How can i practice playing faster(Newbie)

Playing Technique
#1

Hello everybody,

I am new at this forum and first I want to say sorry for my bad “English”. I understand nearly every word, but writing and speaking, there are some problems … :wink:
I want to improve my picking technique, that’s why I’m here and and I’m glad to have found such a great and competent forum.

In the past(I’ve been playing for 30 years) I had focused more on the BluesRock area, but now I want to learn to play a few quick runs now and then, because I also want to be in other styles.
That may sound a bit naive, but I can’t express it better in this language, sorry.

I found out that I would very much like to play 3 notes per string and I have a few questions about this.

Let’s say I’m learning a easy scale like this:

e --------------------5-7-8--8-7-5----------------------
B --------------5-7-8--------------8-7-5----------------
G --------4-5-7--------------------------7-5-4----------
D --4-5-7--------------------------------------7-5-4----
A ------------------------------------------------------
E ------------------------------------------------------

I want to play it as a sixteenth triplet at a speed of 120 bpm.
After what I’ve read here, it would be good if I played it with economic picking.

First I should get the economic picking in my brain/fingers - I ´ve done this (but very slow)
Now I want to increase the speed, but how do I do this effectively ?

I ´ve done this:

  • starting at 50 bpm, playing the whole scale up and down for 3 minutes
  • increase the speed by 10, the same up and down for 3 minutes

I keep going until I can’t play it properly anymore and then (after a pause) start again.
A total of about 1 hour.

The results were not very encouraging.

Someone told me: First you have to master the speed(120bpm) on one string (D-String: 4-5-7) and only then can you play the whole scale ??

Another guitarist said you have to play this for 3 hours every day and half a year.

What should I believe now, I am very insecure?

Can someone help me please ?

Thanks in advance, Jack

3 Likes
#2

Hi @jack65, welcome!

These are the videos we usually recommend when talking about speed :slight_smile:

#3

You have many choices:

USX with HO/PO: down, up, HO to ascend; down, up, PO to descend

DSX with HO/PO: up, down, HO to ascend; up, down, PO to descend

Alternating between USX and DSX every 3 notes, it is like groups, (down, up, down), (up. down, up), …, this sounds the most uniform.

DSX + sweeping (what you are doing?), down, up, down, down, up, …

Etc.

Just curious exactly how you will pick it and if you have any HO/PO.

#4

Thank you very much.
Since i tried to figure out how to play this i have tried several ways:

  • pure AlternatePicking (CrossPicking: D-U-D-U…)
  • EconomicPicking(D-U-D-D-U-D-D-U…)

The USX/DSX with HammerOn & PullOffs seems very interesting.
I will record it slow and then I increase the speed with transcribe only to hear how it sounds on 120 bpm.
A variation of your proposal would be: USX with HO/PO: down, HO, up to ascend …

I have to record to hear the different sound …

#5

I have recorded this lick, but I cannot upload it, because I am a new user.
if it would be interesting for you or someone else I could upload it to Youtube… but i believe that your choice is a little more accurate or aggressive, so that the run sounds a little better.

If I walk this way,
USX with HO/PO: down, up, HO to ascend; down, up, PO to descend
how would you speed it up and what would your daily exercise routine look like?

1 Like
#6

Hey! Not sure what you mean about uploading, but you should be able to upload a video to YouTube and paste the link here to embed, that’s typically how we do it. Here’s some more info on the process: