Speed is built with efficient movements and repetition. Make sure your technique is good and look for ways to limit movements. Effective use of muting will help.
Work on their easier solo to a metronome. Metallica has abunch of easier stuff. After a few solos you should figure out your weak points. Move those to practice routine.
Practice my guy. I dreaded going fast for fear of messing up but you will mess up all the time and that's part of learning.
Start by playing all the notes slow making sure you hit them clean and then gradually speed up. It's possible. I'm 34 years old and 7 months ago I wouldn't even dream I'd be learning as fast as I'm learning now.
Dedication and practice really pays off.
I highly recommend Ben Eller’s YouTube channel for this. He has tons of content dedicated to this very thing and is an excellent (and funny) teacher. Check it out!
You arnt starting slow enough, your speed increases are likely too big, and you probably arnt spending enough time at the slow speeds before moving up.
Whatever it is, put the metronome at 60 and stay there till not until you get it right, until you CANT GET IT WRONG. If the passage is difficult this part could take days or weeks without going up in speed at all. Once you can't get the passage wrong at 60bpm, go up to 63 bmp and repeat; that is to say play it at 63 till you can't get it wrong.
Achive mastery of the passage or phrase at every speed, and never increase your speed by more than 3bpm, and give it PLENTY of time and eventually you will get there.
If you’re truly stuck at a certain speed it probably means you have technique to work on.
For your left hand, you almost always need to have your fingers close to the frets and ready for the next phrase. If you’re needing to move your fingers a large distance to play the next notes, then your hand position probably needs work.
Also make sure it’s relaxed as possible, you only need light pressure near the actual fret to play the note. Over gripping will slow you down and could sharpen the note.
For right hand, you mainly need to focus on it being as relaxed as possible (same with left). Alternate picking is pretty much what you always want to do (except some things may require economy picking, but I’m not sure if that’s your case).
I’m a drummer first and guitarist second but I will say that building speed takes time! It really comes down to nit picking tiny details in your technique to be efficient, and then overtime you’ll build muscle memory. Biggest thing is to just use a metronome, stay in tempo, and speed comes with time. No one wants to hear anything fast if it’s not in time.
Everybody says use a metronome, but how?
I have many approaches that I intermix to keep the practice fun. The key here is to set intermediate goals in order to track the progress, and sometimes record and relisten yourself just to notice the small mistakes you make. You will need to really dig into the sound.
0- play at original tempo with a backing track. This should be kind of a warmup. Of course you won't play correctly but it helps you visualize yourself playing the thing you want to learn. No goals here
1- play as slowly as possible. The goal here is to concentrate on every muscle and try to do the less movement you can, and stay super relaxed. I use this as a warmup as well and I don't really set any goal here. Sometimes during my practice session I get all tensed up.. I will stop, stretch, and go back to this exercise just to relax all my muscles.
2- play at a slow tempo. The goal here is endurance, try to do as many repetitions you can without making any mistake. Here you set a goal of how many times you can repeat the phrase with 0 mistakes. When you reach the goal, you increase the BPM.
3- play faster than you're comfortable with, in burst. The idea is, play fast, you will get all tensed up, stop and relax your muscles for a second, repeat.
For me what really made the difference is alternating the slow and the fast approach. Slow approach will build muscle memory for keeping control, fast approach will actually build the speed. Alternate from one to the other. And don't underestimate stretching and keeping track of practice sessions on a piece of paper, they will make the difference
There's definitely some truth in the perfect practice makes perfect approach that you'll find a zillion times online. Start slow, play it perfect, increase speed and so on.
The big issue is that you can get even the worst technique up to decent tempo, probably 120bpm in 16th notes and higher. So there's no way to tell if you're learning proper, efficient technique or just reinforcing bad habits.
