Proper way to do exercises for maximum benefit

Playing Technique
#1

What’s up everyone? Hope everyone is off to a healthy start to the year (I’m currently in the hospital as I write this but I’ll be home soon, on the bright side at least I have my guitar with me)

When it comes to training for speed, I’m always confused as to which is the proper way to go about it. Typically I’ll use a metronome & gradually increase. I’m looking into the starting fast concept with cleaning up on the fly, but I’m not sure which is more effective; I’ll call it “time under tension” as in minutes practicing a particular exercise at a certain bpm to really get the movement concrete, or burst practice; doing a rep (say a scale run across 6 strings 3nps for example) take a few second pause to recoup & then go back at it for say another 10-20 reps before going onto a higher bpm or additional exercise. Fortunately the hospital time has afforded me the time to mess around as long as I want on my instrument, but I’d like to know what you guys like to do & maybe implement whatever the masters of shred here say is the way to go. I have plenty of exercises on my phone to go to for practice, just curious which is more effective in burning in the muscle memory required for constant progression . Thanks!!

#2

Hi! I don’t use exercises as ways to “build speed”. What you’re describing with “reps” like at the gym and going slowly up the metronome is not generally a thing that has worked for me.

But I think you have to back up a moment. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Are you saying you can’t move your hands fast enough to play fast? Or are you saying you can already move fast and smooth, but your playing is sloppy? Because these are two completely different problems.

If you have a very low speed limit, repping out on exercises will not fix that. You have to start with fast motion. Almost everyone can already move fast enough to play fast guitar. They just can’t do it cleanly, which is fine, we’ll get to that.

In general, if you have any kind of problem relating to picking speed, I highly recommend watching the new “Testing Your Motions” section of the Pickslanting Primer because it will sort out right away whether or not you have a picking motion that actually works. That’s this section here:

If cash is tight for a subscription, fill out a scholarship application and let us know, that’s no problem. You can find that in the store.

If the problem is something else other than speed, let us know.

2 Likes
#3

I think its a mix of the two that you described. I’ve worked quite a bit on my legato to get my left hand moving nice & fluid. The right hand is a tricky beast as you already know. I’m pretty sure I have a natural downward pickslant but I definitely get caught up on the strings a bit. When I was focused on black metal rhythm I managed to get my tremolo in the right direction but definitely not where I wanted it. I don’t think endurance is the issue, I could pick through most songs without exhaustion (probably because I’d spend minutes with the metronome on a particular bpm before moving up in speed) but on the low E string I always tend to get caught up or sloppy. These days I’m trying to challenge myself to play more difficult songs/licks because a lot of the bands I listen to are technically more advanced from where I am at the moment & id like to get a better understanding of picking motions for lead guitar since I’ve mostly been a rhythm based player. I think information overload is giving me paralysis & I’m not sure where to start on improving my technique. Some days the picking feels effortless & I try to take mental note of why but I can’t figure out what I’m doing differently on the days where it just clicks seamlessly. Maybe my hand angle or motion is slightly off; from my eye I’d say I’m a wrist based player who occasionally alternates from a closed fist to an open hand while picking. I’ll sign up for the scholarship program since I’m currently getting a hearty smackdown from the hospital & the bills following. Hope all is well on your end, Troy!

#4

Gotcha. Thankfully the problems to solve are finite. One is the motion itself, making sure it’s efficient and fast. And then knowing which type of joint motion it is. And then knowing which type of escape it is, which is a particular type of motion used for switching strings. Then there’s hand synchronization. And so on. They’re all solvable individually but you have to know which ones are actually problematic and which aren’t. Which is why we’re trying to do more concrete testing so the roadmap is obvious.

FYI the scholarship isn’t tecnically in the store, it’s on the membership “upgrade” page. But it just links to here: