Much as your subject is a part of my introductory thread, @kgk, it’s not really answering my question. Do you want to give me your opinion?
I am not an expert in any of this but I can give you my opinion. First, what is the TAB for the music? Next, how do you want to run the metronome clicks over it, and what are the “chunks?” Finally, what are the detailed pick motions (in terms of 2WPS, etc.) that you need to memorize (for the chunks)? Somebody experienced like Troy would likely have a good thought about if you’re breaking it down appropriately.
I have no idea how many years it takes to play fast, there are people that can do it in a year (Jimi Bell), others that can never do it at all, etc., but the key is that you will steadily get better as a player, and see what happens!
I think it’s both easy and natural to get fustrated by many things in life, but it can be argued that “the key to success is sustaned moderate effort.” (Sustained extreme effort is even better, but almost nobody can keep that up, so the “sustained” part is the key.) So, that’s why I advocate (a) confirming that your practice is appropriate, and then (b) just keeping it going… hope this helps!
It’s the 6 - note pattern from the Yngwie section, at the start of the Pickslanting Primer. I can’t get it faster than 110bpm. Working on it for nearly a year now, & pushing to the point of forearm & joint tension every time, despite trying to keep relaxed.
Should I just move on, & not worry about the speed?
I’m a huge fan of not worrying about speed. As a teenager, I never knew what metronome speed I could play. It never even occurred to me to try and find out. Mainly what bothered me was the inability to play lines that moved across the strings with the same speed (whatever it was) that I could move my hands at. That’s where the emphasis on string switching and smoothness comes from in my mindset, and in our teaching.
All that being said, here’s a simple test you can do. Set a metronome to some fast tempo like 180bpm and turn it on. Now tap eighth notes on a table, i.e. two taps for every metronome click. Just with one hand, using only wrist motion. Can you do it? If not try elbow motion, can you do it then? Can you do both?
Tapping 8ths at 180bpm is equivalent to alternate picking 16ths at 180bpm — you’re just tapping the downstrokes. The upstrokes are when your hand comes back up. In fact, you can just hold a book in the air above your tapping hand as you tap, so you have something to hit on the “upstroke”.
It’s kind of a fun little game, but to me it also illustrates a point. If you can do the tapping, and it’s not that hard, then the reason you can’t pick that fast is because whatever picking motion you’re using, you’re not doing right. You don’t actually lack speed, you just lack the knowledge of how to do the motion. If that’s the case, then you need to experiment with different motions until you figure out how to do at least one of them:
Give the test a shot and let me know where you make out.
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A lot of “how many years it takes to play fast” depends upon how many hours a day you practice. Guys like Yngwie, Paul Gilbert, MAB, and Steve Vai all practiced at least 8 hours a day to get to where they did.
You can get a general idea of “how many years it takes to play at a high level” which is a more important thing anyway, since there is more to it than just playing fast. When I was going to clubs in the late 80s and early 90s I saw plenty of bands that had very good lead guitarists in their early twenties and in some cases, late teens. So, as a general approximation, I’d say the answer to that question is 4 to 8 years. Can you still improve after 8 years? Absolutely. That’s just a general approximation based on what I’ve personally observed and it makes sense because rock and roll has always been a very youth oriented business. How many guys who have had successful careers as lead guitarists made their professional debuts after their early to mid twenties? Very few.
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I can do both, for 8 beats maximum, before my wrist and/or elbow slows due to tension. So, maybe not enough strength or stamina? 
I’d like to believe (
) it’s just my technique, because I’d have trouble accepting that I’m in the X% of players who just can’t play quickly, after 25 years of playing. Still, I may have to swallow that! 
I really appreciate this @Troy.
Slightly off topic,
I know a couple of these guys @Acecrusher, & i know for a fact that some of them have put in less time then me, which means it can’t be all down to deliberate practise, surely? There’s got to be a genetic component?
But, I’ve asked this question of a few famous musicians, at clinic’s - “What made you succeed when other’s didn’t?” and they all said, “There were a lot more talented players than me, I just didn’t give up”.
I can’t give up on this; I’ve never succeeded at anything else besides playing instruments… 
Regarding your first question, yes, there is a genetic component. People vary in how much natural ability they have for various things. Anyone who has played team sports has observed this first hand. The whole team practices together, so they’re all practicing the same amount, and in the same way, yet some guys get better at a very fast rate, while other guys get better much more slowly. It’s the same way in anything else, including music.
Regarding “I can’t give up on this; I’ve never succeeded at anything else besides playing instruments…” I love your attitude! 
I’m the same way so I can identify. I’ve seen other guitarists who learned faster than I did, had more talent than I did, but at some point they decided they were good enough and stopped learning. They stopped getting better. I’ve never stopped getting better. My progress has come slowly but it keeps on coming and because of that, I’ve become a better player than some of these guys who I thought were great 20 years ago but play exactly the same now, whereas I’m a much better player than I was 20 years ago. It reminds me of the fable about the race between the tortoise and the rabbit.
Edit: BTW, How old are you? Are you interested in playing guitar for a living? It looks that way.
Also, while I said my progress was slow compared to some players, I learned very fast in my first two years of playing guitar. After 2 years I could play a lot of the solos I wanted to be able to play. I think most people improve quickly in their first couple years. After that I still kept progressing but at a slower rate. Of course you don’t know anything about playing guitar when you start, so there is nowhere to go but upwards. I also believe age has something to do with it. I was 16 when I got my first electric guitar. People learn faster as children than as adults and not just in music. I’m sure you’ve noticed how when a family from a foreign country moves to your country, the kids learn the language faster than the adults.
Thanks for doing this. What speed was this and what motion did you use?
Did you try it at a faster speed? Keep bumping it up and tell us how fast you can still two bars of this. And try both elbow and wrist separately and let us know if the results are any different.
Man, there’s no room for vagueness with this CTC stuff. Aren’t we supposed to be right - brained artists?! 
The initial test was, 2 taps-per-beat, at 180bpm with a wrist motion, & then elbow motion. Then…
- Tapping a surface, at 215bpm with wrist motion, for two bars, is my current maximum.
- Tapping a surface, at 190bpm with elbow motion, for two bars, is my current maximum.
I’m not sure what this information can tell you? Please be good news! 
It’s telling me your actual physical capabilities are way higher than you are actually utilizing. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched John Petrucci’s “Rock Discipline” instructional video, but there’s a scene on there where just for fun he tops out at 215 on the metronome. He’s using a different wrist motion. But it’s still wrist motion, and not light years different from what you’re doing when you’re tapping.
Let’s be conservative and say that tapping is, I don’t know, 30-40bpm faster than actual alternate picking. I’m making up that number, but it’s a generous discount. That’s still 170-180bpm sixteenths. That’s as fast as Eric Johnson ever really goes and he’s no slouch.
I have to think that if you can do this one wrist motion at all-time-great levels of speed, then there is probably a picking motion you can do right now in the Eric Johnson ballpark or better. You need decent instructions for doing the motion. And you need to approach the doing of it as a challenge of physical coordination.
I’ve said this many times on here before, but learning a picking motion is not like going to the gym and working up to heavier and heavier weights in small increments over a long period of time. It’s a lot more like learning to raise one eyebrow. At first you can do it once out of 100 tries, then over time you get to 100 out of a 100 tries. But the actual top-end speed of it isn’t really changing super dramatically. It’s the smoothness and repeatability of it that’s changing.
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That’s an interesting concept, Troy. Is it just a theory or is it a proven fact? I ask because unless I’m misunderstanding it, the top speed a guitarist reaches doesn’t change as a result of a physiological adaptation. Once a guitarist gets his picking motion as smooth as he can possibly make it he’ll be playing as fast as he’ll ever be able to play and spending time trying to increase his speed further would be wasted time. That would be because it’s not possible to practice in such a way which forces the body to physiologically adapt in a way that enables further increases in speed.
Is that correct?
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“And breathe…”
Great on many levels, as he’s one of my big influences, & there’s plenty of decent instructions on here. So, I’m going to go back to wrist motions & experiment.
One thing I’ve noticed about everyone who’s great at this, is the lightness of touch and/or perceived lack of effort, compared to my attempts.
And this is where I’ve been going wrong! I’m always in the gym, & muscles are muscles right? I guess not when it comes to picking. 
Thanks @Troy for your time & expertise! 
Your numbers sound reasonable for rock (for classical I heard somewhere that top people have more than 10,000 hours before conservatory). But I undertood that Jimi Bell when from zero to his maximum elbow-driven insanity in one year, and his story is actually quite sad, actually, because it reflects upon what you mention, as he never really “made it;” however, compared to what happened to Jason Becker, Jimi has first-world problems,
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A fascinating analogy.
I would throw in one caviat for sure: One must have the ability to chunk, as I believe it is impossible to count to 800 in a minute, but it is possible to count to 200, and uncertainty/confusion will likely inhibit speed. (For example, working with a metronome at speed actually requires a lot of understanding that is rarely explicitly stated.)
The other thing is that there is a serch problem both for the correct motion and the appropriate neurological control, to make sure that alternating muscles are not needlessly oposing each other; my guess is the neurological problem is likely the harder one, otherwise everybody would be able to figure it out in a few days, I suspect.
Just out of curiosity, I made 7 of my colleagues try the table-tapping thing over the lunch break, and they could all tap around 210-220bpm! I must say I wasn’t super-specific about wrist/elbow etc (since my request was already a bit weird hehe), I just asked them to not move the finger joints.
I don’t know how representative they are of the general population (all male, all physicists/mathematicians who probably “tap” a lot on their keyboards, some of them play piano etc.). But none of them is specifically a “shred” guitarist.
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@Brendan and I did this yesterday too. Brendan has always been faster than me and can do 240 wrist taps for about eight bars. Keep in mind Brendan doesn’t really play guitar either. I can do 225 for about 8 bars, give or take. And it feels pretty easy too.
I have some hypotheses here. One is that the better you get at these movements, the smoother they become, and the longer you can do them with less effort. When he’s not fatigued from a big warmup, @milehighshred can do his 300bpm hyperpicking motion for 15-30 seconds straight without slowing. @TheCount is no slouch at this either. The Count specifically describes the motion as something he learned by trying to emulate Rusty Cooley’s form at its actual speed, and not a thing he worked up to in small increments over time. Correct me if I’m wrong on this.
Brendan has occasionally picked up a guitar and tried to do the hyperpicking motion, and once in a while he’ll get it where he can do it for a second or two around 280bpm. Then he’ll lose the coordination and have to stop. Most attempts he doesn’t get it at all, or he gets the motion going but he can’t center it on the string so you hear note dropouts, or no notes at all. I have the same experience with the EVH tremolo. Some days I can’t do it at all. Other days I can get it pretty smoothly for 15 seconds or something, and then it craps out and I stop.
In all these cases of “trying” to do these movements, it’s like a TV signal flickering in and out. Like, “It’s working it’s working it’s working… crash!” So for @Acecrusher asking whether this pattern is a “proven fact”, I think that’s a little simplistic. Very few things are “proven”. But these are real-world observations, and definitely not my weird personal theories on things.
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I don’t think it’s “weird”; it’s interesting. It’s surprising to me that there wouldn’t be some physiological adaptions that occur as a result of specifically practicing for speed, whether those involve the muscles, the CNS system or both, which enable someone to pick faster.
Haven’t read the whole thread, but there was a time I used to break stuff up into a swing feel to get the accents before speeding things up. Don’t know if anybody else tried this.