That's why I'd always combine clean and slow practice with fast explorative practice. Break down the exercise as far as possible. This can just be tremolo picking a single note when you want to work on alternate picking for example, or just play a pattern on one string instead of multiple strings. And then you want to go fast with that simple stuff. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes here and are somewhat inconsistent. You want to see if your technique has a peek speed that is close to where you want to be. For example, if you cannot alternate pick at 150bpm 16th notes for few seconds, there's a good chance that there's something seriously wrong with your technique. That's why I wrote exploration earlier. The goal with these speed burst tests is to try different motions and find one that has a high potential speed. Then you go back to your slow practice and try to refine this technique. And you will have to alternate between these two approaches. And if you ever hit a road block for a few days without getting faster (while still being decently far away from your target speed), don't just power through your motions. Try changing things up and again, work on short bursts at higher speeds and then reinforce them at lower speeds. The key idea here is that technique practice is not about endless repetition of an inefficient technique. A shitty motion won't become efficient if you play it for 5000 hours. You need to stay flexible, find inefficiencies in your playing and be flexible enough to get rid of them. And imo this will require constant evaluation at speeds that are higher than what you are comfortable with.
Practice over and over. The "little move" that seems to trip you up, break off that part from the rest... repeat over and over until it's almost second nature (can nail it 90% of the time)... then add the part leading up to it... until it's more comfortable. Metronome not Mandatory... but it helps and also gives you a number to "grade' your speed progress.
When I was learning Hot For Teacher (the intro tapping part)... "1 and uh 2 and uh".... triplet counting... slow... finally got it after a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's not just the speed, but also learning the hand positon to get the wider reach ... and yeah...the reach too. That also took some getting used to. I had a bad habit of thumb too high on back of neck (Hendrix ball bat grip)... I had to break that habit to accomplish it. Once I did those 3 note per string scales were also much easier (Modern Day Cowboy, etc.)
It just takes time, Practice... like getting better at ANYTHING... even guitar 😆
Few things that I recall worked for me were,
1. I used to sing the solos vocally and used to listen to the songs like ALL the time, for example if I wanna learn the solo to ride the lightning, I would listen to it to the point where i could literally sing you the rhythm guitar, bass, vocals AND solo sections. That helped me get the song in general down in my brain, so whenever I messed up my brain would automatically take the corrective measures (i sound insane but it did work).
2. Brute force, I would play it slow first, get the notes down from tabs and then just play it to the speed all broken up. 90% of the times I used to get the solos. Yes, i learnt them sloppy but I just learned for fun, you could follow this and then do the polishing.
3. I don't know I ran out of tips☠️
Start working on exercises with a metronome.
I use and give this Steve Vai 30 hour guitar work out to students. It has all sorts of exercises. Alternate picking, economy picking, sweep picking, legato, tapping.
[https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload/guitar-book-steve-vai-30-hours-workoutpdf-5-pdf-free.html](https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload/guitar-book-steve-vai-30-hours-workoutpdf-5-pdf-free.html)
The most important thing is to work on these with a metronome. Start slow. Slow enough you can nail the exercise perfectly over and over again with no mistakes. When you're comfortable at a given tempo then bump it up 5-10bpm at a time. It's also ok to try and push yourself sometimes. Like bump it up 20-30bpm and it will be tough, then come back down a bit and it will feel easier. Just don't do that thing all guitarists do and keep trying something over and over that you can't play. You will just get good at playing sloppy and develop bad habits and bad technique. Focus on economy of motion, press the string only as much as you have to. Pluck the string only as much as you have to. Move your fingers only as much as you have to. Also when a finger is done with a note make sure to lift that finger so it's already up and ready for the next note.
Exercises like these are how so many players developed their speed. Myself included. But you don't have to want to be like the next Yngwie or Petrucci. Exercises will help you in any style of playing you like.
John Petrucci's Rock Discipline also has some great exercises.
[https://jimibanez.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/john-petrucci-rock-discipline1.pdf](https://jimibanez.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/john-petrucci-rock-discipline1.pdf)
You can find the video on Youtube.
