How To Play Guitar Fast - Avoiding Critical Mistakes In Learning To Increase Your Guitar Speed

Do you struggle with playing the guitar Strumming Practicing The Guitar - Practicing the guitar takes time and dedication. Learning to play the instrument requires consistent practice, but it doesn't guarantee that you'll become a rock star. Nonetheless, with regular practice and skill development, you can still achieve proficiency. There are two methods to start strumming a guitar: using your fingers or using a pick. Find a… quickly? Is your lack of guitar speed making it difficult for you to fully express yourself as a musician? While playing guitar fast may not be every guitarist’s main goal, those who wish to improve their guitar speed greatly desire this skill and are often frustrated with their inability to develop this aspect of their guitar playing. If this describes you, I would like to share some important insights about building guitar speed that can greatly help you develop this skill.

The good news is that almost anyone can learn to play the guitar How exactly to Learn to have fun with the Guitar - If you're wondering how to learn to have fun with the guitar, let me assure you there are several ways for you to master this skill. You can opt for the traditional method – private guitar lessons. You can enroll in guitar summer classes or workshops in your area. Reading instructional music books and chord… quickly. Furthermore, you can directly control the practice process to make it more efficient and achieve your guitar speed goals in much less time than the average guitar player.

The bad news is that many guitar players (those who can’t yet play guitar fast) are completely on the wrong track in their approach to improving guitar speed. I see this all the time when working with new guitar students who come to me wanting to improve their guitar playing. The typical path to improving one’s guitar speed usually involves “starting to practice slowly with a metronome and gradually increasing speed in small increments.” While this approach is effective early on in the process of learning new guitar exercises, relying on it alone to develop your maximum guitar speed can lead to plateaus and frustration. Here are a few reasons why:

This approach places most of your focus on struggling to “move your hands/fingers faster.” However, the concept of moving your fingers faster is a small, insignificant part of the bigger picture of what it takes to improve in order to build guitar speed. The most crucial elements of guitar speed are often neglected and under-practiced with this guitar practice system. As a result, practice sessions often become a series of impatient attempts to break through a current guitar speed plateau.

There are a significant number of different elements that need to be trained in order to learn to play guitar Learn to Enjoy Guitar Fast - Many people want to learn to enjoy guitar, and they give up due to a lack of patience and persistence. They often think about the pain in their fingers during practice and end up not making progress. Becoming proficient at something largely depends on your attitude. If you're not passionate about learning something and only… fast, including: two-hand synchronization, picking articulation, tension control, mental processing speed, hand endurance at fast tempos, guitar speed with a single technique vs. guitar speed when integrating a range of guitar techniques, and more. Each of these “guitar speed components” requires specific practice approaches in order to be effectively mastered. Relying solely on any single guitar speed practicing approach (like the most common one described above) will not help you improve the guitar technique elements that are necessary to build guitar speed.

Great guitar players who can play guitar fast were able to effectively master the aforementioned elements of guitar speed, whether they consciously realized it or not. You must do the same in order to maximize your guitar speed potential. If you don’t know how to start the process of practicing these skills in the best ways, I recommend checking out this free mini-course on learning to play guitar quickly.

To help you expand and improve upon the traditional approach for building guitar speed, here are some guidelines to follow:

Get specific about the issues you may be facing in improving your guitar speed. Simply stating “I can’t play guitar fast” is not specific enough. Being unable to play guitar swiftly is just a symptom of a more complex issue that commonly has multiple causes. As mentioned earlier, the root of your guitar speed limitations may exist in one or more of the specific technical elements that make up the multidimensional talent of “playing guitar fast.” Knowing what is causing your issue is the initial step to solving it. If you identify what is holding you back, you can focus your guitar practice sessions on the particular difficulties that need to be overcome. Having your guitar playing analyzed by an expert guitar instructor is the quickest way to gain this necessary level of clarity.

Use a range of practice tips to improve your guitar speed. As your guitar playing skill level evolves, so will your particular guitar technique challenges. Therefore, the practice techniques you employ at each stage of your guitar playing should also evolve in order to be effective. There is no such thing as a single ultimate guitar practice routine for improving your guitar speed. Of course, there are approaches to practicing guitar that are more efficient than others, but the way you organize your guitar speed training routines should be tailored to your specific guitar technique and speed challenges at any given time. You can find many examples of powerful guitar speed building tips that I use with my students by studying this free mini course on how to build guitar speed.

Practice integrating your guitar techniques together to avoid sounding like a “guitar speed robot.” Over the years of training hundreds of guitar players to improve their guitar technique (and other musical skills), I have found that many guitarists spend surprisingly little time applying and integrating their musical abilities and guitar techniques. This leads to a lack of musical flexibility to fully and completely express yourself in any musical context.

When it comes to improving your guitar speed, many guitarists often focus on becoming faster with just one technique at a time. For example, you might practice sweep picking for 15 minutes, then move on to 15 minutes of legato, followed by 15 minutes of two-hand tapping. Although this approach may help you improve these techniques in isolation, you should also practice specifically using all of these techniques together in the same way they are used in real guitar solos. Neglecting to do this can make your guitar playing sound unnatural and somewhat robotic, as you will struggle to consistently and effectively utilize a range of guitar techniques simultaneously.

Manuel Marino

Manuel Marino is a seasoned Senior Producer, Music Composer, and Artist with over a decade of experience. He specializes in branded entertainment across various mediums, including video games, films, and advertising campaigns. With 20+ years as a game music composer, Manuel has worked on numerous platforms, creating diverse orchestral soundtracks. HIRE ME