you are able to quickly play faster than ever before.

Here are some of the most common reasons why your guitar speed may not be improving and what to do to start playing fast:

Reasons Why Guitar Speed Isn’t Improving Due To Guitar Practice:

1. Not Having Clear Musical Goals

Practicing guitar without clear goals is like trying to find your way in the forest without a map or a compass to guide you. It’s easy to end up making little to no progress toward achieving anything significant for long periods of time.

Make your guitar speed goals as clearly-defined and tangible as possible. Ask yourself what you want play specifically. Set short, medium and long-term goals. Then track your progress every week to ensure you are heading in the right direction.


2. Practicing The Wrong Things

Guitar players frequently practice the incorrect practice items needed to help them reach their musical goals.

For example:

Guitarists commonly practice things they “think” they should be practicing like scale patterns, arpeggios or random exercises. This leads them to making very slow progress towards reaching their goals.

Break your guitar speed goals down as much as you can to find the specific skills that must be trained to reach them. Then write them down and order them in priority based on your personal strengths and weaknesses.


3. Not Practicing Efficiently

Sometimes you practice all the right things but do so in a very inefficient way. Many guitarists make the mistake of practicing for many hours at a time. Doing this causes you to lose focus only to waste a lot of time and energy mindlessly playing.

In general, our mind begins to wander and lose focus after around 45 minutes. Make your guitar practice more efficient by breaking it down into smaller sessions.

Practicing guitar while focusing on getting the most benefit from every minute always beats practicing for excessively long hours.

This video explains a great way to make your guitar practice more efficient so you get faster in less time:

To ensure that you are practicing guitar as efficiently as possible while practicing the right things, use the guitar practice generator.


Reasons Why Guitar Speed Isn’t Improving Due To Guitar Technique:

It’s easy for poor technique to turn into long-term bad habits that hold you back from playing guitar at the speed you want. Taking the time to closely examine your guitar playing helps you identify these flaws in your technique, so you correct them and quickly get back on track.


Here are the technical problems to look for while playing any given pattern on guitar:


Both hands are not in perfect sync together – Whenever playing something fast and clean feels like a struggle, it’s likely that your hands are out of sync. Track how well your hands are in sync by double-picking each note in the pattern, then comparing this to your max normal speed.


Picking hand is using inefficient movement – Using too much movement wastes energy and time. This is extremely important when you want to play guitar at fast speeds.

This video demonstrates how to use efficient picking motion to make guitar speed effortless:

Check your guitar playing to see where you can reduce the number of picking strokes you make while playing to make your picking more efficient.


There is unwanted noise coming from the strings – This refers to noise from unplayed open strings or scratchy noise that sounds sloppy. Correct this by using efficient guitar muting technique.


Weak note articulation – Picking the strings with weak articulation makes it harder to play guitar fast and clean. It’s common for people to get into the habit of doing this without even noticing (especially when they are struggling with a lick).

Use heavy picking power to slice through the strings and articulate notes as clearly and loudly as possible.

After reading this article you surely have found one or more things that are keeping your from playing guitar with the speed you want. If you haven’t, work together with a guitar teacher to quickly assess your playing and help you reach your musical goals.

Use this information to start becoming the shred guitarist you always wanted to be!

Learn how to double your guitar speed while practicing less (as mentioned above) by downloading this free guitar speed guide.