4 Reasons You Can’t Play Faster
Everyone single one of us, as guitar players, longs to play the guitar as fast as we possibly can. Not only just play fast but to play fast with precision, to truly shred into the stratosphere. Though, it can only be achieved through dedicated and structured practice. Every shredder whom you’ve admired for the effortless ability to melt faces has sacrificed an enormous amount of times to hone their speedy chops. It’s a simple fact, practice makes perfect. Nevertheless, there can be additional factors that may be hindering your progress. Let’s take a look at 4 reasons why you might be stalling.
1. You’re in Your Own Head
It might sound strange but often a common factor that may be hindering any development is yourself. Moreover, your mindset. We often set unrealistic goals or simply put too much pressure on ourselves to achieve an overall goal; without setting smaller, attainable goals that all help in our quest for speed. It’s important to be honest with yourself about where your playing is at and what little things you can do to improve in the short term. For example, if your fretboard knowledge is lacking, how can you realistically expect to be precise and furthermore, precise with agility?
Little steps lead to leaps and this certainly applies to building up your speed on the guitar.
At the end of the day, it’s all about mindset. If we can be mindful of our goals and honest about our progress, then we allow ourselves to improve honestly. Plus, we can do so by giving ourselves little wins along the way to grand prize!
2. You’re Focusing TOO MUCH On Speed
Now don’t get me wrong, I like to shred as much as the next guy. Nonetheless, to achieve maximum speed, we have to start at the beginning.
Every single thing we play is traceable to how much time we spent perfecting the precision of our technique upon learning it. If we brushed over a lick or tried to cut corners, it doesn’t matter how fast we try to play in order to cover it up; it’s always going to show. Taking everything back to square one and building it up can be both the most revealing and rewarding thing you can do in all aspects of your playing but arguably, most importantly for building speed.
Revealing because it makes us pay attention to every note we are playing (or not playing) and rewarding because once we have our precision, we can now organically build our speed.
Can’t quite nail that sweep? Can’t hit all those notes in a tapping sequence. Take it back to workshop and polish those foundations. Accuracy is one of the most important factors in building speed. Don’t under estimate it!
3. Your Guitar Isn’t Correctly Set Up
Our instruments are the vessels for our creativity and with that, it’s important to make sure they are properly set up and maintained. It can take a little time to get the right set up - don’t be afraid to play around with string gauge and action before you hit on what works best for you. String gauge can naturally make a monumental impact to the playability of a guitar and this will change from player to player. The same can be said of action. For instance, if you have a slim neck; heavy strings and a high action may not be the right choice for improving your speed. This goes back to precision and technique: if the guitar is hard to play then your technique and expression are going to greatly suffer.
It’s also important to maintain your instrument. Having your instrument set up twice a year keeps your instrument consistent and therefore, your playing. A ‘no brainer’ when looking to gain steady progress when building your rapid licks. In addition, making sure you’re using fresh strings responsibly. A set of lifeless, rusty strings are going to do nothing but cause issue with every aspect of your playing. Restring when it’s time to restring because when all is said and done; you’re only hindering your own progress.
4. You’re Not Practicing Constructively
We all do it, simply pick up the guitar and just play. It can be a great reminder of why we decided to learn the instrument. However, these expressive indulgences aren’t always the most constructive use of time when looking to improve a specific technique. Improving your speed falls under many individual areas of practice: alternate picking, legato, arpeggios, rhythm, scales, tapping...the list goes on. These singular areas are split between technique and theory, allowing us to group them into practice sessions. It can be useful to time-block your sessions so that you can build a practice system that works for you. For example, if we have an hour spare to practice, instead of noodling for 60 minutes; take 4 individual areas of practice and work on each for 15 minutes.
Expanding on this, say we have 4 days a week that we can spare that hour’s practice, it may be effective to alternate each day between theoretical practice and technique practice. Pair these factors with setting daily, weekly, monthly goals and the right motivation and dedication; the progress will take off itself. I will reiterate here on the importance of mindset: having clear goals and a roadmap in which to reach them is crucial to feeling like you’re making progress. It keeps your playing positive and your practice constructive. It’s also a super flexible model that we can keep from becoming boring!
Ultimately, we will all have different technical factors that determine how fast we can physically play but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push ourselves to the limits of our capabilities. With the right mindset, practice and responsibility; we can take control and improve every single aspect of our playing but absolutely, our speed. If you’ve found yourself plateauing, it’s time to apply these tips and create a better road map to your speed goal!