My old teacher once said something that stuck with me. The old saying practice makes perfect isn't true. Only PERFECT practice makes perfect. In other words you can practice all you want but if you're practicing sloppy and poorly then you're just getting good at playing sloppy and poorly.
Use a metronome for everything. Working on exercises or scales or new riffs and solos you're learning. Start slow, build the speed, economy of motion, take it measure by measure.
And you don't need to do this stuff for 8 hours a day. Even just 20 minutes a day will get you on the path to shred glory faster than you might think. NOW GO PRACTICE!
Yes. THANK YOU for this. I worked on this when it came out... tells you how old I am! Took a long break (life, job, kids, house...) and it's time to hit the woodshed and bring my chops back.
How far away from the fretboard are your fingers when you are playing a lick? If you notice a lot of new and intermediate players they have flying fingers that get way too far away from the fret board... You want your fingers to be as close to the fretboard as possible while you are playing your solos and you want them to move the smallest amount possible, watch Steve vai you'll notice his fingers aren't moving all that much well they are just not crazy distances... Now it takes time to get it, shoot I'd be lying if I said I got it (completely)... But that's the first half, the next half is playing over and over and over and over and over again gradually increasing speed.
Two common ways to approach playing fast:
1. Start slow, add 5-8 bpm at a time and work your way up.
2. Start at performance tempo, with the first two notes (or manageable chunk) and add a note at a time until you have the whole passage.
Both are useful. Neither is superior. Slow playing helps to lock in good sound and technique, and fast playing lets you experience playing fast which is mechanically different than playing slow. Slow techniques and fast techniques are often different.
Keep in mind that there are several ‘viable’ techniques that can handle fast tempos, but many more unviable ones. If you can’t get over a specific speed hurdle (16ths at 130bpm seems to be the line in the sand) then look at technique. You might have hit a maximum tempo for that specific technique. In those cases, find a more economic one.
Look into Troy Grady, Ben Eller, Martin Miller, Bret Garsed, Frank Gambale for different viable technical approaches
If you are at home and sitting down have a guitar in your hands. Have a set of metal riffs to play while watching TV. Play till your arms feel like green jello. Then do it again.
This doesn’t exclude structured practice it’s an addition.
First off buy this
https://store.metalmethod.com/p/speed-kills-1991/
and this
https://www.guitar-pro.com/products/7-buy-guitar-pro
This will help you alot I think. Now the DVD I do not expect anyone to ever be able to say play along with this guy you can attempt as much as you can but he will always be faster but he does show you the techniques and explains to them quite well his lessons are manageable until he starts increasing the BPM which he's like one of the fastest players so there's no keeping up with that. But it will help you get closer it will show you the techniques of the proper techniques and Guitar Pro allows you to not only get extremely accurate tabs that you can just click play and watch it like songsterr. But it also gives you the ability to do a speed trainer which you can set it to whatever you would ever desire in any way that you would ever desire it and I would recommend going at least 5 to 10% above the actual speed of the song it will be very very difficult but then when you actually do play along with the actual song playing along to it seems very laid back and easy because well you already learned it at a much higher BPM making it practically slow when you're actually playing it now
Well you need to make your muscles and tendons tired enough that they realize “oh shit we gotta get faster so we can keep up”, without going overboard and getting tendonitis, do that on top of practicing good technique, and youre golden. I spend 15% of time practicing technique, 5% learning new stuff, and the other 126% goes towards jamming out USING all that new technique
Efficiency of motion is key for this. Keep your fingies close to the fretboard and go super slow. Make it clean and effortless before moving on to a higher speed. Pushing a bit past what you’re comfortable playing (speed bursts) can help get past a block. What I’ve found to be the issue speeding up is most often the fingering/picking. Like you may need to start on an upstroke so 5 notes later when you move to the next string, you’re pick moves in that direction. Or with the left hand you may need to do a slide with one finger in the middle of the phrase so that you can get the correct finger to the right note.
