Back in the 80's and 90's, I was so obsessed with speed, I ran scales for hours every day - just trying to 'stubborn' my way to shred glory. Lol !!! But because I focused so much on speed, I didn't really have anything else in my bag of tricks. If the band played a slow blues, they'd get shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. If they played a ballad, they'd get shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. If I had played in a polka band, they would have gotten shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. Little flurries of speed are amazing, but only when they are tucked into beautiful melodic solos. Use speed as punctuation, not as the sentence.
Yes, everything is balance, and you lose the thrill that a fast passage gives if there is no slower part to contrast with; if everything is fast, you lose the variation, just as if you play "outside"( I mean non-diatonic notes, not open air concerts) all the time, there remains nothing to be outside of, becsuse it's always the same. It's like saying "Fuck" so much that it loses all its punch and shock value because of lack of contrast.
This is one of the things I love about Jerry Garcia’s playing is that he can play so freaking fast but he barely ever does. Like if you listen to the song Jackstraw especially in the live versions from 1989 during the jam he will just fire off at one point a flurry of notes and it’s so fast it’s mind-boggling. I can’t even tell what he’s doing. I don’t know if he’s doing legato at that moment, but I’ve never seen anybody try to teach, that particular line from that song and whenever I listen to it by ear, I just cannot figure out what the heck he’s doing. Or if you listen to the Jerry Garcia Band live album How Sweet It Is there’s a part during the the song Cats Under The Stars right at the 6 minute mark during the jam where he seems to get frustrated and just lets loose for about 2 seconds. It’s about 50 notes in two seconds and it’s such a contrast because the rest of the jam is just kind of chill, but for that one brief moment, he likes the whole thing on fire and then immediately pulls back into the basic jam. It’s epic.
I remember in John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline DVD that he suggested pushing the metronome past your breaking point for a bit, and then setting the BPM back and all of a sudden the slower tempo feels easier to play even though you were struggling before. It totally helps!
You and Martin Miller are both correct. And you point this out here too. You need to first slowly get something under your fingers. Once you do you should try playing it at speed because the motions are different. If there are mistakes you should back off slightly. Troy Grady teaches this too. And this approach has made me a much faster player at 45 than 25.
Yup, I was about to say this. I practiced a lot in my teenage years, and then had 15 years of not practicing that much. I'm 35 now and in the past couple of years I've practiced a bit more again (on/off, admittedly) and I've pushed my technique to a lot better and faster than what it was in my teenage years.
Exactly this. Troy Grady is so amazing! The slow playing is for muscle memory and essentially programming your fingers to achieve a certain task, once you’ve got it you’re free to start running the program you’ve “coded” at much faster speeds.
Playing fast is incredibly hard and takes years and years of dedication. The only thing harder, I'm finding with my current band, is playing slow and sounding convincing, interesting, and authentic.
@@grayjohn6332 "Planting" your fingers on strings in preparation to making your strokes is key. If you can master classical to any degree you can apply it to any genre.
I'm going to be 60 next month, and I can personally attest that John's assumptions about getting fast while young is probably true but really only due to the amount of free time kids have vs. having a spouse, kids, career, mortgage, etc. Although I've played acoustic (fingerstyle blues) and electric guitar for 40 years, I was never, ever very fast. Or accurate. Or clean. With a pick anyway. In 2022, I finally decided to take the time to learn how to play fast and clean, and this is what I learned (worked for me, YMMV): In my mind, there's playing fast, and then there's what I call warp speed, which John might call shredding. In my opinion, and I think John kinda said this too - those are 2 different techniques. I first changed the way I hold the pick, now my hand is more like a fist. I stopped manipulating the pick by moving my thumb and index finger; now use only my wrist, pronation and supination (thanks, Troy Grady). When I made the switch, I was so bad - my hands barely knew each other. I focused entirely on alternate picking at first (no hammer, no pull-off). It took me 6 months to get comfortable with the new technique - it took me that long to get back to mediocre again. I then used the "start slowly with a metronome and speed up, but stay accurate" method. That worked until I hit a speed roadblock, which I overcame with 2 alterations: 1. I lock my write and swivel at the elbow. 2. Chunking (thanks, German UA-camr I can't remember his name) A few folks have said to stop worrying about being accurate and clean and just "go for it". For me, that was true. I was able to get fairly fast with the "start slow" method, but to shred I had to lock the elbow and learn in 2-3 note sequences. I absolutely sucked at it for a few months. And then suddenly I didn't. I literally went from "I'll never get this" to "holy crap, I can shred!" I can play significantly faster than the goal I set for myself when I started this journey. In the meantime, I brought hammers and pulloffs back into the mix. Also worked on hybrid picking, which for me was easier because I have a fingerstyle background (thanks Josh Smith). I made sure that every riff or lick I steal, um, learn, I learn it starting with a downstroke, and then learn it again starting with an upstroke (thanks Andy Wood). I am a work-in-progress on all of these techniques of course, but am significantly better at all of them as compared to my old technique. I just need to learn more licks. Total time, about 2 years, playing nearly every day anywhere from 5 or 10 minutes at a time (occasionally more). Now if I only knew the fretboard better...
As far as age goes, I think it's a case of correlation, not causation. I made some pretty great speed gains as a teenager, but I was also able to sit and drill for 4 or 5 hours a day back then because I had so few responsibilities. I think that sort of time commitment isn't realistic for most adults. It requires nearly your entire life revolving around the instrument.
I think some Guitar UA-camrs, Troy Grady in particular, explain the bio-mechanics of how fast playing works, and why some mechanics work for some players and don't for others. There's a speed threshold where the biomechanics and right/left hand synchronization are fundamentally different from playing the same thing much slower. Literally different muscles and ranges of motion are being used in addition to the neuromuscular effort that is also different. This is where "starting slow" doesn't work. Yes, if you "chunk" you'll start slower, but it's bottom speed potential is still higher than that of not chunking. Case in point, there are many runs at high bpm where chunking is the only physical way to achieve the run.
The thing is how do guitarists get to that higher speed? Tremolo picking doesn't take very long to learn. That's not what players struggle with. They struggle with tension. They struggle with finger independence. No matter how fast you play, you will not be able to play cleanly, until you have relaxed technique. It's a mental battle. Simply forcing yourself to start faster will lead to more tension and bad habits. You will not be able to tailor your technique to you. It takes 5 seconds to change your pick angle, but thousands of hours to build accurate technique.
Also, chunking is not a physical technique. It's a mental technique. Once you get decent enough at rhythm, chunking literally happens automatically at a higher speed. So again, it's really not something that matters to the learning process. Edit: Funnily enough, John is clearly using chunking in this video, without realizing it. You can tell by the way he accents the notes lol.
I feel like a lot of people take Troy Grady's mechanism videos and apply it incorrectly to the LEARNING process, when these biomechanical changes will occur naturally if you follow proper technique.
Some of the best advice I've received was to go learn a bunch of bluegrass songs. I've had my biggest gains in many years as a result. 1. There is no regularity to the string navigation, so you can't get locked into "notes per string" 2. Every note counts. Can't get away with grazing a string and it sounding close enough 3. A Martin with 13s makes an electric feel like child's play. I have also tried pushing tempos to where my head can no longer keep up. Well beyond the point of 100% or even 80% accuracy. Helps with processing. Also, with a little one here, too, who is learning to read, it has been fascinating to watch two aspects of development: 1) decoding or slowing processing to break down and learn basic and new words, and 2) chunking where combinations of letters are processed at once--more of an "at tempo" thing. Feels like there is an analogy for internalizing/memorizing vs getting it under your fingers with this.
@@Boldylock Here’s a starting list (below). Bryan Sutton has a starter class on TrueFire that includes several of these. Plan to be frustrated for a month with the first one or two you learn, but they come faster as you learn more. Also, there’s not an “official” version of each of these. Think of them like heads of jazz standards. For me, I referenced a lot of Bryan Sutton albums (earlier ones have a bunch of these) and the Tony Rice “58957: The Bluegrass Guitar Collection” album. Angeline the Baker Back up and Push Beaumont Rag Big Sandy River Big Sciota Bill Cheatham Billy in the Lowground Blackberry Blossom Cherokee Shuffle Daley’s Reel Gold Rush Grover Glen Lost Indian Red Haired Boy Saint Anne’s Reel Salt Creek Soldier’s Joy Temperance Reel Turkey in the Straw Whiskey before Breakfast
I started playing around 1976. I cut my teeth breaking down VH, Neal Schon, Blackmore, Page etc. Then the natural progression through the metal age- Rhodes, DeMartini and so on. I’m 61 and I just picked up a vintage RG 550 so I’m still shredding. During the lockdown I progressed as much as I had when I was a kid. This is my advice to aging players. Keep developing different finger independence exercises to keep the muscle memory flexible. Warm up longer to keep left hand fatigue at bay and third, take vitamin E and drink lots of magnesium water💧
I can't help but return to this video to watch JNC shred the life out of his guitar. I think this is one of best JNC solo intros. Would love it if these solos and rifts that JNC plays were to actually exist as part music tracks I could blast out when driving my car.
I was sitting in an orchestra in 1966 when the sax player stood up and took a ten minute solo ( he wasn't breathing [circular]). I saw a woman over in the doorway and recognized her as the late Charlie Parkers' wife. That made me realize the guy next to me was Phil Woods ( makes sense because the orchestra leader was Oliver Nelson0. You Tube gives everyone the ability to sit real close (still not the same as being there) and see what the greatest musicians alive are doing. It you want to roast your weenies you have to go to where the fire is. And sometimes you over cook your weenies (burnt).My price of admission to sit next to people who play like that was ten hours a day practice and study for years and giving up everything else. Excellence in anything more often then not happens this way. Then go to the fire and temper your metal around the best or else you are going to burn your weenies.
The 'start slow' and speed up incrementally is a carry over from classical practice, so not likely to be abandoned. For guitar, with picking, I found a key was to sync my fretting hand with my picking hand and not vice versa. At slower speeds you can fret a note then pick it. At faster speeds you don't have time, so you need to be fretting and picking at a similar speed *but* not exactly syncronised. The fretting needs to be slightly ahead. So easier to aim for full sync, then fret slightly ahead. Theoretically you can play as fast as you can pick on a singles string, but then moving between strings, and fretting speed will slow that, but the better you get at moving between strings and fretting speed, the closer you get to the single string speed. Troy Brady had the best info on the subject last time I looked.
There's this part if you're observant to your own playing, where you hit a spot where your technique either works, or it doesn't and you start to rethink your technique and see if you can make it easier and more relaxed because the tension is the enemy of speed. This is what I took away from watching the stuff that Troy put up, in particular the seminar he did with Andy Wood where he talks about his technique not working at some point and he changed it. Also speed bursts help. You're entirely correct about burning in things to muscle memory too, there is no way to do that other than repetition. Burning in good habits is what you want to do, so you're right there about accuracy. When it comes to the speed thing you want to try stuff and find what works first, and that requires experimentation, THEN burn it in.
Interesting discussion! In Karate, we often shift focus. Sometimes, we practise slow, with emphasis on doing techniques perfectly, other times, we practise speed, and then accuracy goes out the window. The hope is that over time, we will get better at combining these concepts. For like you are alluding at, you use your hand, wrist, elbow and fingers differently pending on whether you go fast or slow. Not entirely obvious what is the best approach
In Ninja school, we learned to run up 200ft vertical surfaces, you can't do that slow because you fall off and have to do a flying-peooow-twang fu maneuver to recover. Good advice is don't play guitar when balancing on the roof, or at least do it fast.
I like to do a mix of both approaches: i set up a metronome to increase speed from comfortable to breaking point. However, when i notice that are parts of a phrase that are not clean, or articulate enough, i play that at a slower speed than the comfortable, for like 15 minutes. i found out that doing that helps with the speeding up exercises as well.
