Thank you for laying this out in so much detail John! Will make this my daily practice method from now on. Much appreciate your input and you taking the time to write this 
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Not that its necessarily feasible to implement, but sometimes when I read these posts I think that we should try to have some common way of the speed we’re referring to. For example 8s @ 190 or 4s @ 220, or something similar. Just to avoid ambiguity.
Great info @milehighshred, thanks for taking the time to share!
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You’re welcome! I hope it helps 
That sounds like a great way to approach speed, but I have a few questions. When you practice building speed the way that you described, and one rep doesn’t really come out clean, do you lower the bpm, play it once in a lower tempo, and continue to speed up again, or do you try to play it cleanly in the tempo where the last time wasn’t very clean, and the try to speed up from that tempo? Also if you hit a wall and feel that you can’t get any faster do you just practice it at one certain speed which is lower than your max, to make the mechanics better?
I was also always wondering if when you build speed the way that you described, isn’t it difficult later to play something blazingly fast right away when you’re playing live? Because you don’t really have time to have your hands”get to know” the part at slower speeds right before attempting to play it fast.
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I stay at the same speed and keep trying to get it right.
Sometimes, yes. I like to call this volume training, because you do a crazy amount of volume just to improve your mechanics and really drill something into your muscle memory. That’s just one way of approaching your practice when a wall is hit.
That’s why I advise students (and myself) to practice things involving speed FASTER than what’s called for in any given song. It basically helps prepare you, or OVER prepare you for when you play something live. Because, chances are just like you said, you won’t be able to suddenly bust out something that’s pushing your limits in terms of your top speed(s). Especially when it comes to something that’s crazy technical and brand new to you. So, if you DID need to play something crazy fast and technical on stage, this is a great example of when you need to pay it 1000 times to make damn sure you have it solid at the appropriate speed.
So, there’s practicing to get more speed, and then practicing to lock it in for show time.
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Thanks for the very detailed answer! I’m definitely going to try your approach. Take care!
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It’s not real evidence but more like a testimony : I friend of mine recording some local band once said to me that every Death Metal guitarist he ever recorded started failing at straight 16th-notes around 220-230 bpm. If the riff was not palm-muted, it was more like a “play freaking fast stuff” with a result somehow working with two guitars L/R in a mix.
As for my own experience : I did learn a full Death Metal set for a session once. Really straight forward stuff with Lots of 16th-notes riffs, palm-muted and not muted. I could take it up to speed, which was 210 Bpm for all the songs (lol). I could do it quite fine, playing the all setlist 3-4 times a week.
But I never felt okay at 220 bpm or higher. I could never do these long 32 bars riffs non-stop 16ths. Maybe I was in that mud-zone my recording friend talked about.
To be honest, I don’t no much bands performing long 16th-notes riffings at those “higher than 210” speeds. Tremolo picked parts are always based on “bursts” compared to those horse-like stamina 16th riffs at the 210 area.
But all those techniques, they always imply elbow locking. There is a grey area where it’s difficult to see if the player is using wrist-only or wrist+elbow ect, ect.
My take on this is that the “shock waves” in your forearm start to work against you at those ~220-ish speeds. Maybe more muscle mass could counter that, I don’t know for sure.
From my own observations, player holding their instrument pretty high up their chest achieve better results with their default picking-arm position involving a pretty flexed elbow, and therefore a more contracted bicep, which maybe could help against that “shock wave” thing.
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I definitely notice something like this when I experiment with my own version of Michael Angelo Batio’s picking. I can do a forearm rotation UWPS thing that’s not a true clone of Batio’s technique, but when I do a more authentically Batio-like technique with significant brachioradialis drive, it can reach speeds slightly faster than my forearm rotation, but doesn’t have the same feeling of tension that I feel with a Vinnie Moore or Rusty Cooley style brachioradialis driven “conventional” elbow flexion/extension movement. But it’s still not quite as fast as my low-control attempt at Cooley style “hyperpicking”.
