Many guitarists long to be able to play blazing fast or “shred” guitar and we all know it’s not an easy task. Not many beginner players (or even many advanced guitarists) can just sit down and play smoking fast lead lines that tear up the fretboard and sound impressive…at least not while keeping it clean, on time and in key.
If you’ve ever tried to play fast and just weren’t ready, it would have been very obvious right from the start as all of the notes would sound jumbled together and just sound like a horrid mess.
The question on your mind right now is most likely “well, then how do I get to play fast too?” Have you ever heard the saying “you’ve got to walk before you can run”? Well, like it or not that is true in this case as well but there are a couple little shortcuts you can take to make sure you get shredding sooner rather than later.
The first thing you’ll need is a metronome. These come in many different styles but the easiest one to operate is the simple electronic one that has a small speaker built in whose speed or BPM (beats per minute) can be increased and decreased one BPM at a time.
Next you’ll take a super simple exercise like the standard 1234 warm up exercise where the 1234 represents playing the first, then second, then third and then forth note on each string starting with the 6th string and then moving onto the 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and finally the first.
Now, rather than playing this exercise using all down strokes of the pick, you’ll want to incorporate alternate picking. As you may recall, alternate picking is where you pick one note using a down stroke and then the next with an upstroke and then you simply alternate back and forth. This is a very efficient picking method and is a must to master if you want to play fast.
Start with a slow metronome setting like 80 BPM or so and see how it feels and work your way up from there.
You should be picking a note every time the metronome ticks. Do this perfectly and adhere strictly to the alternate picking…down-up-down-up-down-up etc. making sure to stay exactly in time and being careful to avoid playing sloppily. When you’re comfortable that you can easily pick every note clearly and perfectly at that speed, write it in a notebook and increase the metronome BPM slightly. Keep repeating this process and before long, you’ll notice you’re ripping up the notes at a high rate of speed of 150 BPM or more!
Repeat the exact same exercise on any scales you may know as well as the 7 modes. Clean, deliberate alternate picking is what will help you become a fast player. It will sound impressive but keep in mind that there is a lot more to killer guitar solos than speed.
I’ll be covering that in greater depth in upcoming posts.
Until then, keep rocking!
Mike
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