One things i haven't seen many people talk about is why and how working slowly can be beneficial to reach higher speed. First off, lemme just say that i'am a very particular case, i've had a lot of nerve/cardio-vascular problem over the years and had to undergo surgery twice due to a thoracic outlet syndroma ( on both arms, feel free to check that out ). I played guitar all my life, and i'am now 38 yo, and after one of the surgery i had to entirely stop playing for 5 years due to the fact my left hand was extremly weak, i had lost quit a bit of motricity, i had no strenght, nor stamina left in my arm, and what i could manage was about 15 min of guitar playing on my best days, while still experiencing pain. I got back into it, after a few years when my hands got better, but i never really came back from it 100%, my 4th finger/pinky are still very weak and have problem coordination wise. I was quit the shredder in my youth, but i had to start again from 0, all my life teacher told me to work slowly but i really never understood why, outside of the fact you'll have to do so in order to "work your way up" , and that's true, to some extent, but once i couldn't play like i did before i started working extremely slow to help my weak fingers to get better, and threw hard work and decication i realised many things about working slow : > Working slow isn't only about working your speed up or correcting mistake, but also about working on your form and efficiency. For my weak fingers to be able to come back from all those problem i had to spend the least amount of movement, and try to be the most confortable i could in order to achieve speed again. > Working really slow allows you to perfect your form, and be meticulous about details you wouldn't normally pay attention to, and also helps your brain memorise better. When i talk about efficiency, it can be many things, > The space between the strings and your finger ( the distance they travel when changing strings, for exemple ) > How much movement do you waste on your picking hand, and how to improve that. > Most of the time ( and i've seen that with a lot of guitarist ), the problem isn't the neck hand, but the picking hand ( myself included ), as we start our guitar journey we tend to focus a lot on the neck hand and don't pay much attention to the other hand, while it is in fact, the one hand that needs the most work in lot of cases. Working extremly slow allowed me to understand i had many flaws in my picking hand game and allowed me to perfect my movement that i am now able to execute with next to no strain in my forearm/shoulder. I used to be tense uppon extended period of time because i had a lot of unpolished movement, and the only way to correct those micro mistake is to become aware of it, playing slow helps a lot with that. Same for the left hand, i had to correct years of habbit ( fingers doing a lot of unwanted movement, trying to be the most efficient i could ) I realise my comment already is hella long so i'am not gonna extend too much. But all that work made me realise how complacent i had been with the instrument over the years, specifically my right hand, and the quality of my picking. It's been a decade now, and my hands feel much better now, i still have some limitation, but i can play smoke and mirrors again. So if I, can do it, anybody can, it's all about being honnest about what you lack as a guitarist, and how smart you can be about the way you work on your weaknesses.
Back in the 80s I was fed up with all these new McAlpine 5000 mph guitarists .. At some point I was beginning to question if I was wrong .. but not for long - Being from the era of solo's I decided to trust my idols like Thin Lizzy (Sykes) etc. and to this day I still play my synth solo's from what comes up at a certain point .. thats it .. today I'm 61 and had a non-voluntary break for 30+ years after a parasite bite .. lately I started re-recording until I was hit by a massive stroke last year .. I'm not into fast, shred and want to tell youth that speed is not the goal, never been 🙂
In the late 80s I had a cassette and booklet from MAB. His approach was to use tremolo picking at high speed to figure out the mechanics that worked for you and then keep those same mechanics as you built speed and accuracy up.
Attention to detail (ie how to play clean) and intentional practice are key. Identify exactly what you want to work on to not waste time. You gotta push yourself to develop the strength and stamina...No pain, no gain within reason. Be mindful of your body's muscle tension while practicing.
One thing many speed exercises don't cover is switching note subdivisions in a single phrase/line. Practicing in 4/4 time, I like to mix up each beat in a measure to really give my hands/brain a workout. Say you play four sixteenth notes, an eighth note triplet, one eighth note and an eighth note rest, and then a sixteenth note triplet for one measure. This is what we know as phrasing, and it can be done with one note or many. Being able to articulately switch between these subdivisions at will, even within a single phrase, is how you develop your own voice/style musically. You can do so much rhythmically with one or two notes when mastering this. Don't be afraid to add rests into your phrasing either as it adds anticipation of what comes next as well as attitude. Shredders get a bad rap as a whole because the entry level largely play sixteenth note phrases fast and nothing else. If someone only plays fluid lines of sixteenth notes, it becomes boring to listeners quickly because there is no change or discernible theme. Freely switching between subdivisions is what we know and love as music regardless of tempo. Eric Johnson and Andy Timmons are great examples of really fast players who do this. Angus Young is my personal favorite example of this. Shredding capability is just one cool trick to have in one's full arsenal of tricks and need not be overdone. This is always my answer to the, "What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago about guitar playing," question. Don't always think what note should I play next. Give some thought to what subdivision should I play next. The note choices set the tonality/mood of a piece, the rhythmic subdivisions convey the attitude/feel of the artist. Edit: I realize this comment could appear like I'm talking about/to John, but I wasn't. Just was the most helpful things I've learned in my 15 years of playing.
Justin Guitar did some excellent research into this, I highly recommend it. Basically, there is a hormone in your body which stops being produced in your 20s and thus as you get older and older it becomes harder and harder to learn more skills.
Love your channel and seriously appreciate all the tutorials, etc. Trying to develop a similar left hand/wrist (neck) position, however, 2 whole step stretch of 1,2, and 4 fingers while achieving fluidity is ridiculously difficult if not impossible. Always impressed with your playing and technique though.
I think part of the starting slow and gradually building up is primarily needed to avoid excess tension in your wrist and/or fingers. Since our muscles work in opposing pairs (biceps curl arms inward, triceps push arms back out), excess tension in any parts of your body that you’re trying to move really slows you down since your body is literally fighting against itself. Of course, some tension is needed or you’d drop your pick, your guitar and maybe even fall out of your chair if you’re sitting or collapse if you’re standing. So, I guess it’s all about finding the smallest amount of tension you can.
My experience over 20 years in regards to fast alternate picking: 1. Learn and practice how to tremolo pick with your right hand. Get comfortable, relaxed and go fast 2. Alternate pick two notes at first fast as you can. Keep practicing this two-note ‘chunk’. 3. Expand the two-note chunk to three notes. 4. Do different combinations of ascending, descending, finger combos etc 5. Keep expanding the ‘chunks’ 6. Simultaneously learn the damn fretboard- patterns, scales, whatever. You need to have an ingrained mental roadmap in order to play fast instinctively 7. The whole ‘start slow and gradually increase BPM’ seems to be well-intentioned but not accurate. Often ppl who can play fast don’t actually remember or know how they did it. It ain’t starting slow and building up lol.
I learnt to play fast in my 30-40s now playing flight of bumble bee at 180 bpm! Started slow and accurate for a few weeks then whacked up the tempo. But have done years of exercises and metronome work.
Learning is also about experimentation. This is true for all types of learning, not just in the domain of music. By pushing the boundaries of what you are comfortable with, you will force your brain to try to adapt in ways that rote learning will take longer to grasp. Then the rote work has to be done, in a consistent and disciplined way in order to hone the realisations of the early learning phase.
My feeing is a metronome should be there to help you with rhythmic precision. It’s not a speedometer. Use a metronome to work on accuracy first. Then you can worry about tempo. As you said, with guitar there are numerous fingerings you’re often trying to gain muscle memory for. I don’t know what the other guys you mentioned said, but yes, everyone learns to run just by running one day, but no one runs at an Olympic level without training, and sometimes that training isn’t running, but working on the muscle memory of things like length of your stride, how high are you knees, learning how to break out of starting blocks. All of that is analogous to the techniques of guitar playing and building speed. But speed really only comes from the accuracy of your technique.
WHen I was younger, I would just GO FOR IT! It worked surprisingly well. I would just back off a bit until it got cleaner and then push back at full speed. Many licks I can play at full speed and cannot play them any slower!! Something about the way it just feels and the way the muscles work.
I'd say that a slow pace is best for memorization, choosing efficient finger positions, transitions and picking directions/type. A steady pace is good for good ingraining the memorised notes in your muscle memory and synchronising the left and right hand. Chunking is good for increasing the left, right or both hands speed whilst trying to maintain synchronisation. Whenever I try to learn something, I've found it's best to do this over multiple days and in short sessions, than in one sitting. There have been countless times I could not play something as well as I want, only to get frustrated and quit. But later, after having a good night of sleep, I wake up and suddenly I can play it. How do you expect your hands to keep up to speed if your brain cannot even memorise what to do properly? Muscle memory is also built over time and can only take place when you have memorised the parts. I bet if you search well enough you must find some science to back this up.
I have found that it requires me to push the speed up so that I can see where exactly the technique starts to fall apart, so I can then go back and slow down to correct it, because what works at a slow speed in terms of pick angle and adjustment of the wrist, etc. doesn’t necessarily work at high-speed. So if one never pushes the speed to the point where it falls apart, they never get to learn what exactly it is that’s falling apart so they can go back slower to fix it. You never hit that point where you can discover what it is that’s wrong that prevents you from playing it fast. Just my experience.
my discouragement comes from the fact that i started playing when i was 12. I'm 26 now. people say "oh so you must be pretty good" i always say i could be a lot better, because im a perfectionist and hate doing things that I perceive as imperfect or not up to whatever standard im trying to achieve. I cant accept being bad at things. Now i wonder if its too late or even worth it to learn to play fast, and rather just dig into the style that i like to noodle aroind in, even though i want to play in bands and MAYBE have some sort of career in music. if I had spent even the first year straight practicing licks from eric johnson and kirk hammet, guitarists that i looked up to from a speed perspective, i wouldnt feel like i've "wasted" the last 10+ years of time playing guitar rather than improving my skill. I just dont understand what playing fast is supposed to FEEL like, and how the motions of the hands are different. so i practice with a metronome on repetitive licks for 2 or 3 days, get stuck on 100bpm and give up
Around the 10 minute mark I wonder if you could shred that passage starting with an upstroke forcing the inside string cross. That has always been my weakness. Yep.
6:50 can someone give me some pointers as to when I should move my index finger to the next string when ascending strings ? I just found the main culprit, I don't automatically move my finger when ascending but I do when descending, so I'm way slower when going back to the low E string, it's frustrating
The “youth advantage” is overstated imho. I did learn the majority of my technical competence in my early teens, but I improved immensely much later. Accurate picking speed came in my 30s. In fact, I was a far faster and more accurate picker in my late 40s. My left hand legato was faster in my late teens, early 20s. I have a permanent finger injury now, so I have to budget the 16th/32nd notes, but I’m a more accurate picker now when I do. I actually think age has very little to do with progression except when it comes to confidence. Older students are less confident, therefore less likely to push through.
I had a similar experience. I could play fast in my teens and 20s but I didn't learn to actually "shred" till I was in my late 30s. The issue isn't speed as much as it is having the time and stamina to practice as much as I did when I was younger. 😅
I think a key lies in your second sentence. This skews player's perception of what others may experience as they have little concept of how much the early gains they made affect their later playing. I know for instance the open chords I learned in childhood simply feel different to play- like there's no way I can screw them up- than things I have learned in middle age. It's more likely that a pentatonic run I learned at 45 will be inaccurate 5 times out of 10. Even if I play it 1/2 the speed I have played it fastest, correctly.
I think you have to consider that you've been playing chords longer and that will never change. I don't know how it is for everyone, but I most certainly became a much better guitarist (much faster even) in my early 40s. I never knew how to properly economy pick, alternate pick, sweep pick or even play entire scales until I was almost 40. I worked on using focused practice and plenty of instructional UA-cam videos. Now I feel like I can fly across the fretboard! I know age undoubtedly affects our bodies, but probably not as much as our ability to dedicate time to something without getting bored or frustrated. When you're younger, it's easier to dedicate more time and attention to things, but I don't think John's statement about building speed only at younger ages is accurate. It might be the most common experience, but certainly not the only one.
I have gone round and round and round both online and in direct conversations with other players about speed. Having learned my first cowboy chords preteen, hanging the guitar up until my 40s...just pulling it off the shelf every now and again in my teens, 20s and 30s...I definitely feel the time for speed is past. I'm almost 50 and have been hammering away daily trying to play even what most "fast players" would consider moderate tempo to no avail. I've used the ramping metronomes on YT to no avail. It's not just about time spent, as some others have suggested....over the course of the past 7 years I have averaged 2 hours a day with a guitar in my hand and about 1/2 of that in actual focused metronome effort to synchronize and speed up. W/O malicious intent, people selling speed, either in lessons or gear, prey upon people like me. An example I have is hammering away an hour daily for 2 months on Creeping Death's verse riff trying to get it to 202 using a long ramping metronome, looking away from the time and watching my speed fail day after day after day at the same time in the video. Many players would suggest I haven't practiced enough...I believe most players don't have the tenacity to fail at something as epically as I have at guitar and still keep at it.