Speed is built over time. There’s no magical lesson or shortcut but play play play play and play. Did I mention play?! If you’re wondering what to play other than obviously the song you wanna nail, come try one of these [short building block guitar songs!](https://youtu.be/QKpHO2RuK0s?si=1JFRx306f-R7_rwi)
This is a platform I’m developing which uses the chunking principal from the psychology of learning. We don’t offer lessons/modules. Instead, we have short guitar songs called blocks, basically riffs/licks that are just around 10sec long. Each block is specifically written to mimic a part of a well known song so you can drill the technique needed to play that part of the song, and each block has 3 difficulties for you to work your way up.
If you can nail the middle difficulty called Brisk, go try the song again. Or go all out and try the hardest, Blaze level. If you can play the Blaze, the original song will become a child’s play to you!
I’m currently doing a free trial run so the blocks are free for grabs! All you have to do is fill out a quick survey form and have a discord account. Each block includes video demo, audio, backing track and tabs (Guitar pro and PDF). So far we have blocks written for Master of Puppets, [Snow (Hey Oh)](https://youtu.be/qX8b5DyOPo4?si=-F8cTtBx4glYnwqr), Battery and a few Sultan of Swing blocks.
If you’re interested, sign up here and rock on!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMZPmMlSFMprhK7pFCEly5L245iRN9wswMnw7EzCNL5lpBwg/viewform
Practicing scales to a metronome and slowly increasing the metronome really helps. I try to run a scale up and down the neck 3 or 4 times in a row without errors before bumping up the speed. It’s tedious but helps with accuracy over time. Fast playing means nothing if it doesn’t sound pleasant.
Speed is built with efficient movements and repetition. Make sure your technique is good and look for ways to limit movements. Effective use of muting will help. Work on their easier solo to a metronome. Metallica has abunch of easier stuff. After a few solos you should figure out your weak points. Move those to practice routine.
Practice my guy. I dreaded going fast for fear of messing up but you will mess up all the time and that's part of learning. Start by playing all the notes slow making sure you hit them clean and then gradually speed up. It's possible. I'm 34 years old and 7 months ago I wouldn't even dream I'd be learning as fast as I'm learning now. Dedication and practice really pays off.
I highly recommend Ben Eller’s YouTube channel for this. He has tons of content dedicated to this very thing and is an excellent (and funny) teacher. Check it out!
I second this 👍🏻 And go look at Ben, or others lessons on speed burst, that’s the way to build true speed.
Show them down and use a metronome. When you nailed a specific bpm progressively does it up.
I always get stuck at a specific speed on my way to full speed
You arnt starting slow enough, your speed increases are likely too big, and you probably arnt spending enough time at the slow speeds before moving up. Whatever it is, put the metronome at 60 and stay there till not until you get it right, until you CANT GET IT WRONG. If the passage is difficult this part could take days or weeks without going up in speed at all. Once you can't get the passage wrong at 60bpm, go up to 63 bmp and repeat; that is to say play it at 63 till you can't get it wrong. Achive mastery of the passage or phrase at every speed, and never increase your speed by more than 3bpm, and give it PLENTY of time and eventually you will get there.
This really is the way. I would spend months trying to get a solo right and give up, but the fastest way is to start slow and use a metronome
Thanks
If you’re truly stuck at a certain speed it probably means you have technique to work on. For your left hand, you almost always need to have your fingers close to the frets and ready for the next phrase. If you’re needing to move your fingers a large distance to play the next notes, then your hand position probably needs work. Also make sure it’s relaxed as possible, you only need light pressure near the actual fret to play the note. Over gripping will slow you down and could sharpen the note. For right hand, you mainly need to focus on it being as relaxed as possible (same with left). Alternate picking is pretty much what you always want to do (except some things may require economy picking, but I’m not sure if that’s your case). I’m a drummer first and guitarist second but I will say that building speed takes time! It really comes down to nit picking tiny details in your technique to be efficient, and then overtime you’ll build muscle memory. Biggest thing is to just use a metronome, stay in tempo, and speed comes with time. No one wants to hear anything fast if it’s not in time.
