Lead Guitar Speed Building Exercises That Get Fast Results To Help You Reach A New Level Of Shred

You’ve probably come across lead guitar speed building exercises online that follow the same concept of practicing scales, arpeggios or licks slowly and building up to speed. To make a lot of progress in your speed, add variety to your practice approach.

Giving yourself many different types of exercises helps you improve your speed from different perspectives. This translates to better speed, cleaner notes and more well-balanced musicianship that makes your playing sound totally professional.

Use these three lead guitar speed building exercises to quickly increase your shredding speed:

Lead Guitar Speed Building Exercise For Consistently Clean Playing

Fast guitar playing mistakes often come from struggling to maintain consistent technique over different tempos. For example: you may be able to play something fast and clean while playing at 150 beats per minute, but struggle with it at 130 beats per minute. This indicates that you have technique flaws that need to be corrected.

A great way to make your lead guitar speed consistent is to practice a wide range of tempos within a very short period of time.

Here’s one way to do it:

Use this tab example together with the steps in the guitar speed building exercise below.

Efficient Guitar Picking Over 5 Notes

Step One: Using the exact picking indicated, use a metronome to find the fastest speed at which you are able to play the notes continually without making mistakes. Play at this speed for several minutes to get a feel for it.

Step Two: Turn off the metronome.

Step Three: Beginning at a very slow speed, continuously play the notes of the tab as perfectly as possible.

Step Four: Gradually begin speeding up the tempo at which you play the notes over the span of 2 minutes. At the end of 2 minutes, you should be at your max speed.

While doing this, you will likely notice mistakes at slower speeds too. You “iron out” (correct) mistakes like this by gradually increasing the speed at which you play something within just a couple of minutes.

When you find flaws in your technique, isolate the notes you are struggling with (by only playing these notes). Then re-integrate them in with the rest of the notes once you have improved them.

Use this practice approach with any guitar lick to quickly clean it up at any speed!

This practice approach is much more efficient than following the common guitar speed myth of starting slow and speeding up (over days, weeks or months).

Lead Guitar Speed Building Exercise For Overcoming Difficult Licks

It’s easy to overlook technical flaws when you constantly play everything as fast as possible. Another way to improve your clean lead guitar speed is to practice a few notes of a given lick slowly… then really fast with no rest in between.

This helps you focus on perfecting technique at a slower, fundamental level, while also practicing at a fast speed to quickly apply your skills. By working with just a few notes at a time, you’re able to more easily make fast progress to build your lead guitar speed.

Use this practice approach to play the sweep picking lick below:

Start by playing the lick using eighth notes only (or simply think of it as playing slowly). If you need to, only play 3-4 notes at a time to get used to the pattern.

Once you are comfortable with the pattern, practice it by playing it slowly (as on the left), then quickly (as on the right).

This may cause you to make mistakes… However, this is good! Mistakes give you information on where your technique is breaking down. Evaluate what went wrong, then try again and focus on making any needed correction.

Make it your goal to be able to master the technique needed to play the lick slowly (using the process described above), then to be able to effortlessly move between the slow and fast version of the lick.

Lead Guitar Speed Building Exercise To Quickly Raise Max Speed & Improve Endurance

Playing at speeds you’re not used to raises your mental processing ability to help you play faster than ever. This exercise helps you play faster and improves your consistency using endurance practice:

Take a few minutes to learn this lick at any speed:

Fast Guitar Speed Exercise

Once you are comfortable with it, do the following:

  1. Find the max speed at which you can play the lick clean.

  2. Break the lick down until you are only playing in groups of 3-5 notes at a time.

  3. For 10 repetitions, practice one of the groups you create at 10 beats per minute faster than your max speed. This should not be too difficult since you are only practicing a few notes at once.

  4. Rest for a moment.

  5. Play another 10 repetitions.

  6. Do this until you have played 50 repetitions of the group, then move onto the next group of notes. Write down any problems you notice to make it easier to isolate them and fix them.

Result: You master any guitar lick at a fast speed in less time, find the mistakes that could hold you back and fix them, plus improve your ability to think at faster speeds than you are used to (making it easier to increase your overall guitar speed).

Want to learn more ways to become a faster guitar player in no time? Find out how to increase your speed by 35.8% without moving your hands any faster in this free guitar speed report.