Hello!
I’m a hobby guitarist in northern England. I’ve owned guitars for 25+ years, the last five of which I’ve been practicing almost every day for 30-60 minutes, and taking the odd lesson. I play mainly for my own pleasure—and occasionally for my wife’s, if I can trip her up as she scrambles for the door when I reach for the guitar.
For the last 13 months I’ve been going through Paul Gilbert’s Rock Guitar ArtistWorks course, working through the fundamentals. These are great and I’ve improved a lot, but the thing I’m struggling with there is the same that I’ve always struggled with: playing them at the required speed.
As a concrete example, I’ve spent months increasing my speed on the opening riff to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck from 80 bpm to about 100 bpm (maybe up to 110 on a good day, but only for a few bars). The original recording is 134 bpm—laughably out of reach for me. Or so I thought!
Then this weekend I came across the Help, I can’t play fast video on YouTube and it hit me so on the nose I got two black eyes. “Start slow, and increase the speed” is advice I keep getting, and have deliberately followed—but it’s just not working for me. And after watching this video, I finally understand why. So here I am!
I’ve started going through the Pickslanting Primer already, and when I discovered I could do north of 200 bpm on the knocking, pen, and coin scratching tests I nearly wept. I now have renewed hope of ever being able to play the Thunderstruck opening riff at 134 
Stig