I don't think you're alone in this - it's maybe something some other folks might be able to chime in on - but I feel like anecdotally amongst folks I know, the ones who can "shred" (not that it is important for most gigs) developed most of their speed in their teens, and the ones who can't seem to have that barrier that seems basically impenetrable?
@@johnnathancordy Thanks for replying John! FWIW I think your lesson here is great with a dose of realism. I am nothing if not tenacious. I'd say at varied points over past few years my obsession with this has damn near ruined my life and marriage, having become obsessive, and trying to figure out what the hell I could be doing wrong or not doing to hold my speed down, but it's really just inability to synchronize beyond a comparatively low speed. It can infuriating as most of my influences are highly melodic players like John Sykes, Neal Schon, Gary Moore, and Adrian Smith that are highly melodic with interjections of bumblebee speeds. I love Gilmour and would likely succeed much more in that tempo it's just not exactly what I aspired to play.
started playing at 16 in the mid 70's. Played and gigged for about 10 years. Had to pack it in, I had a mortgage, wife, child and was working shifts for 30 years. Picked up the guitar again at about 60 years of age, never used a metronome except in school.
Same story exactly. Actually learned more after I picked the guitar up and gigging again after 60. So much more information available. No UA-cam when I was 20.
I greatly prefer these musical sounding exercises rather than non-musical chromatic "spider" exercises. And even though I'm 73 and have never had a goal of being a shredder, this type of exercise sounds great at the slower speeds that I play.
I started playing at 11 in 1981 and i remember seeing motley Crue show and after that i wanted to play fast as i could but my right hand and left were never so coordinated for years. I spent wasted time going about it wrong but at least i kept at it. Taking classical guitar lessons when i was 30 really improved my skill level. It was the breakthrough i needed to take my playing ro the next level. Now i spend most of.my time fingerpicking instead of using a pick and i can play almost as fast and clean as that Italian kid Mancuso. And when i do use a pick, Dunlop jazz III are most precise, i can really shred like Yngwie and petrucci. The point is, take classical or finger style lessons and you will make dramatic improvements on your speed as well as overall technique
Love to play fast form time to time, maybe is my adrenaline. I was guitar nerd with videos of Lane, Cooley, Becker, Holdsworth, etc. But now I'm more on jazz standars, but still love both sides. I think the best intructional if you wanna be a faster player was Shred Guitar manifesto by Rusty Cooley. Obiously on a technical aspect (legato, picking, tapping)
Great lesson and insights. Your picking hand is incredibly smooth and your pinky is as long as my index finger 😅 so I’ve always had to work around not having a huge reach. I played a lot in my teens but only recently picked it back up in my 50s. Obviously I’m not as fast. Also a lifetime of work and sports, broken fingers, have affected my play. It’s more about accuracy and tone for me now.
Way to go (picking it back up)! I’m doing the same thing and it’s been an adventure to relearn guitar at this age. I’m actually enjoying the journey. So much more now to experience then in the 90s (UA-cam, pedals, gear etc). Keep it up!
For me, as I got older I learned more about the "less is more" idea of melody and have found my playing has more ... well, feeling and soul in the things I play and speed took a back seat. And to be honest I wasn't to into speed players anyway, always preferred Beck and Gilmour to Vai and the like ... not that the faster player weren't great, just my wiring I guess.
I can make a long story on this one.But the thing is if you do this and it's not working then you have to study pickslanting And the doors will be open forever.And everything makes sense. cheers all the best
You get a ‘Like’ for the impressive arm veins mate. Stimulated veins is a good sign of having a good work out. Get that blood flowing. Enjoy your videos as always. Cheers! 🍻
Steve Morse used to advise to practice something 90% of the time at the tempo that you can play it correctly and 10% at the tempo you’re trying to get to. Otherwise you’re just practicing mistakes. But also test out how fast you’re getting.
Coming from a classical perspective, I was taught to only play something as fast as you can manage without making mistakes. Once you master it at a particular speed, ramp it up a notch. Also, taking a break from playing is crucial to becoming more proficient.
@@hottamanful well, I always practiced something as fast as I could without messing up. If I found a particular phrase that gave me trouble, I'd just adjust the speed of the entire segment. As far as how long before I sped it up depends on my own criticism of what I'm playing. If it sounds wrong, messy or not quite right, I would wait until it didn't require much effort or thought. Then you know . 😁
@@hottamanful also, if you're referring to how much of a break, I tend to go several days or perhaps a week depending on what my regular practice schedule is. What I've learned over the years is once you learn something, you only get rusty at it if you don't practice, but you never completely forget. At least for me that's true..
You're right about newer players wanting to play too fast too soon and getting frustrated. That's not such a bad thing, as a properly motivated player will find the ways. The other type of newer player that is more problematic, though, is the one who tries to do the same and is oblivious to what they sound like doing it. Working on feel and accuracy is of utmost importance when ramping speed. I do adhere to the same train of thought as cats like Andy Wood and John Petrucci, though. Floor it. Pedal to the metal for a take or two and get a grasp of what that feels like to see not only the potential, but where problem areas may lie. Then back it off a bit from there to hone in on fixing flaws. It also makes previously impossible speeds not seem so bad. Anyway, good video concept.
If you practice slowly with a mind to speeding up, you NEED to understand picking strategy. I gained most of my speed recently when I shifted focus from speed to picking efficiency. Speed was a byproduct of this focus. You can't go wrong with a bit of Troy Grady and "cracking the code."
Yes; the guys who say you don’t get better at running by walking already put in hours memorizing patterns and they’re trying to go from 16th notes at 200 bpm to 210 bpm. Once you are familiar with lots of patterns you can “learn” new ones at faster starting speeds. I’m a shite guitar player; I know all this from practicing the tuba…
I can play pretty fast using hammer ons and pull offs, but my alternate picking is only moderately fast. I loose the synchronization when my right goes fast. My left hand is pretty fast too but my brain totally goes caput when i try alternate picking at a higher speed. I'm 64 and a regularly gigging lead guitarist. I still believe some how some day I'll get fast.
Just from sports perspective. There's a difference in fast- vs slow-twitch fibres across individuals and certain learning curve resulting from that (and the level of achievement resulting from that). The second thing is fascia and how it tends to stiffen as the years go by. That being said, accoracy and speed are to certain extent different skills, that should be trained separately, with different drills, and then merged gracefully. One without the other gets messy and limiting over time.
The elephant in the room is that a lot of shredders are incredibly sloppy rhythm-wise. Fwiw, I asked a classically trained pianist known for their technical ability whether they'd ever practice sloppy and tidy it up later for speed. They said they have techniques for building speed but would never practice sloppily.
I’m not sure the comparison between piano and guitar is so straightforward. I think that for piano the technique for playing fast is more similar to the technique for playing slow, and also well defined and well known by teachers and players, so that even while practicing slow, you’ll focus on using the mechanics that are needed to play fast. On electric guitar, mechanics (especially for the picking hand using a plectrum) for playing slow and fast are significantly different and not so well defined (until Troy Grady). So it’s easier to figure out what mechanics work for playing fast by trying to play fast even if one fails, rather than grinding on the mechanics that work for playing slow and hoping to eventually be able to perform those slow mechanics fast enough
Anton Oparin is the only youtuber I pay any attention to regarding technique because 1) he has the best technique I've ever seen and it's not even close and 2) he bases his ideas of solid anatomical understanding rather than broscience. I like Troy but his channel is really about learning to imitate the techniques of decent players, rather than trying to isolate what is the optimal way to play guitar.
The thing with this is that people wrongly think playing fast, playing accurately and learning a song are the same skill when i reality everything should be practiced individualy.
As others have said Troy Grady has the definitive, revolutionary material on this, and picking in general. Miller did a long interview with him. Andy Wood says the same thing. I'm not interested in shredding but picking issues are definitely a thing of the past. Still, many pedagogues will continue to recommend "starting slow" and misleading learners. It will probably take a few more years, until a few more Troys, Martins and Andys have emerged, for the old notions to go away.
You have to learn the moves and the feeling of playing fast. After that it's like riding a bike. Daily speed work helps too. By moves I mean can you play all hammer-on legato, but then add in a very, very slight amount of pull-off...almost none...this type of motion sensitivity is what we need to be gaining awareness of, not just practicing the same way over and over, but trying different subtle motion variations...find what works and repeat for a few weeks. Then learn with slightly different motion variations. Like Inner Skiing or Inner Tennis. Life is a game.
I see your picking technique changes the faster you go and whether you are alternate picking, rake picking or using legato. The faster you play, the less the picking motion is in the wrist and the more it is in your arm. Its that transition as you speed up the tempo that is difficult as what work slower doesn't necessarily work faster.
This is only one kind of speed. I'm more focused on playing like Johnny Ramone, but yeah, when I'm working something out I will slow it down to get it, but I sometimes find the sloppiness is part of what makes the riff.
Im not fast. I trip on my fingers. I cant do repetition for more than a few repetitions. But I also cant practice like I would like to. Life gets in the way and I am not a professional musician. But I sure do wish I could be better.
As soon as I start thinking what my right hand is actually doing I mess it up, I always feel my picking hand is connected to my fretting hand naturally. If I concentrate on that 9/10 times my picking hand is accurate at speed. I play more traditional rock stuff so I don't class my playing style as a shredder.
Bounce by Mathew Syed and The talent code ar books that set out what we currently know about how the physiology of learning works. From which you can experiment and find your own way. Troy Grady’s stuff is good too. Lots of others here have summed it up well, but one key element is Called ‘reaching’. Which is you must do the skill faster than you can. Else your body will happily stay where it is. My final thought. Technique serves expression.
I want to play fast. Because it's necessary for the kind of music I want to play. Golden era 80/90s metal. Feel and note value are more important, but you don't get through the qualifiers without also having the speed. I've practiced quite a lot. But I'm 40 this year, have two kids so I'm not drilling these execises all day. But I know what it is to drill. For what it's worth, here's what I've learned. Guthrie Govan is right (about everything). If you can play something very precisely and efficiently, then speeding it up isn't necessarily that hard. A lot of times I've thought 'bah, I can't play this fast'. Then slowed it down a bit, and realised, actually, I just can't REALLY play it well. So slow it right down, work out every nuance, then start speeding it up. But.. you can't train for the sprint, by practicing running marathons. You can't walk all day, and just assume that because you've made so many steps, you'll be great at running. There is value in pushing the tempo beyond what you can play comfortably, and just trying to hang on. You need to do both. Fast and sloppy sounds terrible. I realised that the phrases I wanted to play are like phrases in language. They contain information that we're trying to convey to the listener. If bits of information are missing, dead notes etc.. or it goes off the beat, you lose the listeners engagement. Master of puppets at 180bpm played well sounds better than master of puppets at 200bpm played badly. The slow playing technique is just different to the high speed. And I found there's a shifting 'awkward' bpm range where you're not quite sure which one you're doing. Initially for me, it was 110bpm. I could play at 100 and weirdly at 120, though it felt really fast, but I just literally couldn't play at 110. Final point. It's not all right hand. It's all hand sync. The minute details of timing, muting and pressure. I realised what makes the good guys good, is that the notes are fast, but clear and legato. No dead space. And that's hard to do.
at the start of your conversation at 6:55 showing the 3 notes per string you seem to be picking only once per string and using a legato technique to get the second and third notes to sound out yes? I assume without heavy sustain/distortion the notes would not sound out as clearly as yours do? BTW I'm 64 been playing classic rock-blues since 1977 and still have never been a speedy player I just cant seem to get the technique down . I use alternate picking every single note just seem to fumble and bumble when trying to go quickly as the metronome4 techniques where nerve shown to me b ack in the day it was mostly find a book on soloing and here's a blues box pattern and have at it
Good points! Why is it that your low strings sounding so flubby and compressed? To me it sounds like the action is to low, which results in frett buzz and compressed notes with not enough sustain.
Young players have more free time and have less bad habits built in to their technique (and are less stubborn about changing them). Aging players like me have to really be diligent with devoting specific time blocks to metronome practice, and have to be willing to step backward to make technique adjustments where bad habits limit speed
Speed is cool (had you listen Coltrane's 'sheets of sound'), but I prefer 'melodic freedom' over finger/muscular memory speedy patterns, ok, they are fun to play and one can build pattern sequences in a 'freely way' like Steve Morse did or Paul Gilbert showed, ... but a better example of 'melodic freedom' could be Scott Henderson, inclusive, Frank Gambale , John Scofield, there is a girl in youtube called Tori Slusher, she is a beast in having melodic freedom while using intricate plucking patterns ... Of course, I am not at that level crafmantshift ... but what I found useful to grasp that is to center my accuracy routines in just the transitions between strings (with just pick, or pick and fingers, or just fingers) and applying combinatory rithmic patterns alternating left hand fingering ... then, two kind of exercises, dumb exercises for made while watching TV or Anything else that don't means that I am playing guitar ... and 'real exercises' that are musical phrases that got a plucking pattern and can betransposed all over the fretboard and/or scale intervals, the 'real exercises' I don´t play as running a pattern, instead , as melodic performance line with dynamics. accents nuances ... very slow, and bringing rhythmic displacements ... these form of practice comes from Michael Brecker ... and he called that something like 'subconcious food' , a thing that you do while practicing but never think to do that as you did in a performance ... soon or later, after years of practice, those 'ideas' begins to merge spontaneously and without thinking in your improvisations ... Yes, that is not getting a fast lick an impressing people with that or repeating a composition that brings you a reward to play as you want it to be ... but getting into that zone when/where the playing is like jumping into the unknown and trying to get something 'something' in the moment and get the luck to get into a musical flow that means something for the ensemble and surprise yourself because you are not playing preplanned lines, instead, what the subconscious flows is bringing to your 'body/hands/fingers' is something(composing in real time) that I enjoy more that playing a picking pattern at the speed of light ... ... and I think that 'melodic freedom' is way more difficult to achieve than speed of light picking patterns ...
If you cant do it slow then you cant do it fast. If you cant walk you cant run. So you have to walk first. Thats why starting slow is a requirement. Once get that down the gradual increase on speed isnt the best tactic. I found speed bursts are the way to get faster.
Well, there are many aspects to speed playing. There is the physical aspect of developing the rapid muscle response required to pick and fret with speed, and that is where speed bursts with rests between them helps players like Bernth go so incredibly fast. Think of it like doing a work out where your speed bursts are done in sets. Then there is slow playing where you gradually increase speed, and that is more teaching you how to maintain control as you focus on accuracy, but the tendency with this approach is that you lose control as you get faster and faster. And this approach can take years to build up speed to any significant degree on its own-especially if you are playing complex pieces. Then there is playing faster than you can keep things accurate, but you slow down ever so slightly until you find the upper edge of your control. This helps to develop a level of control that you wouldn’t normally obtain using other methods, because you gain more consistent control as you slow down to a level that is within your accurate playability zone. Then there is picking methods like studying the pick radius above and below the string, the shorter you make the pick radius, the quicker the speed of the pick becomes without having to apply more force to get the speed to increase. Then there is pick slanting, and pick angling to help you slice through and across strings easier. Troy Gradey discusses this in detail in his videos. And you can even try slight pick raising to get hmore of the tip to ride the top of the string for easier picking execution. Just pull your hand back ever so slightly from the strings as you pick and pay attention until you find that sweet spot that works for you. Then you can practice changing the tension between when you pick more with your wrist versus your forearm. The ability to smoothly change the tension in your arm to go back and forth between these two approaches while you play is a useful technique that almost no one talks about, but pro players do this effortlessly. This will make it easier to execute complex rapid picking patterns which cross many strings. And there is Legotto practices to help the fretting fingers improve independently of your pick attack altogether. Because your fretting hand work out matters, because neglecting this leads to desynchronization because one hand is more developed than the other. However, you want to get to a point where your legotto is extremely relaxed so you aren’t struggling to roll off long runs and such. Then there is synchronizing your two hands while just picking on one string, which involves the use of accented notes to get your speed picking and faster fretting to work together more effectively. And then there is this little technique a lot of guitarists rarely talk about where you take to adjacent strings and you just go down down and up up and cycle between the two strings to train your picking hand how to cycle string transitions. This is perhaps the most important, yet most neglected practice technique of those who want to gain more speed, but don’t pause to realize that string transition time is slowing them down. Just do this on two strings for two or three hours in front of the television and you will see how much difference this makes. This technique helped me reach unbelievable speeds. Then there is the pick attack transition time that so few guitarists talk about where you play notes in a scale slow, but your pick attack of each note is extremely fast and stacattoed so it sounds more like how a classical player would strike a note. As you learn to speed this technique up, it is very transformative to your playing. Think of it like you know you will get shocked as you pick, so you want to slice through the string quickly even though your fretting hand is moving through notes slowly. This will create space between notes as expected. And another great idea for building speed is learning how to do selective picking like you see guys such as Charlie Robins do. It forces your picking to be both quick and in time and the trick with selected picking is not to get frustrated, because it really does take months of tedius practice to get good at it. Address all these issues with your speed playing and you will start to see amazing results. I wish I had this list handed to me 35-years ago when I was starting out on guitar.
The key to speed is practicing with the metronome, chunking, having individual practice for both hands and practicing all key paces from slow to medium to fast. One of most people's mistakes is spending too much time practicing slowly. You should spend equal time in all paces which means you would be practicing more notes in the medium pace than in the slow pace and more notes in the fast pace than in the medium pace. Another mistake is not knowing which hand is less developed. My personal problem was that my picking hand was underdeveloped since I loved playing legato lines. Personally, legato is too soft for real shredding.
I'm a faster player at 51 than I was in my 20's. But I've now spent the time just sitting there running scales and 3 note per string licks. I think it just depends on when in your life that became important and you just sat there putting in that work. Obviously the longer you've played the more you can see the fretboard so it would make sense you get more accurate later.
Fast forward into your 60's & reverse the problem. I was a fast accurate player, then I got Parkinson's. There are no words to describe how it feels to close your eyes, feel that fast mixolydian move & find your hand completely unresponsive to the instruction to execute it.
Focus in on your technique, one part at a time. The biggest speed killer is excess movement. It goes for both hands but especially your picking hand. Practice in front of a mirror or get a GoPro. Focus on economy of movement. If you really want to pick fast, learn directional picking.
It can. I've played guitar for 23 years, but at 35 and putting more focus into practicing again in the past couple of years, thought still very on/off, and I've pushed my fast/clean boundaries a lot - to higher speeds than in my teenage years.
@@poulwinther I will say though, that in all those years of not practicing, I did keep learning about music theory and such, and that has been a great foundation for the technical stuff as well, meaning that I don't get stumped by many things theory-wise and can tie most things on the fretboard to some theory. That has definitely been helpful as well, and especially when I decided to get more serious about guitar again.
Dude: the reason many people start out at slow speeds because they have to figure out the notes and the finger positions ! Neither the standard notations nor the tabs show you where the finger positions should be… good luck playing fast if you don’t even know where you should put your fingers on the frets when playing a new song… I come from playing violin. As a young student learning violin, my teachers didn’t even bother to teach me how to play fast or articulate expressions until I actually memorized (know all the notes and where all my left hand fingers are supposed to go)… we were not allowed to come taking lessons with sheet musics…after that, playing fast is a walk in a park… SO, your next tutorial UA-cam should be : How to find where to put your left hand fingers, and how to memorize a song. Of course in the case of improvisation, then how to master the “Arpeggio Progression”. Once you do all that then the fast speed will come much easier… in summary: your fingers cannot move fast, if your muscle memory is not there… people try to run fast like olympian runners, but they don’t even know running where ?? Sorry I’m almost done ranting: I’ve seen a lot UA-camrs showing off their very fast ripping sounds - but they really sound terrible and awful… why even bother !!
Ahh, yes, but developing fast alternate picking in the right hand can also be difficult for older players, because the technique we more chronologically challenged guitarists have mostly learned with was an angled three-finger blues pentatonic grip. I'm surprised to hear that you learned major scale geometry before finding pentatonic patterns. This would have been the exception rather than the rule in the early seventies. Having committed much of this to muscle memory, it becomes problematic to counter-intuitively change to a four fret, four-fingered grip in order to execute shreddy passages. Most of us learned by ear from listening to Hendrix and Clapton, and were unable, with a few exceptions like Garry Moore,( who was left-handed, giving more power to his left hand) and the odd player like Johnny Winter, or Frank Marino, who managed to fly around the pentatonics more rapidly and more tidily than Hendrix, most people playing this way were limited like an engine limiter in their picking speed. I spent two years in the early nineties trying to do the type of practise that you and other younger players have championed, only to find it nearly impossible to unlearn years of playing spontaneously the way we always had. I don't know that age has anything to do with it, because at 70 I'm much quicker than I was in my twenties when I first recorded and toured with local bands. In the early nineties I tried to learn from four or five sessions with a young shred guitar player how to execute these lines, but after 10 years of working on these skills, I was only at about 60% of the clean speed of my younger teacher, who had at the time he taught me, been playing for only five years in total, whereas I'd been playing,( on electric lead) since the late sixties. It's more about when and how you first learn that determines your ability to play fast and clean, and I find it a bit glib, when well-intentioned good players, who have learned mainstream standard left hand fingering since they began to play. Many of them are not so good at bends or vibratos, but this is probably also due to their early learned techniques ; I'm grateful for the occasional positive feedback I recieve on my "feel" or touch, but in my heart of hearts I still yearn for the excitement and fun of rapid-fire clipped phrasing and clean delivery that makes things more joyful and dynamic...., and believe me, practicing these passages slowly reinforces only the sort of technique that won't work when you crank up the pace. I'm so sick of people saying... it's easy.., and anyone can do it... just follow these steps... because it obviously worked for them but doesn't for people who have to reinvent the wheel after twenty years of playing in a self-taught three-fingered approach.
I think either you have fast twitch or not, then it's just up to putting in a few reps. My kid basically started playing segovia and polyphia this past year after actually practicing a few hours a day for 4-6 months. It's insane; however, enter genetics. My mom was a professional typist, I am a professional Tech guy, and also type like the wind and don't find many guitar parts that hard if I want to put in the time. We are Also related to Elvis, so there's that. Fortunate I suppose. But just know there are freaks out there. Part of what motivated me when I was young is that there was a 16 year old kid Just around the block who could play all the rhythm and leads from Megadeth's Rust in peace. I figured if he could do it at 16, then it was possible. I wasn't quite sure at the time of the advantage I had.
i reckon Thunderstruck intro is perfect to use the 'starting at speed' method. initially only hit one of the fret hand notes while the pick hand stays constant at 135bpm 16th notes, then add more fret hand notes as you get it happening/synchronised
Back in the 80's and 90's, I was so obsessed with speed, I ran scales for hours every day - just trying to 'stubborn' my way to shred glory. Lol !!! But because I focused so much on speed, I didn't really have anything else in my bag of tricks. If the band played a slow blues, they'd get shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. If they played a ballad, they'd get shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. If I had played in a polka band, they would have gotten shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. Little flurries of speed are amazing, but only when they are tucked into beautiful melodic solos. Use speed as punctuation, not as the sentence.
I don't know about anybody else but I for one would love to hear shreddy harmonic minor scales over a polka beat!
I enjoyed this comment 🤣
Yes, everything is balance, and you lose the thrill that a fast passage gives if there is no slower part to contrast with; if everything is fast, you lose the variation, just as if you play "outside"( I mean non-diatonic notes, not open air concerts) all the time, there remains nothing to be outside of, becsuse it's always the same. It's like saying "Fuck" so much that it loses all its punch and shock value because of lack of contrast.
This is one of the things I love about Jerry Garcia’s playing is that he can play so freaking fast but he barely ever does. Like if you listen to the song Jackstraw especially in the live versions from 1989 during the jam he will just fire off at one point a flurry of notes and it’s so fast it’s mind-boggling. I can’t even tell what he’s doing. I don’t know if he’s doing legato at that moment, but I’ve never seen anybody try to teach, that particular line from that song and whenever I listen to it by ear, I just cannot figure out what the heck he’s doing. Or if you listen to the Jerry Garcia Band live album How Sweet It Is there’s a part during the the song Cats Under The Stars right at the 6 minute mark during the jam where he seems to get frustrated and just lets loose for about 2 seconds. It’s about 50 notes in two seconds and it’s such a contrast because the rest of the jam is just kind of chill, but for that one brief moment, he likes the whole thing on fire and then immediately pulls back into the basic jam. It’s epic.
@StarDarkAshes I got to see 12 dead shows, including their last one, also got to see a Jerry solo show. He is awesome.
I remember in John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline DVD that he suggested pushing the metronome past your breaking point for a bit, and then setting the BPM back and all of a sudden the slower tempo feels easier to play even though you were struggling before. It totally helps!
He has a super robotic style to be fair
You and Martin Miller are both correct. And you point this out here too. You need to first slowly get something under your fingers. Once you do you should try playing it at speed because the motions are different. If there are mistakes you should back off slightly. Troy Grady teaches this too. And this approach has made me a much faster player at 45 than 25.
Yup, I was about to say this. I practiced a lot in my teenage years, and then had 15 years of not practicing that much. I'm 35 now and in the past couple of years I've practiced a bit more again (on/off, admittedly) and I've pushed my technique to a lot better and faster than what it was in my teenage years.
Exactly this. Troy Grady is so amazing! The slow playing is for muscle memory and essentially programming your fingers to achieve a certain task, once you’ve got it you’re free to start running the program you’ve “coded” at much faster speeds.
Delightful phrasing 💯
Playing fast is incredibly hard and takes years and years of dedication. The only thing harder, I'm finding with my current band, is playing slow and sounding convincing, interesting, and authentic.
I'm learning Classical guitar and you have to learn to fill the sound. Learn to be fluent but also keeping fingers down.
@@grayjohn6332 "Planting" your fingers on strings in preparation to making your strokes is key. If you can master classical to any degree you can apply it to any genre.
I'm going to be 60 next month, and I can personally attest that John's assumptions about getting fast while young is probably true but really only due to the amount of free time kids have vs. having a spouse, kids, career, mortgage, etc. Although I've played acoustic (fingerstyle blues) and electric guitar for 40 years, I was never, ever very fast. Or accurate. Or clean. With a pick anyway. In 2022, I finally decided to take the time to learn how to play fast and clean, and this is what I learned (worked for me, YMMV):
In my mind, there's playing fast, and then there's what I call warp speed, which John might call shredding. In my opinion, and I think John kinda said this too - those are 2 different techniques. I first changed the way I hold the pick, now my hand is more like a fist. I stopped manipulating the pick by moving my thumb and index finger; now use only my wrist, pronation and supination (thanks, Troy Grady). When I made the switch, I was so bad - my hands barely knew each other. I focused entirely on alternate picking at first (no hammer, no pull-off). It took me 6 months to get comfortable with the new technique - it took me that long to get back to mediocre again. I then used the "start slowly with a metronome and speed up, but stay accurate" method. That worked until I hit a speed roadblock, which I overcame with 2 alterations:
1. I lock my write and swivel at the elbow.
2. Chunking (thanks, German UA-camr I can't remember his name)
A few folks have said to stop worrying about being accurate and clean and just "go for it". For me, that was true. I was able to get fairly fast with the "start slow" method, but to shred I had to lock the elbow and learn in 2-3 note sequences. I absolutely sucked at it for a few months. And then suddenly I didn't. I literally went from "I'll never get this" to "holy crap, I can shred!" I can play significantly faster than the goal I set for myself when I started this journey.
In the meantime, I brought hammers and pulloffs back into the mix. Also worked on hybrid picking, which for me was easier because I have a fingerstyle background (thanks Josh Smith). I made sure that every riff or lick I steal, um, learn, I learn it starting with a downstroke, and then learn it again starting with an upstroke (thanks Andy Wood). I am a work-in-progress on all of these techniques of course, but am significantly better at all of them as compared to my old technique. I just need to learn more licks.
Total time, about 2 years, playing nearly every day anywhere from 5 or 10 minutes at a time (occasionally more). Now if I only knew the fretboard better...
So you locked your wrist to shred? Or your elbow?
@@brianhylkema13 locked my wrist and pivoted from the elbow.
As far as age goes, I think it's a case of correlation, not causation. I made some pretty great speed gains as a teenager, but I was also able to sit and drill for 4 or 5 hours a day back then because I had so few responsibilities. I think that sort of time commitment isn't realistic for most adults. It requires nearly your entire life revolving around the instrument.
I think some Guitar UA-camrs, Troy Grady in particular, explain the bio-mechanics of how fast playing works, and why some mechanics work for some players and don't for others. There's a speed threshold where the biomechanics and right/left hand synchronization are fundamentally different from playing the same thing much slower. Literally different muscles and ranges of motion are being used in addition to the neuromuscular effort that is also different. This is where "starting slow" doesn't work. Yes, if you "chunk" you'll start slower, but it's bottom speed potential is still higher than that of not chunking. Case in point, there are many runs at high bpm where chunking is the only physical way to achieve the run.
Exactly!!
The thing is how do guitarists get to that higher speed? Tremolo picking doesn't take very long to learn. That's not what players struggle with.
They struggle with tension. They struggle with finger independence. No matter how fast you play, you will not be able to play cleanly, until you have relaxed technique. It's a mental battle. Simply forcing yourself to start faster will lead to more tension and bad habits. You will not be able to tailor your technique to you.
It takes 5 seconds to change your pick angle, but thousands of hours to build accurate technique.
Also, chunking is not a physical technique. It's a mental technique.
Once you get decent enough at rhythm, chunking literally happens automatically at a higher speed. So again, it's really not something that matters to the learning process.
Edit: Funnily enough, John is clearly using chunking in this video, without realizing it. You can tell by the way he accents the notes lol.
I feel like a lot of people take Troy Grady's mechanism videos and apply it incorrectly to the LEARNING process, when these biomechanical changes will occur naturally if you follow proper technique.
@@arunkarthikma3121 I think we agree on all points. I literally say the neuromuscular effort is different.
Some of the best advice I've received was to go learn a bunch of bluegrass songs. I've had my biggest gains in many years as a result.
1. There is no regularity to the string navigation, so you can't get locked into "notes per string"
2. Every note counts. Can't get away with grazing a string and it sounding close enough
3. A Martin with 13s makes an electric feel like child's play.
I have also tried pushing tempos to where my head can no longer keep up. Well beyond the point of 100% or even 80% accuracy. Helps with processing.
Also, with a little one here, too, who is learning to read, it has been fascinating to watch two aspects of development: 1) decoding or slowing processing to break down and learn basic and new words, and 2) chunking where combinations of letters are processed at once--more of an "at tempo" thing. Feels like there is an analogy for internalizing/memorizing vs getting it under your fingers with this.
Do you know the name of some blue grass songs? I’ve been wanting to learn these due to Guthrie Govans road island shred!
@@Boldylock Here’s a starting list (below). Bryan Sutton has a starter class on TrueFire that includes several of these. Plan to be frustrated for a month with the first one or two you learn, but they come faster as you learn more. Also, there’s not an “official” version of each of these. Think of them like heads of jazz standards. For me, I referenced a lot of Bryan Sutton albums (earlier ones have a bunch of these) and the Tony Rice “58957: The Bluegrass Guitar Collection” album.
Angeline the Baker
Back up and Push
Beaumont Rag
Big Sandy River
Big Sciota
Bill Cheatham
Billy in the Lowground
Blackberry Blossom
Cherokee Shuffle
Daley’s Reel
Gold Rush
Grover Glen
Lost Indian
Red Haired Boy
Saint Anne’s Reel
Salt Creek
Soldier’s Joy
Temperance Reel
Turkey in the Straw
Whiskey before Breakfast
Learning a bunch of bebop tunes on the guitar can have similar benefits -- especially WRT playing in positions up the neck without open strings.
Andy Wood wisdom?? Did wonders for my alternate picking too
@@samwheeler-brown7458 You know it! He's the one who got me down this path, which included buying at D-18 😁
I started playing around 1976. I cut my teeth breaking down VH, Neal Schon, Blackmore, Page etc. Then the natural progression through the metal age- Rhodes, DeMartini and so on. I’m 61 and I just picked up a vintage RG 550 so I’m still shredding. During the lockdown I progressed as much as I had when I was a kid. This is my advice to aging players. Keep developing different finger independence exercises to keep the muscle memory flexible. Warm up longer to keep left hand fatigue at bay and third, take vitamin E and drink lots of magnesium water💧
Just like many things, it's a blend of approaches that gets in done in the end. Come at from all angles. Perspective is everything.
I can't help but return to this video to watch JNC shred the life out of his guitar. I think this is one of best JNC solo intros. Would love it if these solos and rifts that JNC plays were to actually exist as part music tracks I could blast out when driving my car.
I was sitting in an orchestra in 1966 when the sax player stood up and took a ten minute solo ( he wasn't breathing [circular]). I saw a woman over in the doorway and recognized her as the late Charlie Parkers' wife. That made me realize the guy next to me was Phil Woods ( makes sense because the orchestra leader was Oliver Nelson0. You Tube gives everyone the ability to sit real close (still not the same as being there) and see what the greatest musicians alive are doing. It you want to roast your weenies you have to go to where the fire is. And sometimes you over cook your weenies (burnt).My price of admission to sit next to people who play like that was ten hours a day practice and study for years and giving up everything else. Excellence in anything more often then not happens this way. Then go to the fire and temper your metal around the best or else you are going to burn your weenies.
The 'start slow' and speed up incrementally is a carry over from classical practice, so not likely to be abandoned. For guitar, with picking, I found a key was to sync my fretting hand with my picking hand and not vice versa. At slower speeds you can fret a note then pick it. At faster speeds you don't have time, so you need to be fretting and picking at a similar speed *but* not exactly syncronised. The fretting needs to be slightly ahead. So easier to aim for full sync, then fret slightly ahead. Theoretically you can play as fast as you can pick on a singles string, but then moving between strings, and fretting speed will slow that, but the better you get at moving between strings and fretting speed, the closer you get to the single string speed. Troy Brady had the best info on the subject last time I looked.
There's this part if you're observant to your own playing, where you hit a spot where your technique either works, or it doesn't and you start to rethink your technique and see if you can make it easier and more relaxed because the tension is the enemy of speed. This is what I took away from watching the stuff that Troy put up, in particular the seminar he did with Andy Wood where he talks about his technique not working at some point and he changed it. Also speed bursts help. You're entirely correct about burning in things to muscle memory too, there is no way to do that other than repetition. Burning in good habits is what you want to do, so you're right there about accuracy. When it comes to the speed thing you want to try stuff and find what works first, and that requires experimentation, THEN burn it in.
Interesting discussion!
In Karate, we often shift focus. Sometimes, we practise slow, with emphasis on doing techniques perfectly, other times, we practise speed, and then accuracy goes out the window. The hope is that over time, we will get better at combining these concepts. For like you are alluding at, you use your hand, wrist, elbow and fingers differently pending on whether you go fast or slow.
Not entirely obvious what is the best approach
In Ninja school, we learned to run up 200ft vertical surfaces, you can't do that slow because you fall off and have to do a flying-peooow-twang fu maneuver to recover. Good advice is don't play guitar when balancing on the roof, or at least do it fast.
@@mimetype Yeah, you got to be fast, just make sure you are using a wireless amp, otherwise it might get expensive
"Start slow, like this:", then proceeds to melt faces with a C major scale... 😎
Great video John - and fantastic playing!
I like to do a mix of both approaches: i set up a metronome to increase speed from comfortable to breaking point. However, when i notice that are parts of a phrase that are not clean, or articulate enough, i play that at a slower speed than the comfortable, for like 15 minutes. i found out that doing that helps with the speeding up exercises as well.
One things i haven't seen many people talk about is why and how working slowly can be beneficial to reach higher speed. First off, lemme just say that i'am a very particular case, i've had a lot of nerve/cardio-vascular problem over the years and had to undergo surgery twice due to a thoracic outlet syndroma ( on both arms, feel free to check that out ).
I played guitar all my life, and i'am now 38 yo, and after one of the surgery i had to entirely stop playing for 5 years due to the fact my left hand was extremly weak, i had lost quit a bit of motricity, i had no strenght, nor stamina left in my arm, and what i could manage was about 15 min of guitar playing on my best days, while still experiencing pain.
I got back into it, after a few years when my hands got better, but i never really came back from it 100%, my 4th finger/pinky are still very weak and have problem coordination wise.
I was quit the shredder in my youth, but i had to start again from 0, all my life teacher told me to work slowly but i really never understood why, outside of the fact you'll have to do so in order to "work your way up" , and that's true, to some extent, but once i couldn't play like i did before i started working extremely slow to help my weak fingers to get better, and threw hard work and decication i realised many things about working slow :
> Working slow isn't only about working your speed up or correcting mistake, but also about working on your form and efficiency. For my weak fingers to be able to come back from all those problem i had to spend the least amount of movement, and try to be the most confortable i could in order to achieve speed again.
> Working really slow allows you to perfect your form, and be meticulous about details you wouldn't normally pay attention to, and also helps your brain memorise better.
When i talk about efficiency, it can be many things,
> The space between the strings and your finger ( the distance they travel when changing strings, for exemple )
> How much movement do you waste on your picking hand, and how to improve that.
> Most of the time ( and i've seen that with a lot of guitarist ), the problem isn't the neck hand, but the picking hand ( myself included ), as we start our guitar journey we tend to focus a lot on the neck hand and don't pay much attention to the other hand, while it is in fact, the one hand that needs the most work in lot of cases. Working extremly slow allowed me to understand i had many flaws in my picking hand game and allowed me to perfect my movement that i am now able to execute with next to no strain in my forearm/shoulder. I used to be tense uppon extended period of time because i had a lot of unpolished movement, and the only way to correct those micro mistake is to become aware of it, playing slow helps a lot with that.
Same for the left hand, i had to correct years of habbit ( fingers doing a lot of unwanted movement, trying to be the most efficient i could )
I realise my comment already is hella long so i'am not gonna extend too much. But all that work made me realise how complacent i had been with the instrument over the years, specifically my right hand, and the quality of my picking.
It's been a decade now, and my hands feel much better now, i still have some limitation, but i can play smoke and mirrors again.
So if I, can do it, anybody can, it's all about being honnest about what you lack as a guitarist, and how smart you can be about the way you work on your weaknesses.
Back in the 80s I was fed up with all these new McAlpine 5000 mph guitarists .. At some point I was beginning to question if I was wrong .. but not for long - Being from the era of solo's I decided to trust my idols like Thin Lizzy (Sykes) etc. and to this day I still play my synth solo's from what comes up at a certain point .. thats it .. today I'm 61 and had a non-voluntary break for 30+ years after a parasite bite .. lately I started re-recording until I was hit by a massive stroke last year .. I'm not into fast, shred and want to tell youth that speed is not the goal, never been 🙂
In the late 80s I had a cassette and booklet from MAB. His approach was to use tremolo picking at high speed to figure out the mechanics that worked for you and then keep those same mechanics as you built speed and accuracy up.
Attention to detail (ie how to play clean) and intentional practice are key. Identify exactly what you want to work on to not waste time. You gotta push yourself to develop the strength and stamina...No pain, no gain within reason. Be mindful of your body's muscle tension while practicing.
One thing many speed exercises don't cover is switching note subdivisions in a single phrase/line. Practicing in 4/4 time, I like to mix up each beat in a measure to really give my hands/brain a workout. Say you play four sixteenth notes, an eighth note triplet, one eighth note and an eighth note rest, and then a sixteenth note triplet for one measure. This is what we know as phrasing, and it can be done with one note or many. Being able to articulately switch between these subdivisions at will, even within a single phrase, is how you develop your own voice/style musically. You can do so much rhythmically with one or two notes when mastering this. Don't be afraid to add rests into your phrasing either as it adds anticipation of what comes next as well as attitude.
Shredders get a bad rap as a whole because the entry level largely play sixteenth note phrases fast and nothing else. If someone only plays fluid lines of sixteenth notes, it becomes boring to listeners quickly because there is no change or discernible theme. Freely switching between subdivisions is what we know and love as music regardless of tempo. Eric Johnson and Andy Timmons are great examples of really fast players who do this. Angus Young is my personal favorite example of this. Shredding capability is just one cool trick to have in one's full arsenal of tricks and need not be overdone. This is always my answer to the, "What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago about guitar playing," question. Don't always think what note should I play next. Give some thought to what subdivision should I play next. The note choices set the tonality/mood of a piece, the rhythmic subdivisions convey the attitude/feel of the artist.
Edit: I realize this comment could appear like I'm talking about/to John, but I wasn't. Just was the most helpful things I've learned in my 15 years of playing.
Justin Guitar did some excellent research into this, I highly recommend it.
Basically, there is a hormone in your body which stops being produced in your 20s and thus as you get older and older it becomes harder and harder to learn more skills.
Love your channel and seriously appreciate all the tutorials, etc. Trying to develop a similar left hand/wrist (neck) position, however, 2 whole step stretch of 1,2, and 4 fingers while achieving fluidity is ridiculously difficult if not impossible. Always impressed with your playing and technique though.
I think part of the starting slow and gradually building up is primarily needed to avoid excess tension in your wrist and/or fingers. Since our muscles work in opposing pairs (biceps curl arms inward, triceps push arms back out), excess tension in any parts of your body that you’re trying to move really slows you down since your body is literally fighting against itself. Of course, some tension is needed or you’d drop your pick, your guitar and maybe even fall out of your chair if you’re sitting or collapse if you’re standing. So, I guess it’s all about finding the smallest amount of tension you can.
My experience over 20 years in regards to fast alternate picking:
1. Learn and practice how to tremolo pick with your right hand. Get comfortable, relaxed and go fast
2. Alternate pick two notes at first fast as you can. Keep practicing this two-note ‘chunk’.
3. Expand the two-note chunk to three notes.
4. Do different combinations of ascending, descending, finger combos etc
5. Keep expanding the ‘chunks’
6. Simultaneously learn the damn fretboard- patterns, scales, whatever. You need to have an ingrained mental roadmap in order to play fast instinctively
7. The whole ‘start slow and gradually increase BPM’ seems to be well-intentioned but not accurate. Often ppl who can play fast don’t actually remember or know how they did it. It ain’t starting slow and building up lol.
I learnt to play fast in my 30-40s now playing flight of bumble bee at 180 bpm! Started slow and accurate for a few weeks then whacked up the tempo. But have done years of exercises and metronome work.
Learning is also about experimentation. This is true for all types of learning, not just in the domain of music. By pushing the boundaries of what you are comfortable with, you will force your brain to try to adapt in ways that rote learning will take longer to grasp. Then the rote work has to be done, in a consistent and disciplined way in order to hone the realisations of the early learning phase.
My feeing is a metronome should be there to help you with rhythmic precision. It’s not a speedometer. Use a metronome to work on accuracy first. Then you can worry about tempo. As you said, with guitar there are numerous fingerings you’re often trying to gain muscle memory for. I don’t know what the other guys you mentioned said, but yes, everyone learns to run just by running one day, but no one runs at an Olympic level without training, and sometimes that training isn’t running, but working on the muscle memory of things like length of your stride, how high are you knees, learning how to break out of starting blocks. All of that is analogous to the techniques of guitar playing and building speed. But speed really only comes from the accuracy of your technique.
ime start slow and build up works better for the fretting hand and chunking works better for the picking hand
Thanks. Great playing. Can't keep my eyes off that K-Line Del Mar...
WHen I was younger, I would just GO FOR IT! It worked surprisingly well. I would just back off a bit until it got cleaner and then push back at full speed. Many licks I can play at full speed and cannot play them any slower!! Something about the way it just feels and the way the muscles work.
I'd say that a slow pace is best for memorization, choosing efficient finger positions, transitions and picking directions/type. A steady pace is good for good ingraining the memorised notes in your muscle memory and synchronising the left and right hand. Chunking is good for increasing the left, right or both hands speed whilst trying to maintain synchronisation.
Whenever I try to learn something, I've found it's best to do this over multiple days and in short sessions, than in one sitting. There have been countless times I could not play something as well as I want, only to get frustrated and quit. But later, after having a good night of sleep, I wake up and suddenly I can play it. How do you expect your hands to keep up to speed if your brain cannot even memorise what to do properly? Muscle memory is also built over time and can only take place when you have memorised the parts. I bet if you search well enough you must find some science to back this up.
I have found that it requires me to push the speed up so that I can see where exactly the technique starts to fall apart, so I can then go back and slow down to correct it, because what works at a slow speed in terms of pick angle and adjustment of the wrist, etc. doesn’t necessarily work at high-speed. So if one never pushes the speed to the point where it falls apart, they never get to learn what exactly it is that’s falling apart so they can go back slower to fix it. You never hit that point where you can discover what it is that’s wrong that prevents you from playing it fast. Just my experience.
my discouragement comes from the fact that i started playing when i was 12. I'm 26 now. people say "oh so you must be pretty good" i always say i could be a lot better, because im a perfectionist and hate doing things that I perceive as imperfect or not up to whatever standard im trying to achieve. I cant accept being bad at things. Now i wonder if its too late or even worth it to learn to play fast, and rather just dig into the style that i like to noodle aroind in, even though i want to play in bands and MAYBE have some sort of career in music. if I had spent even the first year straight practicing licks from eric johnson and kirk hammet, guitarists that i looked up to from a speed perspective, i wouldnt feel like i've "wasted" the last 10+ years of time playing guitar rather than improving my skill. I just dont understand what playing fast is supposed to FEEL like, and how the motions of the hands are different. so i practice with a metronome on repetitive licks for 2 or 3 days, get stuck on 100bpm and give up
Around the 10 minute mark I wonder if you could shred that passage starting with an upstroke forcing the inside string cross. That has always been my weakness. Yep.
6:50 can someone give me some pointers as to when I should move my index finger to the next string when ascending strings ? I just found the main culprit, I don't automatically move my finger when ascending but I do when descending, so I'm way slower when going back to the low E string, it's frustrating
The “youth advantage” is overstated imho. I did learn the majority of my technical competence in my early teens, but I improved immensely much later. Accurate picking speed came in my 30s. In fact, I was a far faster and more accurate picker in my late 40s. My left hand legato was faster in my late teens, early 20s. I have a permanent finger injury now, so I have to budget the 16th/32nd notes, but I’m a more accurate picker now when I do. I actually think age has very little to do with progression except when it comes to confidence. Older students are less confident, therefore less likely to push through.
I had a similar experience. I could play fast in my teens and 20s but I didn't learn to actually "shred" till I was in my late 30s. The issue isn't speed as much as it is having the time and stamina to practice as much as I did when I was younger. 😅
I think a key lies in your second sentence. This skews player's perception of what others may experience as they have little concept of how much the early gains they made affect their later playing. I know for instance the open chords I learned in childhood simply feel different to play- like there's no way I can screw them up- than things I have learned in middle age. It's more likely that a pentatonic run I learned at 45 will be inaccurate 5 times out of 10. Even if I play it 1/2 the speed I have played it fastest, correctly.
I think you have to consider that you've been playing chords longer and that will never change. I don't know how it is for everyone, but I most certainly became a much better guitarist (much faster even) in my early 40s. I never knew how to properly economy pick, alternate pick, sweep pick or even play entire scales until I was almost 40. I worked on using focused practice and plenty of instructional UA-cam videos. Now I feel like I can fly across the fretboard! I know age undoubtedly affects our bodies, but probably not as much as our ability to dedicate time to something without getting bored or frustrated. When you're younger, it's easier to dedicate more time and attention to things, but I don't think John's statement about building speed only at younger ages is accurate. It might be the most common experience, but certainly not the only one.
I have gone round and round and round both online and in direct conversations with other players about speed. Having learned my first cowboy chords preteen, hanging the guitar up until my 40s...just pulling it off the shelf every now and again in my teens, 20s and 30s...I definitely feel the time for speed is past. I'm almost 50 and have been hammering away daily trying to play even what most "fast players" would consider moderate tempo to no avail. I've used the ramping metronomes on YT to no avail. It's not just about time spent, as some others have suggested....over the course of the past 7 years I have averaged 2 hours a day with a guitar in my hand and about 1/2 of that in actual focused metronome effort to synchronize and speed up. W/O malicious intent, people selling speed, either in lessons or gear, prey upon people like me. An example I have is hammering away an hour daily for 2 months on Creeping Death's verse riff trying to get it to 202 using a long ramping metronome, looking away from the time and watching my speed fail day after day after day at the same time in the video. Many players would suggest I haven't practiced enough...I believe most players don't have the tenacity to fail at something as epically as I have at guitar and still keep at it.
