4 Reasons You Can’t Play Guitar Faster

The more you practice the better you get, right? Well that also goes for any glitches and inaccuracies. Practicing something at speed, before you can play it clean, and at a comfy tempo, will actually cement those inaccuracies which trip you up when the speed increases.

Muscle memory is the key first step to playing anything fast, so ‘program’ the part into your fingers slowly first. Another progress killer, when things ramp up a notch, is hesitation. Using a metronome (groan, I know, those boring grown ups were right!) will keep every note in its place and ensure that, when the time comes to crank up the pace, you will be able to do so evenly.

As you play, feel and be aware of tension. Breathe, don’t grip your pick too hard or apply too much pressure with your fingers. It is in this interim stage where you are conditioning every physical movement you will need in order to play faster. Make sure these are all in place before stepping on the accelerator pedal.

Think of the efficiency of an Olympic standard swimmer or competition sprinter; in the pursuit of speed, every wasted movement and output of extraneous energy is scrutinised and removed. No athlete ever won a race by flapping their arms and cartwheeling with their legs!

The same scrutiny can be applied to our fingers and picking hand - how much movement is needed to perform the run or lick? Any exaggerated or overly animated lifting of our fingers can, not only dramatically impact our ability to match a desired speed, but inadvertently tire us out before we get there.

If you are trying to execute a scale run or pattern which involves your pinky and are suffering a little from fretting hand ‘flappy finger syndrome’ (Editor - not an actual recognised medical condition), then a look at your thumb placement can provide an instant fix. Be sure to place your thumb in a central position, in the middle of your hand and central to the back of the neck (just as you would when playing a barre chord). This immediately reduces your fretting finger movements, making you cleaner and more accurate in the process. Disclaimer - you will still need to wrap your thumb around the neck for any good old fashioned blues bending and lead work. Even so, any unwanted movement should be reduced in order to play quicker and accurately.

Cutting down on large finger moments also improves your right and left hand sync - the less you move your fretting fingers, the less of a ‘moving target’ they present for your picking hand to co-ordinate with.

Take the same approach with your picking hand and execute a range of motion that is just enough to do the job. Look at your favourite speedy players, take note of their finger and picking hand movements and thumb placement (can you see their thumb poking over the top of the neck when playing faster scale lines?).

So, you do the responsible thing and break out the metronome, looping that lick until it's up to tempo, but when the time comes to nail it in the context of the song or improvisation, it bombs. What gives?

Playing any pre learnt part in isolation can result in a false sense of how readily we can execute it ‘in the moment’. When performing the part with a backing track, or band, there are other distractions which are absent when working things up to speed - additional instruments, louder volume and, most importantly, keeping your focus on what to play next.

It is helpful to practice in context, with the song or jam track itself. This will let you know whether you are truly able to deliver that speedy line when it counts! If a song remains in the same key throughout, try playing the lick, or indeed the full solo, over the entirety of the song or backing track. This is also a great way to become comfortable performing the lick within the context of the song, rather than experiencing the pressure of only encountering it once.

For any tricky lick or run, it is useful to practice the preceding and following parts of the solo too, so you can get in and out of the lick when the performing the solo in context.

For fast riffs, ease yourself into the tempo by performing (with the track) only half of the riff. Play every second repeat of the riff or play the riff twice and miss one out before joining back in. Often, with faster repeating parts, we can feel that the pace is escaping us and we are falling behind the beat with each repetition. Leaving those all important gaps provides us with a reset and chance to take a breath before locking back in to the pulse, effectively ‘sprinting’ rather than ‘running’.

Think of all those ballads which feature a sudden rip roaring mid solo lick! Faster guitar parts are not just the preserve of faster songs. Often it is not the beat which is dictating the speed of a part, it is the subdivision of that beat. If the term ‘subdivision’ is new to you, this doesn’t require any deep dive music theory to understand; in simple terms, subdivisions refer to the number of notes played on each beat. Once we start playing divisions of 4 notes per beat (16th notes) and upwards, even the most pedestrian of tempos can start to feel challenging.

Understanding and being able to hear the rhythmic subdivision of a fast lick gives us a greater level of control and a clear target, rather than just playing as fast as we can when the moment arrives.

Learn about rhythm and how to count the common rhythmic values - 1/8, 1/16, triplets, 16th note triplets. The chances are that fast lick, run or riff you are trying to master sits nicely within one of these subdivisions. Practice clapping, strumming and playing scales to a metronome with 2, 3, 4 and 6 notes per beat. This will equip you with the ability to recognise these when you hear them. Understanding the the subdivisions of a given part also tethers us to the beat, locking the part to the music.