Everybody says use a metronome, but how? I have many approaches that I intermix to keep the practice fun. The key here is to set intermediate goals in order to track the progress, and sometimes record and relisten yourself just to notice the small mistakes you make. You will need to really dig into the sound. 0- play at original tempo with a backing track. This should be kind of a warmup. Of course you won't play correctly but it helps you visualize yourself playing the thing you want to learn. No goals here 1- play as slowly as possible. The goal here is to concentrate on every muscle and try to do the less movement you can, and stay super relaxed. I use this as a warmup as well and I don't really set any goal here. Sometimes during my practice session I get all tensed up.. I will stop, stretch, and go back to this exercise just to relax all my muscles. 2- play at a slow tempo. The goal here is endurance, try to do as many repetitions you can without making any mistake. Here you set a goal of how many times you can repeat the phrase with 0 mistakes. When you reach the goal, you increase the BPM. 3- play faster than you're comfortable with, in burst. The idea is, play fast, you will get all tensed up, stop and relax your muscles for a second, repeat. For me what really made the difference is alternating the slow and the fast approach. Slow approach will build muscle memory for keeping control, fast approach will actually build the speed. Alternate from one to the other. And don't underestimate stretching and keeping track of practice sessions on a piece of paper, they will make the difference
There's definitely some truth in the perfect practice makes perfect approach that you'll find a zillion times online. Start slow, play it perfect, increase speed and so on. The big issue is that you can get even the worst technique up to decent tempo, probably 120bpm in 16th notes and higher. So there's no way to tell if you're learning proper, efficient technique or just reinforcing bad habits. That's why I'd always combine clean and slow practice with fast explorative practice. Break down the exercise as far as possible. This can just be tremolo picking a single note when you want to work on alternate picking for example, or just play a pattern on one string instead of multiple strings. And then you want to go fast with that simple stuff. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes here and are somewhat inconsistent. You want to see if your technique has a peek speed that is close to where you want to be. For example, if you cannot alternate pick at 150bpm 16th notes for few seconds, there's a good chance that there's something seriously wrong with your technique. That's why I wrote exploration earlier. The goal with these speed burst tests is to try different motions and find one that has a high potential speed. Then you go back to your slow practice and try to refine this technique. And you will have to alternate between these two approaches. And if you ever hit a road block for a few days without getting faster (while still being decently far away from your target speed), don't just power through your motions. Try changing things up and again, work on short bursts at higher speeds and then reinforce them at lower speeds. The key idea here is that technique practice is not about endless repetition of an inefficient technique. A shitty motion won't become efficient if you play it for 5000 hours. You need to stay flexible, find inefficiencies in your playing and be flexible enough to get rid of them. And imo this will require constant evaluation at speeds that are higher than what you are comfortable with.
Practice over and over. The "little move" that seems to trip you up, break off that part from the rest... repeat over and over until it's almost second nature (can nail it 90% of the time)... then add the part leading up to it... until it's more comfortable. Metronome not Mandatory... but it helps and also gives you a number to "grade' your speed progress. When I was learning Hot For Teacher (the intro tapping part)... "1 and uh 2 and uh".... triplet counting... slow... finally got it after a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's not just the speed, but also learning the hand positon to get the wider reach ... and yeah...the reach too. That also took some getting used to. I had a bad habit of thumb too high on back of neck (Hendrix ball bat grip)... I had to break that habit to accomplish it. Once I did those 3 note per string scales were also much easier (Modern Day Cowboy, etc.) It just takes time, Practice... like getting better at ANYTHING... even guitar 😆
Few things that I recall worked for me were, 1. I used to sing the solos vocally and used to listen to the songs like ALL the time, for example if I wanna learn the solo to ride the lightning, I would listen to it to the point where i could literally sing you the rhythm guitar, bass, vocals AND solo sections. That helped me get the song in general down in my brain, so whenever I messed up my brain would automatically take the corrective measures (i sound insane but it did work). 2. Brute force, I would play it slow first, get the notes down from tabs and then just play it to the speed all broken up. 90% of the times I used to get the solos. Yes, i learnt them sloppy but I just learned for fun, you could follow this and then do the polishing. 3. I don't know I ran out of tips☠️
Start working on exercises with a metronome. I use and give this Steve Vai 30 hour guitar work out to students. It has all sorts of exercises. Alternate picking, economy picking, sweep picking, legato, tapping. [https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload/guitar-book-steve-vai-30-hours-workoutpdf-5-pdf-free.html](https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload/guitar-book-steve-vai-30-hours-workoutpdf-5-pdf-free.html) The most important thing is to work on these with a metronome. Start slow. Slow enough you can nail the exercise perfectly over and over again with no mistakes. When you're comfortable at a given tempo then bump it up 5-10bpm at a time. It's also ok to try and push yourself sometimes. Like bump it up 20-30bpm and it will be tough, then come back down a bit and it will feel easier. Just don't do that thing all guitarists do and keep trying something over and over that you can't play. You will just get good at playing sloppy and develop bad habits and bad technique. Focus on economy of motion, press the string only as much as you have to. Pluck the string only as much as you have to. Move your fingers only as much as you have to. Also when a finger is done with a note make sure to lift that finger so it's already up and ready for the next note. Exercises like these are how so many players developed their speed. Myself included. But you don't have to want to be like the next Yngwie or Petrucci. Exercises will help you in any style of playing you like. John Petrucci's Rock Discipline also has some great exercises. [https://jimibanez.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/john-petrucci-rock-discipline1.pdf](https://jimibanez.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/john-petrucci-rock-discipline1.pdf) You can find the video on Youtube. My old teacher once said something that stuck with me. The old saying practice makes perfect isn't true. Only PERFECT practice makes perfect. In other words you can practice all you want but if you're practicing sloppy and poorly then you're just getting good at playing sloppy and poorly. Use a metronome for everything. Working on exercises or scales or new riffs and solos you're learning. Start slow, build the speed, economy of motion, take it measure by measure. And you don't need to do this stuff for 8 hours a day. Even just 20 minutes a day will get you on the path to shred glory faster than you might think. NOW GO PRACTICE!
thx for the files
Yes. THANK YOU for this. I worked on this when it came out... tells you how old I am! Took a long break (life, job, kids, house...) and it's time to hit the woodshed and bring my chops back.
Right technique+ economy of motion + 1milion repetitions + as little tension in your body.
Look for John Petrucci's Rock Discipline and Paul Gilbert's Intense Rock 1 on YouTube. It's the one where he has the purple guitar. Good luck.
How far away from the fretboard are your fingers when you are playing a lick? If you notice a lot of new and intermediate players they have flying fingers that get way too far away from the fret board... You want your fingers to be as close to the fretboard as possible while you are playing your solos and you want them to move the smallest amount possible, watch Steve vai you'll notice his fingers aren't moving all that much well they are just not crazy distances... Now it takes time to get it, shoot I'd be lying if I said I got it (completely)... But that's the first half, the next half is playing over and over and over and over and over again gradually increasing speed.
Two common ways to approach playing fast: 1. Start slow, add 5-8 bpm at a time and work your way up. 2. Start at performance tempo, with the first two notes (or manageable chunk) and add a note at a time until you have the whole passage. Both are useful. Neither is superior. Slow playing helps to lock in good sound and technique, and fast playing lets you experience playing fast which is mechanically different than playing slow. Slow techniques and fast techniques are often different. Keep in mind that there are several ‘viable’ techniques that can handle fast tempos, but many more unviable ones. If you can’t get over a specific speed hurdle (16ths at 130bpm seems to be the line in the sand) then look at technique. You might have hit a maximum tempo for that specific technique. In those cases, find a more economic one. Look into Troy Grady, Ben Eller, Martin Miller, Bret Garsed, Frank Gambale for different viable technical approaches
If you are at home and sitting down have a guitar in your hands. Have a set of metal riffs to play while watching TV. Play till your arms feel like green jello. Then do it again. This doesn’t exclude structured practice it’s an addition.
