Speed should be there from the beginning. It’s impossible to tell what’s wrong without seeing a video. But even if I gently put my finger tips on a drinking glass I can generate decent speed just lightly smacking my fingers against the side of the glass. I am in a good position to do this - straight wrist (in both the flex/ext and deviation axis), fingers gently extended but relaxed. Without any difficulty at all I can tap 8ths repeatedly with any fingers in the 170’s, or alternate between pairs like index/ring or index/middle at 16ths. That’s fast enough to play a lot of Eric Johnson’s fretting patterns. In short order you should be able to do similar patterns that go between index/middle/pink or index/middle/ring (or the reverse) at impressive speeds. 6’s at 110 - 150 bpm and beyond should be achievable. There will be a certain degree of coordination for this, but raw speed should be there for most people that don’t have some type of physical limitations like arthritis or previous bone break etc.
Legato, is for the most part a left hand affair, but there’s lots of spots where the pick can activate notes also! I’d say you might find a lot of handy information if you do a search on @Tom_Gilroy and efficient digital cycles. Lots of cool threads here in that that you should find helpful!
I just tried this and interestingly (perhaps unsurprisingly?) on my right hand I can trill between index/middle and index/ring at over 200bpm 16ths but my left hand is already starting to struggle at 150. I’m just placing my hands out in front of me symmetrically so there are no differences in form. Similar with just tapping 8th notes. Maybe I should relearn guitar as a lefty? 
I do wonder if this can be improved. All the anecdotes I’ve heard about trying to train raw speed (e.g. credfb91’s post above as well as some other posts on this form and elsewhere, as well as my own experience) have, unfortunately, resulted in failure, but perhaps there are other approaches that can be taken. Where does the discrepancy stem from? I assume it’s not muscle strength. I would guess that the neural pathways for the non-dominant hand have less myelination. Perhaps a nerve conduction velocity test would reveal some insights.
By the way, @Tom_Gilroy, a while back you mentioned you were reading “Motor Learning and Control for Practitioners” by Cheryl A. Coker, did you ever decide if you would recommend this book?
Totally guessing: Perhaps speed comes from starting a movement as early as possible vs. waiting for the last moment, and avoiding antagonistic muscles fighting? In other words, early and momentary muscle contraction? After all, picking is just flipping the hand back-and-forth.
I decided about 10 years ago that I was going to just play Chapman Stick (All tapping) and you know it was quite an experience. RH/LH independence, legato articulations and all that jazz and of course I tried to learn all kinds of crazy stuff, like this Bach 2 part invention - I got it as best I could and had to splice two takes together for this video and it was STILL prone to completely falling apart. Practiced it hardcore for over a year! Dang, that instrument was tough! I actually had it so memorized, that piece that I could play it on a keyboard - and I am the WORST keyboardist. Well, not so bad anymore - thanks Chapman Stick…
Anyways, I realized that my playing environment (The Stick) was SO complicated that it was actually distracting me from connecting to that inner pulse. Like, I had to concentrate on every move. Half the instrument is tuned in 5ths backwards, the other half in 4ths. What a nightmare! Anyways - learning this piece and playing this instrument dedicated to tapping helped out a lot of things, but legato/tapping speed wasn’t one of them. I realized that a keyboard literally solves all of my tapping and harmony needs, and that although my guitar only has 6 strings - all of my Stick tapping stuff works perfectly there and can be utilized alongside my other guitar skills. I learned that complexity and difficulty aren’t necessarily conducive to ummm something sounding good or interesting. Hell, I sound like I am struggling through a grade 2 piano recital. Yuck.
The brain is in control, yep I accept that. However; ease of note activation, physical ability, strength, endurance, wellness, flexibility etc are all factors. Big factors I think. Speed, especially on the LH I think is all about efficiency, instrument setup as well as strength, agility and endurance. Hard to say!
Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption tapping solo I think is a GREAT place to start to build LH dexterity and articulation - plus it’s fun and sounds great.
Anyways, here’s some Bach to ruin your morning! 
That would certainly make sense. If you’re going to hit a note on the beat, you have to begin the movement a little bit before the beat. I suppose the question that follows would be: why is my (maybe everybody’s?) dominant hand able to start the movements early enough whereas the non-dominant hand is not? And how does one go about training?
I could probably come up with plenty of ideas for training, e.g. practice making “quick pulse and release tension” motions (press your finger and then relax it as quickly as possible), individually at first, then in sets of 2, 3, etc. until you can string many together. But I have no reason to believe those would (or wouldn’t) actually be effective since the underlying cause of limitation is still a mystery.
OMG that Bach is just awesome!!! Show those keyboardists who’s boss 
I’ve had a love/disenchanted relationship with classical guitar over the years. I love the tone/timbre expressiveness of it but it’s SO hard to play it’s almost not worth it. At the end of the day, the most challenging classical guitar pieces are the equivalent of something most not even great keyboardists could sight read. That thing you’re doing just may level the playing field. Very cool!
Hell yeah man! That was freaking awesome! The Chapman stick is one of those crazy instruments I always forget is a thing and then whenever I’m reminded of its existence my mind is blown every time.
I’m going through this very experience myself The amount of agility, finesse, and precision required to make anything sound good can just be overwhelming. I’ve been working on this song for months and I feel like I’m going to have to grow 2 extra fingers to be able to ever play it well.
So, about the idea of testing legato speed… How do you account for the fingers bouncing off of the strings? Is it a myth or a factor? I’m not exactly sure. I feel like there is some bounce when doing a 2-note trill, but not so much doing longer runs. I think there is a bit of bounce by default, but I don’t know if it hurts or helps. I know that when doing the “Satch pick tap thingy” that the bounce is obvious and helpful, but that’s just on 1 note.
Hmmm for me, it’s not a matter of “bounce”. But more of a “press” for the hammer-on, the pulloff is kind of a “release” like releasing an arrow. I think certain finger combinations are much more powerful than others; LH fingers 1-2-3 or 1-2-4 seems to work best for me; (@Tom_Gilroy has an awesome EDC program that works great with legato!)
Thanks for the kind words on the Bach - I actually learned 3 inventions on the Stick with the hopes and dreams of having hand/finger independence but what I learned is that there’s more of an interdependence than anything else, so I kind of had to learn it in… get ready for this… chunks! hahaha I am a big fan of Bach. Always rewarding to listen to while I played it, even when I played it poorly.
I have some thoughts on sightreading for guitar as well, but that’s a tale for another day.
Well, I went to a jazz oriented music school and the emphasis there was on improvisation and composition, creative interpretation. Different emphasis = different output. A classical musician is all about spending time with the piece, maybe only 1 or two super serious pieces in a year - and honestly that stuff is so difficult to play sometimes that really your reading and theory skills, fretboard knowledge etc would have to be off the hook to be able to pull off one of those monsters on the first pass sight reading it. So I agree, Joe - I love/hate complex stuff for that very reason. Very worth it to learn though, even if it gets forgotten.
As far as developing speed with legato, I think you need to start with chunks that are conducive to being played fast; like the opening trill in crossroads or something. I found that “even number of notes” with a pick activation on every new string worked great as a starting point. Or even 3 pick activations on a 6 note thing, etc etc seems to propel it and help with accent. SOunds cool also; adds punctuation!
Oh yeah, the inventor - Emmett Chapman was a very interesting fella. He loved guitar and guitar technique! He was really into John Mclaughlin and he created the Stick so that he could do Mahavishnu type stuff by himself! Of course, the stick became it’s own kind of thing after a while (Nobody played like Emmett - Greg Howard and Bob Culbertson are pretty awesome too, but nowhere near as individual as Emmett)
Emmett was really big on the connection to the instrument. Neat guy.
Hi @Gumgo.
Honestly, that right hand speed is very quite impressive. The individual speeds of my fingers on right and left hands in the range of 190-200bpm 8th notes comfortably. I can’t do the “trill” type coordinations as fast off the guitar with my left hand and I can only do index-middle with my right (I feel like they aren’t chunked), but I can do 2nps shapes at those speeds on a guitar. To me, this suggest that these aren’t totally motor equivalent.
For whatever it’s worth, my raw movement speeds have increased since I started tracking them. I’d look into the kinds of things drummers do to develop their non-dominant hands.
I suppose it’s possible, but I’d encourage you not to come to any conclusions that would discourage your continued pursuit. There’s always the possibility that it’s easy and you just haven’t learned how to do it yet.
The intended audience is athletes or coaches of athletes, and there are topics that would be of greater relevance to that audience. It’s a good overview of the basic concepts in motor learning and practice design for the intended audience. There is nothing specifically intended for musicians (rhythm, etc).
However, it’s definitely an interesting and informative read, and I’m sure you’d at least find some value in it given your other interests (bouldering). I’d be happy talk with you about it some time when you’re free. I know this is a huge source of frustration for you. Just a friendly chat with a fellow forummer, no need to count it as a “lesson.”
Speed absolutely feels like ballistic contraction against low background tension to me. Everything feels percussive and the clearer the perception of impact the better everything works.
I also agree with @Scottulus about building fretting hand speed (and I really enjoyed the Stick playing). You learn to habituate fretting postures with low background tension which facilitate speed, and which increase the tactile, proprioceptive and kineasthetic perception of your fretting hand. You build a basis of transferrable rhythmic coordinations, which are chunked in connection to your internal clock. There’s a lot to be said about that process and what makes a coordination actually amenable to being played fast, but really is the gist of it. I’m pretty sure @Scottulus will vouch for my fretting hand.
@Tom_Gilroy is the bomb, LH or right hand it’s crazy how efficient he has this. We’ve had extensive conversations about playing, music, technique and the detail of his understanding is amazing. No lie. Again, I have to say that he has several posts on efficient digital cycles and they are gold… Just saying…
Also, I put that quote in there because, dang it if that isn’t one of THE most eloquently phrased statements that hits the nail on the head that I have ever read! hahahaha Mic drop! What Tom said!
Anyways back to regularly scheduled programming!
