Learn A Fun Guitar Speed Practice Routine For Smooth & Clean Playing Like Never Before

It sucks when your guitar speed seems to be stuck and you can’t get any faster. A great way to get “unstuck” is to push yourself to try new things you’ve never tried before. This has the effect of making what you normally play feel easier while also showing you what else is truly possible (that you might’ve never considered before).

The guitar speed practice routine below pushes you to take your playing to the next level by focusing on difficult challenges that people usually avoid without thinking about it.

Result: You strengthen the weaknesses that are holding you back and become a better overall guitarist to play with speed that feel effortless.

The challenges below give you a solid guitar speed practice routine to help you get faster while explaining the core weakness being improved:

Challenge One: Using Single String Scales On The Lowest (In Pitch) String Only

Weakness being improved:

Playing on the lowest string removes the ability for you to anchor your hand on the strings (as you normally would on higher strings). When you struggle to play in this manner, it shows that you could improve your concentration while picking. Picking on a thicker string also helps you improve your general picking technique as it requires picking through heavier resistance than on thinner strings.

Use this exercise to get started improving your guitar picking technique:

Start by playing just the first 6 notes over and over. When you are able to do this reliably (without your hands getting out of sync/making a lot of mistakes), add a few more notes.

This exercise is easily transferrable to any string, so use it in this manner. If you have a 7 string guitar, playing this exercise on the low B string gives your picking technique even more benefit.

Here are some ways to make this style of practice even more efficient for developing better guitar speed technique:

Alternate between playing 3 notes of the pattern in the example, then moving to the high E string (skipping strings in the process) and playing the same 3 notes. Try to make this transition as fluid as possible.
Create your own variations of the lick and practice improvising using only notes on a single string. This helps you get out of habit of only playing in certain fretboard positions that feel comfortable.

Challenge Two: Double Picking Notes In A Guitar Lick

Weakness being improved:

Double picking notes helps your picking hand catch up to the fast movements being performed by your fretting hand. This improves your synchronization between the two, making your guitar speed cleaner and more accurate.

The example below shows a lick on the left and its double picked version on the right:

Practice this for a few minutes at a specific tempo and track how many mistakes you make. Then double pick it for a few minutes. Repeat this 3 times and watch how much it helps you keep both hands in sync to make less mistakes.

Apply this same idea to any guitar lick you are struggling with to play it with better speed and accuracy.

Challenge Three: Playing With Descending Runs Only

Weakness being improved:

This fixes the imbalance in your picking technique between your downstrokes and upstrokes. Downstrokes are naturally stronger, so upstrokes become less consistent and weak (making your entire guitar picking technique break down).

Descending runs improve the upstrokes to make fast playing more consistent, so it isn’t smooth during some parts and inconsistent during others.

Practice this exercise for a few minutes using ONLY upstrokes:

Next, practice it using the following picking pattern:

Note 1: Up

Note 2: Down

Note 3: Up (continue the upstroke to the next string in one motion)

Note 4: Up (using the continued motion from previous pickstroke)

Note 5: Down

Note 6: Up

This makes your picking feel smooth at fast speeds. Learn more ways to master smooth and effortless picking technique in this guitar speed article.

Challenge Four: Playing Big Position Shifts

Weakness being improved:

Making position shifts commonly causes mistakes because it causes both hands to get out of sync. Practicing with big position shifts overemphasizes this issue to make normal shifts much easier to play cleanly.

Take time to practice this guitar speed exercise two strings at a time:

Beginning on string 3, focus on eliminating noise while moving from fretting the 10^th fret of the D string with your pinky, to fretting the 9^th fret of the G string with your index finger.

Practice the motion of just playing these two notes until you can quickly move between them in a fluid manner. This keeps them from holding back the rest of the lick.

The exercise below forces you to make bigger and bigger shifts, making shifts (like in the example above) much easier:

While picking in these guitar speed exercises, make sure to use the efficient picking technique discussed in this video:

Want to learn more ways to develop killer speed guitar technique and become a better player faster? Learn them now and take your speed to a new dimension by downloading this speed guitar resource.