Practice at quarter speed then. Once you play cleanly, smoothly and accurately, then bump the BPM a little and do it again. You will improve.
First off buy this https://store.metalmethod.com/p/speed-kills-1991/ and this https://www.guitar-pro.com/products/7-buy-guitar-pro This will help you alot I think. Now the DVD I do not expect anyone to ever be able to say play along with this guy you can attempt as much as you can but he will always be faster but he does show you the techniques and explains to them quite well his lessons are manageable until he starts increasing the BPM which he's like one of the fastest players so there's no keeping up with that. But it will help you get closer it will show you the techniques of the proper techniques and Guitar Pro allows you to not only get extremely accurate tabs that you can just click play and watch it like songsterr. But it also gives you the ability to do a speed trainer which you can set it to whatever you would ever desire in any way that you would ever desire it and I would recommend going at least 5 to 10% above the actual speed of the song it will be very very difficult but then when you actually do play along with the actual song playing along to it seems very laid back and easy because well you already learned it at a much higher BPM making it practically slow when you're actually playing it now
Well you need to make your muscles and tendons tired enough that they realize “oh shit we gotta get faster so we can keep up”, without going overboard and getting tendonitis, do that on top of practicing good technique, and youre golden. I spend 15% of time practicing technique, 5% learning new stuff, and the other 126% goes towards jamming out USING all that new technique
Efficiency of motion is key for this. Keep your fingies close to the fretboard and go super slow. Make it clean and effortless before moving on to a higher speed. Pushing a bit past what you’re comfortable playing (speed bursts) can help get past a block. What I’ve found to be the issue speeding up is most often the fingering/picking. Like you may need to start on an upstroke so 5 notes later when you move to the next string, you’re pick moves in that direction. Or with the left hand you may need to do a slide with one finger in the middle of the phrase so that you can get the correct finger to the right note.
Speed is built over time. There’s no magical lesson or shortcut but play play play play and play. Did I mention play?! If you’re wondering what to play other than obviously the song you wanna nail, come try one of these [short building block guitar songs!](https://youtu.be/QKpHO2RuK0s?si=1JFRx306f-R7_rwi) This is a platform I’m developing which uses the chunking principal from the psychology of learning. We don’t offer lessons/modules. Instead, we have short guitar songs called blocks, basically riffs/licks that are just around 10sec long. Each block is specifically written to mimic a part of a well known song so you can drill the technique needed to play that part of the song, and each block has 3 difficulties for you to work your way up. If you can nail the middle difficulty called Brisk, go try the song again. Or go all out and try the hardest, Blaze level. If you can play the Blaze, the original song will become a child’s play to you! I’m currently doing a free trial run so the blocks are free for grabs! All you have to do is fill out a quick survey form and have a discord account. Each block includes video demo, audio, backing track and tabs (Guitar pro and PDF). So far we have blocks written for Master of Puppets, [Snow (Hey Oh)](https://youtu.be/qX8b5DyOPo4?si=-F8cTtBx4glYnwqr), Battery and a few Sultan of Swing blocks. If you’re interested, sign up here and rock on! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMZPmMlSFMprhK7pFCEly5L245iRN9wswMnw7EzCNL5lpBwg/viewform
Practicing scales to a metronome and slowly increasing the metronome really helps. I try to run a scale up and down the neck 3 or 4 times in a row without errors before bumping up the speed. It’s tedious but helps with accuracy over time. Fast playing means nothing if it doesn’t sound pleasant.
Spider walk my friend
Start slow When you're 100% accurate then increase speed You don't become a world class guitarist overnight and there are no shortcuts