Slowest guitar player here

Introduce Yourself
#1

Hello everybody, first of all I would like to thank Troy and the team for the wonderful work they are doing. The Cracking the Code series is on of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen. You could as well be show producers.

I’ve been playing guitar for 10 years now and while some of these years I didn’t practise at all, most of the time I practised various exercises mostly including technique and speed. The problem is I have never been able to play 16th notes at more than 100-110 bpm. (that’s just picking one note, picking a pattern on one string would be 90-100) According to this poll the average picking speed of people here is 180 bpm. https://troygrady.com/2016/08/22/survey-on-picking-speed/ That’s fascinating to me.

I’ve tried both approaches of practicing at low speeds and slowly building the speed up and also practicing at high speeds. Personally, I don’t see a difference. In the last interview, Paul Gilbert said there is a third approach of finding a lick that you can somehow play well and build on that. I’ve never found that I can play something better than other things.

My take on this is that my practice routine is probably the worst ever. I usually pick an exercise and practise it for 30 minutes while gradually increasing metronome speed. Is this wrong? Let’s say I have an hour to practise. What should I do?

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#2

Do you have an audio interface to record yourself through? I find it very helpful to be able to see the waveform to check if my notes are falling exactly on the bar. Then once I have that accuracy locked in perfectly at a low tempo I can increase the metronome by 5-8bpm and work my way up. I find that practicing in a warm room is a big help too.

I focus on one exercise at a time (say the Poptarts lick for example) and I’ll practice that for about an hour or two, increasing the metronome as much as possible before my playing gets sloppy and then I’ll bring it back to a comfortable place until I’m fatigued or sick of the metronome lol. Then the next day I can usually increase my “comfortable” tempo by about 5bpm.

I’m at a comfortable 170bpm and a messy 180bpm on the PT lick right now after about 2 weeks of practicing. I’ve been playing fast music for a while though, so I think I’m used to the feeling of speed already and so it was mainly a matter of figuring out the motion of DWPS for me.

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#3

I wish I could explain it better, but it’s a mental thing, not a physical problem. Unless you have some physical defect or injury I guarantee that your fingers are capable of moving extremely fast. It’s just a matter of getting your brain to lock both hands together and take over. You’re not able to consciously keep track of every note you play at speeds over 130-140 bpm and I think that’s where most people plateau because they’re trying to consciously control every note/movement. But you can’t do that though because at higher speeds it’s like your fingers are just moving on their own in a controlled twitch type thing.
I think Troy’s advice in the Volcano seminar is probably the best. Start with a short, repeating, easily chunkable pattern like Yngwie’s six-note pattern, and work on it on one string at first. Play it over and over until you have it memorized. Then play it over and over while watching TV (or CtC episodes :slight_smile:). That way it gets into your subconscious. After doing that for a couple of days I’d try playing as fast as you possibly can. It’ll be sloppy but you’ll get a few moments here and there where your subconscious takes over and you’ll sync up for a few notes. Once you’ve experienced what it’s like to play at high speeds cleanly, you’ll have a reference point to guide your brain to. Then it’s just a matter of extending those bursts of clean speed playing until you can do longer lines while also moving from string to string.
It’s a long process you have to do a few baby steps at a time. But if you’re patient and consistent with your practice you’ll amaze yourself at how good you can get in just a few weeks.

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#4

Wow, it takes me at least months if not years to increase my speed by 5 bpm. Though I understand you already have ability to play fast, so this concerns learning one specific lick.

I sure hope so! But how do I get there? I’ve practised thousands of hours already. I’ll try your approach, especially the mental thing. Everytime I tried playing fast and it was sloppy I just stopped, because I thought it wasn’t working. But what you’re saying makes sense. Thank you very much.

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#5

Are you sure you’re not using a stringhopping motion? Because if so, you can practice all you want, you won’t get any faster. There is zero sense worrying about practice routines if you’re simply not using a picking movement that works. Nine times out of ten here on the forum, when we get this complaint, this is what we see when folks post test clips.

So before you do any other single thing, film a clip of your fastest single string or tremolo type playing, upload to YT, and post a link here in Technique Critique. We’ll tell you right away if stringhopping is the issue. If it is, you’re in luck, because you can fix it by using a different picking motion.

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#6

6 posts were split to a new topic: Elpii technique critique

#7

THIS.

I practice inside the DAW all the time. It’s crazy useful—like 10x’ing the effectiveness of your practice.

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#8

I have M-audio Jamlab. It’s quite nice but I haven’t used it in a while. I used to record myself often, it’s a great feedback. It never occured to me to check the waveform as a form of practise though.

Elpii technique critique