I didn’t fully attend but when I started classical guitar I was 17 and took private lessons from Peabody’s Julian Gray. He was training me with the intent that I would enroll. All we focused on for the first 6 months was tone production and technique/positioning. He did have me playing some actual (though simple) compositions, so it was not just scales and arpeggios. But getting just the right posture (torso and hand), keeping the proper amount of tension to sound the string and getting just the right combination of nail/flesh (not to mention the annoying nail care/buffing routine necessary) was pretty involved. Looking back with decades of experience and thankfully pushing through some dogma due to breakthroughs like CtC, there are parts of Julian’s approach I’m now a little critical of, but the majority of it was solid instruction and I can’t think of any other way to learn tone production than what he showed me. There’s just no concept of that in plectrum picking. I mean, yes, there’s good/bad sounding pick attacks, but I just think addressing that is so much more simple compared to getting a good sound from a nylon string, with nails. Most other instruments have some other accessory or mechanical aspect that assists in tone production. On classical guitar, really the closest thing we have to that are the frets. Everything else, it’s up to our hands/fingers. The tolerance of error is really unforgiving.
It’s reasons like this that I have huge amounts of respect for anyone who reaches levels like David Russell, John Williams or (my favorite) Christopher Parkening (though his technique is not as good as the other 2…still…he sounds better lol). To get through entire pieces of the classical repertoire with extreme attention to phrasing, dynamics, musicality, rubato etc with seemingly no errors is pretty staggering. I’ve played pieces at the highest level of the repertoire (Barrios, Tarrega, Bach etc) and I just can’t fathom their level of control over pieces of that difficulty. It’s a huge challenge to get through even an intermediate or even beginning level etude with zero errors. It’s such a different type of skill than shredding. But yes, the amount of work you have to put into it to even get above mediocre makes me question it as a hobby. And that’s all it is for me anymore.
Haha to even be considered mediocre these days, one has to be “next level” eh?
Haha it’s been that way for quite some time for the “finished” instruments (violin, piano, etc) so yeah, guitar is going to get ugly! I guess it’s on us to find an efficient way to assimilate and then expand upon the lore that came before us!
That would be great! I’ll send you a PM.
It’s not just the brain, and I will bring up those autistic savants. I hope I don’t get banned, but there is no way you are going to convince me they are using more of their brains. It is the soul that is singing those sounds, sure you could do all this research on how their brains are always like a small child’s so they can endlessly learn the musical language deeper and deeper. But it’s not the brain doing the creative thing, it’s in your gut, in that middle part of your body, the warm area that screaming this is who i am. And the older we get the more it is harder to find it because we are constantly bombarded with such analytics that we forget how to portray who we are and what we are feeling because the world is a scary place, especially now more than ever. so if you keep on using your brain chances are you will sound more and more robotic, and it will be harder to hide it. not saying that it’s bad, many artists will create mechanical looking art, nothing wrong with that, but to say it is the brain is not reflecting on the bigger picture.
I completely disagree with this statement:
So this idea that every virtuoso practiced 8 hours a day and that’s what’s necessary is absurd.
If your goal is to consistently compete or perform at a world-class level, yes it’s necessary.
Michael Phelps didn’t just jump in the pool for an hour a day to win twenty-three gold medals. Is he gifted, certainly. But he didn’t work any less than the next person. Kobe Bryant out-worked everyone. Yngwie was obsessed “I was a freak…”, as was Steve Vai when he spent months on end using nearly every waking hour practicing and learning. No life, no relationship cultivation…just work. Even EVH said words to the effect of “I didn’t develop these techniques over night. I didn’t just ‘know’ how to do this. There was a LOT of trial and error and a ton of work involved.”
Genetic limits aren’t where we (humans, I mean) tend to falter. We lose focus, lack the will or in other words “don’t care” enough. That’s not bad or good - it just is. As CtC has proven time and again, physical (or genetic) limitations are rarely the core problem.
For me, an enormous part of the fun of this rather enigmatic instrument is the chase. As Les Paul said:
A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar - it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.
I would largely agree, but I would add the caveat that often we think that efficient technique is the result of long hours of practice, it’s actually reciprocal in nature. The discovery of efficient technique enables high practice volume and makes the process of learning easier, and more enjoyable.
That resonates with me a lot. I don’t even enjoy playing things I’ve “mastered”. It just seems so much less fun than playing things I’ve yet to master.
I never played 8 hours per day, but for a stretch I religiously did 5. Looking back, I lacked the feedback loop that is crucial. Doing the same thing, the wrong way, for 1000’s of repetitions is possibly worse than just having a more “lazy” approach and only doing similar for 1 hour per day. It’s very important when we play to be analyzing what we’re doing. Was it correct? Great, do more of it! Was it wrong (loaded term that goes way beyond if the notes were clean…it should include ease of execution etc)? Find out what was wrong and fix it, then go through the loop again.
I was most definitely just passing time while running scales/arpeggios/patterns and even similar regarding playing actual pieces. It’s sort of sad looking back, because this was truly wasted time.
Successful players, like virtuosos, whether they practice 3 hours per day or 10, are likely “doing it right” the whole time. Maybe we can say they were figuring stuff out in the first several years, but the majority of their reps are the productive sort. Not the type that just burns up minutes on some clock