Learn How To Practice Speed On Guitar & Get Results Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible
Wondering how to practice guitar for speed in order to quickly become a faster guitarist? Most guitarists have no idea how to do this and end up practicing with ineffective methods that slow their progress down.
To quickly gain tons of guitar speed, avoid the mistakes most people make and learn how to optimize your practice so you get results every time you pick up your guitar.
Here are 5 powerful tips to help you practice speed on guitar and become a faster player in no time:
Guitar Speed Practice Tip #1: Practice
Guitar With Intense Focus To Get Amazing Results
Don’t make the same mistake many guitarists make of mindlessly repeating scales, arpeggios or licks over and over during your practice. Effective guitar practice that gets results requires practicing with intense focus on the movement of your hands and how it’s helping you improve.
For example: Instead of practicing a scale over and over for 20 minutes. Practice it several times while looking for the notes where mistakes occur. Then think about why these mistakes are occurring, adjust and fix them.
Cut down long practice sessions into 15-25 minute segments and spread them out throughout the day. This ensures that your mind won’t wander while practicing and that every session gets your complete focus.
Guitar Speed Practice Tip #2: Isolate
Your Weaknesses And Fix Them So They Don’t Hold Back Your Overall Playing Speed
You save time and become a better guitar player faster by efficiently isolating problems and fixing them.
This means NOT repeating an entire exercise when you only struggle with one or two notes in it. Isolate your problem areas and focus on them like a laser to quickly fix them so they no longer hold you back.
For example, look at the tab below:
Guitarists often struggle to with string transitions or parts in a lick where a position shift is needed. In this case, focusing on practicing 3, 4, 7 and 8 is more beneficial than practicing the other notes to correct this issue.
This places the emphasis on strengthening your weaknesses by isolating them away from everything else. After fixing the mistakes with these notes, integrating them back into the original lick gives you the chance to feel what it’s like to play everything together (and see if any other mistakes pop up).
Guitar Speed Practice Tip #3: Use
Powerful Speed Burst Training To Practice Without Slowing Down
Programming your mind to process notes at fast speeds is critical for playing guitar fast and clean. One of the best ways to do this is to use speed burst training to practice without slowing down.
This video explains the concept of practicing in bursts of speed and how it helps you quickly play faster/cleaner:This practice technique trains your mind to identify and correct mistakes at faster speeds so you fix them and quickly clean up your playing. Practicing with it for just a week or two has the potential to take your guitar playing to a new dimension!
Learn more about this practice technique by reading this guitar speed article that further explains the speed bursts method.
Guitar Speed Practice Tip #4: Improve Your Guitar Speed By Practicing Many
Skills In One, Intense Session
You don’t need to practice guitar by focusing on one skill for an hour before moving onto another or stopping for the day. It’s fun and easy to make massive progress in your playing by practicing many skills in rapid-fire succession within a short period of time.
Here’s a quick idea for how this works:
Practice the steps below using the tab example.
Step One: Play through the red sweep picking section of the lick at max speed for 1 minute. Pause between repetitions to process and correct any mistakes you hear.
Step Two: Play through the green section (that combines sweep picking with a scale run) of the lick at max speed for 1 minute. Pause between repetitions to process and correct any mistakes you hear.
Step Three: Play through the blue string skipping section of the lick at max speed for 1 minute. Pause between repetitions to process and correct any mistakes you hear.
Step Four: Play through the entire lick for 1 minute. Pause between repetitions to process and correct any mistakes you hear.
Step Five: Rest for one minute.
Repeat these steps twice for a total of 10 minutes practice time. This short and simple circuit intensely trains many different skills helping you improve in many ways at once. Compare this to the kind of results you might get from practicing a single scale aimlessly for 10 minutes and it’s easy to see how powerful this method really is!
Think of your own practice circuits to improve your own specific weaknesses or reach your unique guitar playing goals in less time.
Guitar Speed Practice Tip #5: Set
Specific, Tangible Guitar Playing Goals To Give Your Practice A Clear Purpose
Setting clear goals is key for making progress with your guitar practice. If your goals are vague (i.e. “Get better”), you don’t know what to practice or how to practice it. This makes guitar practice feel frustrating and unmotivating when you don’t see yourself progressing.
The best way to determine which goals you should be working towards is to work with a guitar teacher who has taught hundreds or even thousands of other students. This tells you that he knows he has already helped many people reach their goals and help you break down your goals in a way that makes them easier to achieve.
Work together with a great teacher now if you aren’t already. After you have your musical goals picked out, create a guitar practice schedule to help you reach them as fast as possible.