I don't think you're alone in this - it's maybe something some other folks might be able to chime in on - but I feel like anecdotally amongst folks I know, the ones who can "shred" (not that it is important for most gigs) developed most of their speed in their teens, and the ones who can't seem to have that barrier that seems basically impenetrable?
@@johnnathancordy Thanks for replying John! FWIW I think your lesson here is great with a dose of realism. I am nothing if not tenacious. I'd say at varied points over past few years my obsession with this has damn near ruined my life and marriage, having become obsessive, and trying to figure out what the hell I could be doing wrong or not doing to hold my speed down, but it's really just inability to synchronize beyond a comparatively low speed. It can infuriating as most of my influences are highly melodic players like John Sykes, Neal Schon, Gary Moore, and Adrian Smith that are highly melodic with interjections of bumblebee speeds. I love Gilmour and would likely succeed much more in that tempo it's just not exactly what I aspired to play.
started playing at 16 in the mid 70's. Played and gigged for about 10 years. Had to pack it in, I had a mortgage, wife, child and was working shifts for 30 years. Picked up the guitar again at about 60 years of age, never used a metronome except in school.
Same story exactly. Actually learned more after I picked the guitar up and gigging again after 60. So much more information available. No UA-cam when I was 20.
I greatly prefer these musical sounding exercises rather than non-musical chromatic "spider" exercises. And even though I'm 73 and have never had a goal of being a shredder, this type of exercise sounds great at the slower speeds that I play.
I started playing at 11 in 1981 and i remember seeing motley Crue show and after that i wanted to play fast as i could but my right hand and left were never so coordinated for years. I spent wasted time going about it wrong but at least i kept at it.
Taking classical guitar lessons when i was 30 really improved my skill level. It was the breakthrough i needed to take my playing ro the next level. Now i spend most of.my time fingerpicking instead of using a pick and i can play almost as fast and clean as that Italian kid Mancuso. And when i do use a pick, Dunlop jazz III are most precise, i can really shred like Yngwie and petrucci.
The point is, take classical or finger style lessons and you will make dramatic improvements on your speed as well as overall technique
Love to play fast form time to time, maybe is my adrenaline. I was guitar nerd with videos of Lane, Cooley, Becker, Holdsworth, etc. But now I'm more on jazz standars, but still love both sides. I think the best intructional if you wanna be a faster player was Shred Guitar manifesto by Rusty Cooley. Obiously on a technical aspect (legato, picking, tapping)
Learning to absolutely eliminate tension is the key to unlocking speed.
It is the same for world-class Olympic runners. No tension.
Great lesson and insights. Your picking hand is incredibly smooth and your pinky is as long as my index finger 😅 so I’ve always had to work around not having a huge reach. I played a lot in my teens but only recently picked it back up in my 50s. Obviously I’m not as fast. Also a lifetime of work and sports, broken fingers, have affected my play. It’s more about accuracy and tone for me now.
Way to go (picking it back up)! I’m doing the same thing and it’s been an adventure to relearn guitar at this age. I’m actually enjoying the journey. So much more now to experience then in the 90s (UA-cam, pedals, gear etc). Keep it up!
Your guitar tone on here is nuts!
For me, as I got older I learned more about the "less is more" idea of melody and have found my playing has more ... well, feeling and soul in the things I play and speed took a back seat. And to be honest I wasn't to into speed players anyway, always preferred Beck and Gilmour to Vai and the like ... not that the faster player weren't great, just my wiring I guess.
I can make a long story on this one.But the thing is if you do this and it's not working then you have to study pickslanting And the doors will be open forever.And everything makes sense. cheers all the best
You get a ‘Like’ for the impressive arm veins mate. Stimulated veins is a good sign of having a good work out. Get that blood flowing. Enjoy your videos as always. Cheers! 🍻
Steve Morse used to advise to practice something 90% of the time at the tempo that you can play it correctly and 10% at the tempo you’re trying to get to. Otherwise you’re just practicing mistakes. But also test out how fast you’re getting.
Coming from a classical perspective, I was taught to only play something as fast as you can manage without making mistakes. Once you master it at a particular speed, ramp it up a notch.
Also, taking a break from playing is crucial to becoming more proficient.
How much time would you recommend ?
Thank you.
@@hottamanful well, I always practiced something as fast as I could without messing up. If I found a particular phrase that gave me trouble, I'd just adjust the speed of the entire segment. As far as how long before I sped it up depends on my own criticism of what I'm playing. If it sounds wrong, messy or not quite right, I would wait until it didn't require much effort or thought. Then you know . 😁
@@hottamanful also, if you're referring to how much of a break, I tend to go several days or perhaps a week depending on what my regular practice schedule is. What I've learned over the years is once you learn something, you only get rusty at it if you don't practice, but you never completely forget. At least for me that's true..
@@donboehnker7542
Yes I actually meant this specific subject 👍🏻.
Thanks a lot for the comprehensive reply..
Bless you..
You're right about newer players wanting to play too fast too soon and getting frustrated. That's not such a bad thing, as a properly motivated player will find the ways. The other type of newer player that is more problematic, though, is the one who tries to do the same and is oblivious to what they sound like doing it. Working on feel and accuracy is of utmost importance when ramping speed.
I do adhere to the same train of thought as cats like Andy Wood and John Petrucci, though. Floor it. Pedal to the metal for a take or two and get a grasp of what that feels like to see not only the potential, but where problem areas may lie. Then back it off a bit from there to hone in on fixing flaws. It also makes previously impossible speeds not seem so bad.
Anyway, good video concept.
sick af playing bro some great melodic shred there
If you practice slowly with a mind to speeding up, you NEED to understand picking strategy. I gained most of my speed recently when I shifted focus from speed to picking efficiency. Speed was a byproduct of this focus. You can't go wrong with a bit of Troy Grady and "cracking the code."
Yes; the guys who say you don’t get better at running by walking already put in hours memorizing patterns and they’re trying to go from 16th notes at 200 bpm to 210 bpm.
Once you are familiar with lots of patterns you can “learn” new ones at faster starting speeds.
I’m a shite guitar player; I know all this from practicing the tuba…
I can play pretty fast using hammer ons and pull offs, but my alternate picking is only moderately fast. I loose the synchronization when my right goes fast. My left hand is pretty fast too but my brain totally goes caput when i try alternate picking at a higher speed. I'm 64 and a regularly gigging lead guitarist. I still believe some how some day I'll get fast.
Just from sports perspective. There's a difference in fast- vs slow-twitch fibres across individuals and certain learning curve resulting from that (and the level of achievement resulting from that). The second thing is fascia and how it tends to stiffen as the years go by.
That being said, accoracy and speed are to certain extent different skills, that should be trained separately, with different drills, and then merged gracefully. One without the other gets messy and limiting over time.
The elephant in the room is that a lot of shredders are incredibly sloppy rhythm-wise. Fwiw, I asked a classically trained pianist known for their technical ability whether they'd ever practice sloppy and tidy it up later for speed. They said they have techniques for building speed but would never practice sloppily.
I’m not sure the comparison between piano and guitar is so straightforward. I think that for piano the technique for playing fast is more similar to the technique for playing slow, and also well defined and well known by teachers and players, so that even while practicing slow, you’ll focus on using the mechanics that are needed to play fast.
On electric guitar, mechanics (especially for the picking hand using a plectrum) for playing slow and fast are significantly different and not so well defined (until Troy Grady). So it’s easier to figure out what mechanics work for playing fast by trying to play fast even if one fails, rather than grinding on the mechanics that work for playing slow and hoping to eventually be able to perform those slow mechanics fast enough
Hey man! Great video! Are the tabs/backtrack for the piece you played at the start of the video on your Patreon? It was such a killer piece of music!!
Anton Oparin is the only youtuber I pay any attention to regarding technique because 1) he has the best technique I've ever seen and it's not even close and 2) he bases his ideas of solid anatomical understanding rather than broscience. I like Troy but his channel is really about learning to imitate the techniques of decent players, rather than trying to isolate what is the optimal way to play guitar.
The thing with this is that people wrongly think playing fast, playing accurately and learning a song are the same skill when i reality everything should be practiced individualy.
As others have said Troy Grady has the definitive, revolutionary material on this, and picking in general. Miller did a long interview with him. Andy Wood says the same thing. I'm not interested in shredding but picking issues are definitely a thing of the past. Still, many pedagogues will continue to recommend "starting slow" and misleading learners. It will probably take a few more years, until a few more Troys, Martins and Andys have emerged, for the old notions to go away.
You have to learn the moves and the feeling of playing fast. After that it's like riding a bike.
Daily speed work helps too.
By moves I mean can you play all hammer-on legato, but then add in a very, very slight amount of pull-off...almost none...this type of motion sensitivity is what we need to be gaining awareness of, not just practicing the same way over and over, but trying different subtle motion variations...find what works and repeat for a few weeks. Then learn with slightly different motion variations. Like Inner Skiing or Inner Tennis.
Life is a game.
Check out Jon Bjork where he talks absolutt transition times. The movements need to be fast and precise when you’re practicising slow.
Nice! What major scale do you play there up and down the neck? Stil having problems with seeing the mayor scale on my fretboard.
There's benefit and drawbacks to both approaches.
I think you should play soow ONLY to internalize the rhythm, then push the tempo to 160-190 like Shawn Lane would.
I see your picking technique changes the faster you go and whether you are alternate picking, rake picking or using legato. The faster you play, the less the picking motion is in the wrist and the more it is in your arm. Its that transition as you speed up the tempo that is difficult as what work slower doesn't necessarily work faster.
This is only one kind of speed. I'm more focused on playing like Johnny Ramone, but yeah, when I'm working something out I will slow it down to get it, but I sometimes find the sloppiness is part of what makes the riff.
Im not fast. I trip on my fingers. I cant do repetition for more than a few repetitions. But I also cant practice like I would like to. Life gets in the way and I am not a professional musician. But I sure do wish I could be better.
As soon as I start thinking what my right hand is actually doing I mess it up, I always feel my picking hand is connected to my fretting hand naturally. If I concentrate on that 9/10 times my picking hand is accurate at speed. I play more traditional rock stuff so I don't class my playing style as a shredder.
Bounce by Mathew Syed and The talent code ar books that set out what we currently know about how the physiology of learning works. From which you can experiment and find your own way. Troy Grady’s stuff is good too.
Lots of others here have summed it up well, but one key element is Called ‘reaching’. Which is you must do the skill faster than you can. Else your body will happily stay where it is.
My final thought. Technique serves expression.
What did Marin Miller say? Is there a link to watch it?
open loop! 🎉
I want to play fast. Because it's necessary for the kind of music I want to play. Golden era 80/90s metal. Feel and note value are more important, but you don't get through the qualifiers without also having the speed. I've practiced quite a lot. But I'm 40 this year, have two kids so I'm not drilling these execises all day. But I know what it is to drill. For what it's worth, here's what I've learned.
Guthrie Govan is right (about everything). If you can play something very precisely and efficiently, then speeding it up isn't necessarily that hard. A lot of times I've thought 'bah, I can't play this fast'. Then slowed it down a bit, and realised, actually, I just can't REALLY play it well. So slow it right down, work out every nuance, then start speeding it up.
But.. you can't train for the sprint, by practicing running marathons. You can't walk all day, and just assume that because you've made so many steps, you'll be great at running. There is value in pushing the tempo beyond what you can play comfortably, and just trying to hang on. You need to do both.
Fast and sloppy sounds terrible. I realised that the phrases I wanted to play are like phrases in language. They contain information that we're trying to convey to the listener. If bits of information are missing, dead notes etc.. or it goes off the beat, you lose the listeners engagement. Master of puppets at 180bpm played well sounds better than master of puppets at 200bpm played badly.
The slow playing technique is just different to the high speed. And I found there's a shifting 'awkward' bpm range where you're not quite sure which one you're doing. Initially for me, it was 110bpm. I could play at 100 and weirdly at 120, though it felt really fast, but I just literally couldn't play at 110.
Final point. It's not all right hand. It's all hand sync. The minute details of timing, muting and pressure. I realised what makes the good guys good, is that the notes are fast, but clear and legato. No dead space. And that's hard to do.
at the start of your conversation at 6:55 showing the 3 notes per string you seem to be picking only once per string and using a legato technique to get the second and third notes to sound out yes? I assume without heavy sustain/distortion the notes would not sound out as clearly as yours do? BTW I'm 64 been playing classic rock-blues since 1977 and still have never been a speedy player I just cant seem to get the technique down . I use alternate picking every single note just seem to fumble and bumble when trying to go quickly as the metronome4 techniques where nerve shown to me b ack in the day it was mostly find a book on soloing and here's a blues box pattern and have at it
The most difficult things for me with playing guitar are patience and discipline.
Good points!
Why is it that your low strings sounding so flubby and compressed? To me it sounds like the action is to low, which results in frett buzz and compressed notes with not enough sustain.
Young players have more free time and have less bad habits built in to their technique (and are less stubborn about changing them). Aging players like me have to really be diligent with devoting specific time blocks to metronome practice, and have to be willing to step backward to make technique adjustments where bad habits limit speed
Speed is cool (had you listen Coltrane's 'sheets of sound'), but I prefer 'melodic freedom' over finger/muscular memory speedy patterns, ok, they are fun to play and one can build pattern sequences in a 'freely way' like Steve Morse did or Paul Gilbert showed, ... but a better example of 'melodic freedom' could be Scott Henderson, inclusive, Frank Gambale , John Scofield, there is a girl in youtube called Tori Slusher, she is a beast in having melodic freedom while using intricate plucking patterns ... Of course, I am not at that level crafmantshift ... but what I found useful to grasp that is to center my accuracy routines in just the transitions between strings (with just pick, or pick and fingers, or just fingers) and applying combinatory rithmic patterns alternating left hand fingering ... then, two kind of exercises, dumb exercises for made while watching TV or Anything else that don't means that I am playing guitar ... and 'real exercises' that are musical phrases that got a plucking pattern and can betransposed all over the fretboard and/or scale intervals, the 'real exercises' I don´t play as running a pattern, instead , as melodic performance line with dynamics. accents nuances ... very slow, and bringing rhythmic displacements ... these form of practice comes from Michael Brecker ... and he called that something like 'subconcious food' , a thing that you do while practicing but never think to do that as you did in a performance ... soon or later, after years of practice, those 'ideas' begins to merge spontaneously and without thinking in your improvisations ...
Yes, that is not getting a fast lick an impressing people with that or repeating a composition that brings you a reward to play as you want it to be ... but getting into that zone when/where the playing is like jumping into the unknown and trying to get something 'something' in the moment and get the luck to get into a musical flow that means something for the ensemble and surprise yourself because you are not playing preplanned lines, instead, what the subconscious flows is bringing to your 'body/hands/fingers' is something(composing in real time) that I enjoy more that playing a picking pattern at the speed of light ...
... and I think that 'melodic freedom' is way more difficult to achieve than speed of light picking patterns ...
That guitar is a beauty 😍
If you cant do it slow then you cant do it fast. If you cant walk you cant run. So you have to walk first. Thats why starting slow is a requirement. Once get that down the gradual increase on speed isnt the best tactic. I found speed bursts are the way to get faster.
"... not just a random kid".... laughed way too hard ;)
Shawn Lane talked about this back in 1993
Is that a San Bernadino K-Line with SSS? Or a different model
Well, there are many aspects to speed playing. There is the physical aspect of developing the rapid muscle response required to pick and fret with speed, and that is where speed bursts with rests between them helps players like Bernth go so incredibly fast. Think of it like doing a work out where your speed bursts are done in sets.
Then there is slow playing where you gradually increase speed, and that is more teaching you how to maintain control as you focus on accuracy, but the tendency with this approach is that you lose control as you get faster and faster. And this approach can take years to build up speed to any significant degree on its own-especially if you are playing complex pieces.
Then there is playing faster than you can keep things accurate, but you slow down ever so slightly until you find the upper edge of your control. This helps to develop a level of control that you wouldn’t normally obtain using other methods, because you gain more consistent control as you slow down to a level that is within your accurate playability zone.
Then there is picking methods like studying the pick radius above and below the string, the shorter you make the pick radius, the quicker the speed of the pick becomes without having to apply more force to get the speed to increase.
Then there is pick slanting, and pick angling to help you slice through and across strings easier. Troy Gradey discusses this in detail in his videos.
And you can even try slight pick raising to get hmore of the tip to ride the top of the string for easier picking execution. Just pull your hand back ever so slightly from the strings as you pick and pay attention until you find that sweet spot that works for you.
Then you can practice changing the tension between when you pick more with your wrist versus your forearm. The ability to smoothly change the tension in your arm to go back and forth between these two approaches while you play is a useful technique that almost no one talks about, but pro players do this effortlessly. This will make it easier to execute complex rapid picking patterns which cross many strings.
And there is Legotto practices to help the fretting fingers improve independently of your pick attack altogether. Because your fretting hand work out matters, because neglecting this leads to desynchronization because one hand is more developed than the other. However, you want to get to a point where your legotto is extremely relaxed so you aren’t struggling to roll off long runs and such.
Then there is synchronizing your two hands while just picking on one string, which involves the use of accented notes to get your speed picking and faster fretting to work together more effectively.
And then there is this little technique a lot of guitarists rarely talk about where you take to adjacent strings and you just go down down and up up and cycle between the two strings to train your picking hand how to cycle string transitions. This is perhaps the most important, yet most neglected practice technique of those who want to gain more speed, but don’t pause to realize that string transition time is slowing them down. Just do this on two strings for two or three hours in front of the television and you will see how much difference this makes. This technique helped me reach unbelievable speeds.
Then there is the pick attack transition time that so few guitarists talk about where you play notes in a scale slow, but your pick attack of each note is extremely fast and stacattoed so it sounds more like how a classical player would strike a note. As you learn to speed this technique up, it is very transformative to your playing. Think of it like you know you will get shocked as you pick, so you want to slice through the string quickly even though your fretting hand is moving through notes slowly. This will create space between notes as expected.
And another great idea for building speed is learning how to do selective picking like you see guys such as Charlie Robins do. It forces your picking to be both quick and in time and the trick with selected picking is not to get frustrated, because it really does take months of tedius practice to get good at it.
Address all these issues with your speed playing and you will start to see amazing results. I wish I had this list handed to me 35-years ago when I was starting out on guitar.
John, what is that strap you're using?
The key to speed is practicing with the metronome, chunking, having individual practice for both hands and practicing all key paces from slow to medium to fast. One of most people's mistakes is spending too much time practicing slowly. You should spend equal time in all paces which means you would be practicing more notes in the medium pace than in the slow pace and more notes in the fast pace than in the medium pace. Another mistake is not knowing which hand is less developed. My personal problem was that my picking hand was underdeveloped since I loved playing legato lines. Personally, legato is too soft for real shredding.
Why on earth was my comment about Shaun Baxter deleted?
I'm a faster player at 51 than I was in my 20's. But I've now spent the time just sitting there running scales and 3 note per string licks. I think it just depends on when in your life that became important and you just sat there putting in that work. Obviously the longer you've played the more you can see the fretboard so it would make sense you get more accurate later.
Fast forward into your 60's & reverse the problem. I was a fast accurate player, then I got Parkinson's. There are no words to describe how it feels to close your eyes, feel that fast mixolydian move & find your hand completely unresponsive to the instruction to execute it.
Reverb on the metronome makes it way for digest for the ear lol
I’m 40 this year… I’d love to be able to play fast and clean.
Tell it can be done, John. Tell me!
😂😂😂
Get a looper and just enjoy. Stop working and just have fun. Who cares how long it takes.
Focus in on your technique, one part at a time. The biggest speed killer is excess movement. It goes for both hands but especially your picking hand. Practice in front of a mirror or get a GoPro. Focus on economy of movement. If you really want to pick fast, learn directional picking.
It can. I've played guitar for 23 years, but at 35 and putting more focus into practicing again in the past couple of years, thought still very on/off, and I've pushed my fast/clean boundaries a lot - to higher speeds than in my teenage years.
@@Cloudburzt I absolutely agree. I pushed a lot after 30 years of playing by cleaning up my technique, especially flabby thumb and excess movement.
@@poulwinther I will say though, that in all those years of not practicing, I did keep learning about music theory and such, and that has been a great foundation for the technical stuff as well, meaning that I don't get stumped by many things theory-wise and can tie most things on the fretboard to some theory. That has definitely been helpful as well, and especially when I decided to get more serious about guitar again.
"Yngwie Malmsteen for instance seems to be a very relaxed guy......with his picking I mean" 🤣
Jason Becker said to start off fast too.
Dude: the reason many people start out at slow speeds because they have to figure out the notes and the finger positions ! Neither the standard notations nor the tabs show you where the finger positions should be… good luck playing fast if you don’t even know where you should put your fingers on the frets when playing a new song… I come from playing violin. As a young student learning violin, my teachers didn’t even bother to teach me how to play fast or articulate expressions until I actually memorized (know all the notes and where all my left hand fingers are supposed to go)… we were not allowed to come taking lessons with sheet musics…after that, playing fast is a walk in a park… SO, your next tutorial UA-cam should be : How to find where to put your left hand fingers, and how to memorize a song. Of course in the case of improvisation, then how to master the “Arpeggio Progression”. Once you do all that then the fast speed will come much easier… in summary: your fingers cannot move fast, if your muscle memory is not there… people try to run fast like olympian runners, but they don’t even know running where ??
Sorry I’m almost done ranting: I’ve seen a lot UA-camrs showing off their very fast ripping sounds - but they really sound terrible and awful… why even bother !!
Ahh, yes, but developing fast alternate picking in the right hand can also be difficult for older players, because the technique we more chronologically challenged guitarists have mostly learned with was an angled three-finger blues pentatonic grip. I'm surprised to hear that you learned major scale geometry before finding pentatonic patterns. This would have been the exception rather than the rule in the early seventies. Having committed much of this to muscle memory, it becomes problematic to counter-intuitively change to a four fret, four-fingered grip in order to execute shreddy passages. Most of us learned by ear from listening to Hendrix and Clapton, and were unable, with a few exceptions like Garry Moore,( who was left-handed, giving more power to his left hand) and the odd player like Johnny Winter, or Frank Marino, who managed to fly around the pentatonics more rapidly and more tidily than Hendrix, most people playing this way were limited like an engine limiter in their picking speed. I spent two years in the early nineties trying to do the type of practise that you and other younger players have championed, only to find it nearly impossible to unlearn years of playing spontaneously the way we always had. I don't know that age has anything to do with it, because at 70 I'm much quicker than I was in my twenties when I first recorded and toured with local bands. In the early nineties I tried to learn from four or five sessions with a young shred guitar player how to execute these lines, but after 10 years of working on these skills, I was only at about 60% of the clean speed of my younger teacher, who had at the time he taught me, been playing for only five years in total, whereas I'd been playing,( on electric lead) since the late sixties. It's more about when and how you first learn that determines your ability to play fast and clean, and I find it a bit glib, when well-intentioned good players, who have learned mainstream standard left hand fingering since they began to play. Many of them are not so good at bends or vibratos, but this is probably also due to their early learned techniques ; I'm grateful for the occasional positive feedback I recieve on my "feel" or touch, but in my heart of hearts I still yearn for the excitement and fun of rapid-fire clipped phrasing and clean delivery that makes things more joyful and dynamic...., and believe me, practicing these passages slowly reinforces only the sort of technique that won't work when you crank up the pace. I'm so sick of people saying... it's easy.., and anyone can do it... just follow these steps... because it obviously worked for them but doesn't for people who have to reinvent the wheel after twenty years of playing in a self-taught three-fingered approach.
I think either you have fast twitch or not, then it's just up to putting in a few reps. My kid basically started playing segovia and polyphia this past year after actually practicing a few hours a day for 4-6 months. It's insane; however, enter genetics. My mom was a professional typist, I am a professional Tech guy, and also type like the wind and don't find many guitar parts that hard if I want to put in the time. We are Also related to Elvis, so there's that. Fortunate I suppose. But just know there are freaks out there. Part of what motivated me when I was young is that there was a 16 year old kid Just around the block who could play all the rhythm and leads from Megadeth's Rust in peace. I figured if he could do it at 16, then it was possible. I wasn't quite sure at the time of the advantage I had.
Man, I can’t even pick “Thunderstruck” at full tempo, and it’s on one string 😂
i reckon Thunderstruck intro is perfect to use the 'starting at speed' method. initially only hit one of the fret hand notes while the pick hand stays constant at 135bpm 16th notes, then add more fret hand notes as you get it happening/synchronised