I think the more acute bend in the elbow is a factor in why the Batio version feels better to me. Maybe there’s almost a “bounce” of the forearm off the biceps, a little like the Moeller drumstick bounce type of phenomenon that I think I mentioned in another thread with respect to forearm-rotation picking.
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Back in the day, Guitar Player featured an article on developing speed with some simple patterns. They provided an “everybody should be capable of this” speed of I think quarter notes at 112. From there on was self-deprecation in the absence of the science. Thank goodness for Cracking the Code.
These days I find the greatest advances in speed come with complete assimilation of a particular technique or motion and not because of some particular physical exercise. Furthermore, more strumming practice and legato practice (which you bring up) seems to benefit my picking. Because of the success with tangential results in any given practice, I try to pay attention more to what I haven’t set out to do, if that makes any sense.
I can muscle twitch at super crazy speeds, but it’s not actually something I particularly want to cultivate. Effortlessly sustained higher picking speeds is of more interest to me, and so working on optimal wrist flex/extension along with forearm rotation gets more attention.
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Hello, it is not as complex as it seems, it is a matter of practicing using the correct concepts and parameters, don’t forget the synchronization of the brain with the 2 hands, as Michael Angelo Batio says: the right hand is the Master and the left hand is the pupil…, but and the brain?, the brain contains the concepts or ideas that you will execute with your 2 hands, it is not a matter of quantity but the quality, Joe Satriani in an article advises you not to spend more than 5 minutes practicing an exercise, Marty friedman advises you to practice only what you are going to play, I would recommend that you master the whole tuning fork of the guitar, with diagrams and intervals then create your own mental map of the tuning fork and keep it in your head, you will see how simple concepts will help you a lot, finally I would advise you to investigate and apply on the law of pareto which tells us that approximately 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes.
Regards.
Hey everyone just thought I might add a strategy I have been using recently and using with my students.
I wanted to get better at economy picking so I picked the strategy Frank Gambale uses. I started the training in November of 2017 and using a “window”- we shall say for the training. I was using 16th notes and started at 70 BPM to 50 BPM I think. I used the good ole major scale and practiced 3 reps of ascending, descending, arpeggio and sweep style. I would go through the circle of 5ths and then proceed down 5 BPM to until I finished my 20 BPM “Window”. I would shoot for 720 to 1000 reps a day. Then after a week I would bump the “Window” up 5 BPM.
To make a long story short, Last week I just completed my “Window” of 215 BPM to 195 BPM and it didn’t feel ridiculous.
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Interesting! So, instead of going up during the practice session you go down the tempo!?
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Hey BurningAXE yes. I call my first tempo my intro speed and 20 beats lower is my master speed. After 4 weeks my intro speed becomes my master speed.
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Interesting! Don’t you need to first build up to that speed?
Otherwise it sounds like a good idea after trying to break your current speed limit to finish the practice session with some slower and correct repetitions.
Oh yes that definitely is the plan but in case you missed my earlier point, this is a long term action plan. I planned this type of progress for the length of a year. I started off at 80 BPM which is absolutely manageable at sixteenth notes. So my building up to this ridiculous type of speed is in the months and months of the training. However, in the present time, once I got into the 180 BPM range, the intro speed will be difficult to work with but I wanted to feel the speed of the movements of my technique mixed with the “closed feedback loop” that Martin Miller talks about. You would be surprised how going through the Circle of Fifths, with these scales and licks, helps you “slow the speed of the game” down every time you go down 5 BPM. By the time you get down to the “Master Speed” in this case 160 BPM, it felt much slower and the accuracy was almost 100%.
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Yeah, I got that. What I mean was don’t you need to warm up before you start rippin’ at 180+ BPM?
Sure I just usually do several small warm up exercises or play through a couple of the scales circle of 5ths at eighth notes with down strokes.
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